Two actors are standing in front of an intimate audience, scripts in hand. One actor has their hand held up to their temple and they look stressed. The second actor has their hand on the first actor's shoulder. — Afton Moran as Pie and Emma Lynne Harley as Flick

I’ve written this sentence a thousand times.

And deleted it.

And written it again.

And decided to start another way. Failed. Despaired. Distracted myself. Procrastinated. Agonised. Felt guilty about all the time wasted despairing, distracting, procrastinating and agonising.

Started again.

Bold writing on a notepad. "Is love enough?"

Nobody supports you to do that. You do that part for free. So, between all the (necessary) failing, despairing, distracting, procrastinating, agonising and guilt – you have to pay the bills.

And find time to worry about the bills.

Can you pay someone to do your worrying for you?

Never mind, can’t afford it anyway.

So, to be supported to do all that – and to pay my bills whilst I do it – that’s pretty phenomenal. To be supported to do all that and be encouraged to celebrate your queerness – that’s something that doesn’t come around too often. And yet, here I am – again! – the luckiest of queer little ducklings, working on my play Flick and Pie Go Fishing.

I started my development with two aims.

I wanted to get a full draft of the play finished, and I wanted to work out what the ultimate question was - what question was this play was asking to which I did not know the answer? And I think I found it.

It felt like a simple question ‘is love enough?’, but the more I thought about it the less I was confident on my answer.

Is love enough between two individuals? Flick loves Pie, Pie loves her back – but do we need more than that to succeed? Don’t we need compatibility, attention, care, kindness, consideration, a general baseline understanding? Don’t we need to feel like the other person ‘gets it’? And, if we are saying we do need those things are we then comfortable in saying that you can be madly in love but... it just isn’t enough?

Then, romantic love is conditional, isn’t it? So, it’s not enough... but, what about ‘unconditional’ love? For queer people. Who face their fair share of rejection, specifically familial and parental rejection, it feels like we can all point at times where love has not been enough. It’s not been enough for a parent to accept their child, not been enough to maintain a relationship with someone who cannot acknowledge who you are. But - I don’t know anyone who finds it easy to disconnect and say ‘it just isn’t enough’.

So I don’t know the answer to ‘is love enough’? And with that question in my mind, I wrote pages and pages, testing my central characters, pushing them over the line again and again to see if they would break. I can’t tell you their ending - because I’m never going to write it for them. I’m always going to leave them there, eternally un-ended for an audience to decide the answer.

I’m so grateful for this time to push Flick and Pie, to push myself, in ways that I simply could not have afforded to do without the bursary. I am delighted to share a little snippet of them once again with the people of Dundee and I am beyond thrilled that I have got that full draft to move on to the next stage of development for production. I have never known a company put out ‘love’ in the way that Shaper/Caper does – and it returns in such abundance at their sharings and in their audience. The joy, connection and complete sense of belonging is so wonderful to be a part of – I truly thank you for letting me be a small part of this wonderful celebration of Queer Creativity.

Laila Noble is a Queer identifying Director, Producer and Playwright from Wales, based in Scotland. She is the inaugural winner of the St. Andrews Playwriting Award and the premier of this play will be in early 2023. Laila is also a winner of the Scottish Arts’ Club Bright Spark Award, runner up for Theatre Uncut’s Political Playwriting Award and was recently a finalist for the Hope Mill playwriting award. Her recent directing work includes Young Writers Scratch (Traverse Theatre), Waves (Alice Mary Cooper) and Moonlight on Leith. She is currently in rehearsal for the Scottish Tour of The Bush which will feature as a Made in Scotland showcase at Summerhall’s Fringe this year. Laila is the Artistic Director of ClartyBurd (New Scottish Companies Award 2021) and is an L20 artist supported by the Lyceum Theatre.

Laila Noble: Flick and Pie Go Fishing | BRAW Bursary