The Host House for Nicky Singer

I want to tell you a story.

It’s a story about stories. About their power. About how they can change the world, make things happen. But also, about different ways of telling them. And it is an invitation to you to join in the telling, to help with the shaping of a story that is only just beginning.

You may be familiar with some parts of the story, but you won’t know this version of it, because I’ve never told it quite like this before.

The story starts with the brilliant novelist, playwright, prize-winning author, Nicky Singer and the mentorship she gave me in, what turned out to be, the last five years of her life, and for which I will be grateful for the rest of mine.

The first time I met Nicky, she told me that she never began work on a book until she knew its final sentence. She liked to know the plan, to see where she and her characters were headed. She didn’t ever revise her work. She didn’t need to revise it - why would you, when you know where you’re going, and exactly how to get there? 

This was radical to me. Not how I wrote at all. I made it up as I went along. I work with a company of storytellers and theatre-makers called Improbable - improvisation is the core of our practice, not-knowing, not-planning is what we do- unfolding the story, the process, as we go. We do this to make small studio shows but also big operas, musicals, plays. This is not a conventional way of working. Nicky’s method has more cultural traction, is the better tried and tested model - because how can you try and test something that hasn’t happened yet?

We discussed all this, and Nicky shared with me an essay - Ursula Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction- which articulates these different methods of storytelling. Le Guin posits that they relate back to our origins. She describes the image of early Man with a spear, the hero who drives his point home, wins the day and a load of meat, versus the image of our ancestors as gatherers - the idea that, in truth, the first cultural device was probably a bag to hold things, wild oats for example, and that this too is a way to make a meal, and a story happen. Gather as you go, see what you find and how your findings might slowly come together.

Nicky identified herself as being akin to the hunter with the spear – fast, adroit- and me as being the gatherer – wandering, ponderous. With immense generosity and patience, she mentored me as I did my slow gathering, and learnt some of her hunter-like craft. At the point when I finally sent her a story structure that held up under her rigorous critique, she sent me an email containing four words, huge and red (for discretion here I will keep them small and black):

“You fucking nailed it!!!!”

Nailing it was what Nicky was all about. Brilliantly, beautifully, skilfully hitting the mark. 

And yet…

When I go back through the many emails we wrote to each other, I am struck, not by a spear, or hammer, but by the other kinds of imagery she used to guide me. She wrote of ‘seeding’ the story. Of doing ‘spade work.’ Of collecting pearls and stringing them into a necklace. Of finding ‘the pull thread.’ And, she wrote of narrative structure, “once you tack it down, it’s like the spine of a leaf, you can add the colour and shape – and end on that nice sharp point…”

Seeds, spades, pearls, threads, and the sharp point - not of a spear - but a leaf. Images, not of hunting, but of gardening, weaving, and of gathering.

However, she definitely liked to know her destination, signed off her emails to me with ‘Onwards,’ and is famous for marching along on a walk.

 And yet…

When I sent Nicky the invitation I had written for Improbable, about our quest to find a creative home - an invite that explicitly embraced the act of setting out with no idea of our endpoint - she wrote back with tremendous enthusiasm. Our dream was of a place to house our practice- our improvisational way of telling stories - and we were calling it ‘The Gathering.’ “Did anyone have any clues to put in our carrier bag?” we asked in our invite. In response Nicky told me about a site in Kent - “probably the place where I feel most creative on earth.” It was where she had run the Performing Arts Labs for ten years, and for thirty years since had hosted a New Year gathering of her closest family and friends.  

What a clue for the bag. The kind of clue that, funnily enough, hit right on the mark. Nailed it.

And so Nicky, being the woman of action that she was, went right ahead and arranged for us to meet with the Executive Director of Bore Place, in Kent, and to lead us on site, to an area called ‘The Brick Works’ consisting of some derelict barns, an old brick kiln and other buildings…..

Bore Place is a farm, an outdoor education centre, a retreat, on 500 acres of regeneratively managed land. It is owned by The Commonwork Trust, a charity set up by Neil and Jenifer Wates in 1976, out of a profound desire to bring about real change in the world, and specifically to model sustainable practices. The role of the arts was always a part of the vision, and The Performing Arts Labs that Nicky helped hold, along with Susan Benn, were an early manifestation of this, but in more recent years the artistic strand of the charity’s work has been dormant.

And so now here we are reanimating that strand of the story- Improbable are making a home, thanks to Nicky Singer, at Bore Place. She made the introduction in 2021, and so knew that she had, indeed, hit the mark and was utterly delighted. We want to build a creation centre on site – it’s a huge, and hugely ambitious project, but we are approaching it as we would any artistic endeavour - narrating it into being, trusting the power of the telling, not sure of the ending yet, but listening, gathering, and learning as we go. And one of the things we have learnt of late is about the ideas behind Susan’s and Nicky’s Performing Arts Labs. How they were aimed at exploration, at taking risks, at following your passion, without quite knowing where it would lead….

So, the plot thickens - the weave of it, the threads pulling through it, and more and more, I am coming to recognise in Nicky, not just the hunter, but the host- a rather magnificent gatherer, who brought people and ideas together. She was not only the one to spy the prey, carry the spear, but also the one to bring the food back home, to stoke up the fire, to tell the stories, and the one to listen, to question, to invite others to talk, and to delight in what unfolded round that fire, or kitchen table, or in those rooms and gardens at Bore Place.

Which means that, although we don’t know the ending of this story yet, we do have a beginning, which honours Nicky - she has given us a ‘pull-thread’ for a thrilling future narrative. As we get out our spades, start to dig and to seed things, it has become clear that our first task is to renovate an old oast house, which stands right in the centre of the site to which Nicky led us. We want to transform this into a Host House. The downstairs will hold a long table - big enough for twenty or thirty of you to sit around, to share meals, stories and dreams. Upstairs, you’ll find working and writing space, and a library, perhaps. The Host House will be the heart and hearth of the rest of the project, as the story of the centre unfolds - the base to which to return and from which to grow, as Nicky herself was in her mentoring - her hosting - of me, and of so many others.

The Host House at Bore Place

So, this is how the story both ends- and begins. If you want to help us make the Host House happen, to honour Nicky’s astonishing creative spirit, you can put something into our carrier bag, can help us gather resources. Funds are useful, of course, but other kinds of help are welcome too - hands, ideas, materials, and stories. Always more stories.

To put funds, big or small, in the bag please go here.

To send in stories, ideas or other kinds of ingredients please email: office@improbable.co.uk

To read more about ‘The Gathering’ and to follow the project as it unfolds go here.

But this isn’t quite the end - because I want to let Nicky have the last word - she would have liked, that, I think - the last leaf-sharp word.

The closing words I will share with you come from an email Nicky sent me about her latest book - one she was working on right up to the end- without being entirely sure of its ending. Shockingly - I think she shocked herself a little - she hadn’t known the last sentence before beginning work. She was finding her way as she went – not a familiar approach to her. It vexed her, but she had a breakthrough about it, which she shared with me in a slightly cryptic message - one which now has great resonance, for our dream of a Host House, and the stories yet to come which it might hold:

Over to Nicky……

So – drum roll – I think the answer (well, the start of an answer…) to the Book Problem is….. a bag!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! …. It will be an empty bag…because there must always be space left for the things that don’t yet exist… 

Ha! 

Put that in your bag and smoke it. 

Love love

nxxx