Yes &

is an improvisation rule where when one performer makes an offer, the other must accept it (yes) and also make their own offer. Otherwise the improvisation is blocked. I was blocked myself the other day, and because I'm writing a relationship play involving cross-dressing, confusion, thwarted love and strange adventures, I went back to Northrop Frye, who I last read at university when I was trying to make sense of Shakespeare's comedies. At the time I much preferred the tragedies. An extremely patronising man told me that when I grew up I'd drink red wine, eat dark chocolate and like the comedies best ("because they're darker than you think", he said). It infuriates me that this has mostly come true. But, anyway, Frye argues that rather Shakespeare rammed his plays with improbabilities for the joy of inviting us to say yes to the implausibility, the mad theatrical conventions, the wild adventures—and once we've said yes, he gives us a whole heap of ampersands. It's a more active suspension of disbelief, says Frye, quoting Paulina in The Winter's Tale who warns that something epically unlikely is about to happen and that we must believe it if we want the story, the feeling, the rush: "It is required you do awake your faith." As Frye points out, it's striking how often a Shakespeare play ends with the characters invited to go offstage where all will be explained. We don't get the explanation. But if we really said yes, we don't need it. We leave the theatre and that's the &.

Different for girls

This week I've been mostly watching screwball romances and listening to the rain, but I also read Louise Wener's autobiography, Different for Girls. I loved Sleeper. How could you not love a band who wrote songs with lyrics as stinging as these (from Inbetweener):

He's not a prince, he's not a king
He's not a work of art or anything
It makes no sense, another year
What kind of A-Z would get you here?
He's nothing special, she's not too smart
He studies fashion, she studies art
I think I told you right from the start
You were just my inbetween, just my inbetween
You're such an inbetweener.

I also loved them because in Lady Love Your Countryside they namechecked Belsize Park. Where I live! All right, not in the most positive fashion; the line goes "come over here / and we could spend our lives puking in Belsize Park" but still! Who else has mentioned Belsize Park in song? So far as I know, no one.

Anyway, Wener's autobiography is brilliant because it punctures the idea that Britpop was all about the boys—and because she freely, brazenly, proudly admits the scurrilous things she did to make it. Like, when she and her band (then named Surrender Dorothy after the smoke trail in The Wizard of Oz; they had to change it because other bands were called that, but where are those bands now, huh?) found out a record company rep was coming to one of their gigs, she put an advert in The Stage saying they were auditioning for people to be in their next video, to make sure the gig was rammed with enthusiastic people in supercool clothes. And to get the band together in the first place, she faked an NME review by literally cutting and pasting and then photocopying it, so she could show it to potential band members to prove they were joining a going concern. And when playing support gigs, she'd hide in the loo until enough of the audience arrived to make it worth her while. It's inspiring to read about a female artist who is so happy to talk about her hunger to make it.

And there's plenty of Eighties nostalgia in there too. David Bowie. Moon boots. The stress of recording a mix tape. The pleasures of shopping in Gants Hill. And a manifesto we can surely all get behind: "In the midst of personal tragedy, there is always Flashdance."