Brexit Shorts: Giving voice to a divided Britain through new dramas

A year on from last summer’s Brexit vote, with official divorce talks and the labyrinthine process of leaving the EU only just beginning, the Guardian continues to ask vital questions about the UK’s future. But it’s also important that we keep examining why Britain became the first full member state to vote to leave the EU. Which is why, soon after the referendum, the Guardian partnered with the theatre company Headlong to create Brexit Shorts, a series of original dramas that we launched online this week.

Headlong take their productions all over the UK, and it was important to both the touring company and the Guardian that this set of short films should represent diverse views from around the country. We asked leading playwrights including David Hare, Abi Morgan, Gary Owen, Charlene James and Meera Syal to write monologues about the causes and consequences of Brexit, particularly from the perspective of their home region. We wanted the dramas to reflect the hopes and concerns of remainers and leavers, and were thrilled to see a wide range of scenarios emerge when the scripts arrived.

It is striking that these nine films are still among the first direct responses by playwrights to the referendum result. In fact, the Guardian published what was possibly the first Brexit drama last summer: we commissioned political dramatist James Graham to write a short play set inside the Ministry for Brexit and published his script, A Strong Exit, in July 2016.

Graham is also one of the contributors to Brexit Shorts. His punchy monologue Burn, set in his native Mansfield, is the story of an internet troll, played by Joanna Scanlan, who gleefully watches the sparks fly online as she pits leavers against remainers.

“What I liked about James’s script, aside from the skill of the writing, the comedy and energy, is that it’s an actual dramatic characterisation of something that’s usually talked about in abstract terms – for my generation at least,” Scanlan says.

Other characters we meet in Brexit Shorts include a Welsh dairy farmer (The Pines written by Gary Owen), a Northern Irish mother (Your Ma’s a Hard Brexit by Stacey Gregg) and an immigration lawyer in Manchester (Shattered by Maxine Peake). All succeed in adding emotional insight to complex issues.

The films feature a mixture of household names such as Kristin Scott Thomas and Penelope Wilton and rising stars including Line of Duty’s Scott Reid who plays a mercurial Glaswegian in AL Kennedy’s short, Permanent Sunshine. Like many of the films, it was shot on location – in this case, late at night in and around Glasgow’s George Square, a historic centre of political protest. “It was the weekend of a Celtic-Rangers game,” says Reid, “and normally the city centre would have been really busy but it was eerily quiet which was perfect.”

Kennedy’s unpredictable character, Chummy, takes the viewer by surprise. “He’s learned the hard way,” says Reid, “which a lot of people in the UK have to do. In every major city there’s a group of people left behind, however we describe that. In Scotland they normally get attached with the “neds” label – non-educated delinquent. What this script shows is that he’s a bright young man who is extremely educated, understands exactly what’s going on, but feels that nobody represents him – especially the Westminster gang.”

Reid’s electric performance encapsulates the bold immediacy we aimed to achieve with the films. All the monologues are spoken straight to camera, creating an intimacy with the audience. As the majority of the Guardian’s video content is now watched on mobile phones, that direct communication is vital. We used the same approach last year for our Shakespeare Solos series of films, in which actors including Damian Lewis, Zawe Ashton and Riz Ahmed performed some of the playwright’s greatest speeches.

Jess Gormley, who produced Brexit Shorts for the Guardian, explains that the films take stylistic references from the British director Alan Clarke, who she describes as the master of the unflinching tracking shot. “We also looked to the domestic settings of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads where the characters talk as if chatting to a close friend in their home. We wanted to convey the inner thoughts of the characters while also getting a feel for their environment,” she says.

As the Guardian’s Stage editor, I have been involved with the development of drama as a way of responding to news events at the Guardian. In 2014, journalists collaborated with playwrights from the Royal Court to make a series of “microplays” responding to topical issues such as food poverty. These were filmed using a specially constructed set to give them a theatrical feel. Many of these Brexit monologues, in contrast, gain strength from their vivid regional landscapes. In that sense, the films complement the Guardian’s Anywhere But Westminster videos, in which John Harris and John Domokos tour the UK to discover firsthand the issues that people in the UK care about.

The national breadth of the project was perfect for Headlong. Its artistic director, Jeremy Herrin, says the company aims to reflect the diversity of opinion and feeling across Britain and the nuances and contradictions of conversation. Amy Hodge, Headlong’s associate director, says she wanted the dramas to be swift, impactful and honest about why people voted the way they did. “We are all struck by how polarised opinions are over this issue and, particularly in the fallout of the referendum, how the artistic community seemed so surprised by the result,” she says. “It seemed to me that people in the UK, for a myriad of reasons, simply stopped listening to each other.”

It’s important the Guardian keeps listening to those views from around the UK and maintains an open conversation about Brexit. As David Hare points out: “The opinion polls have not shifted at all about whether this is going to be good for Britain or bad. The country is completely, identically divided in exactly the same way that it was a year ago.”

The first five Brexit Shorts are available to watch online. Four more will be released on Monday 26 June. You can catch up with the series at theguardian.com/brexit-shorts

• Chris Wiegand is the Guardian’s Stage editor and an executive producer of Brexit Shorts.