Interview: Afsaneh Gray on NYT’s shopfront soap Nail Bar

‘At a time when you can do your entire weekly shop and never speak to a soul, places like nail salons and hairdressers are increasingly important sites of community and connection,’ said playwright Afsaneh Gray.

Her new play, Nail Bar, co-written with xx, puts that premise straight onto the high street. Currently running on North London’s Holloway Road as part of the National Youth Theatre’s StoryFest, the 80-minute production bypasses standard studio spaces in favour of an empty retail unit transformed into a functional salon called Well Gel Nails.

The staging relies on rapid, close-quarters interaction. Gray, whose previous stage writing includes Octopus and the Brian Way Award-winning The Border, has long traded in sharp social satire. Here, that instinct meets continuing drama mechanics, drawing heavily on her years writing for BBC series such as Doctors.

To ground the world in truth, Gray and Jones conducted field research in local salons before writing. ‘All kinds of conversations happen in these spaces — I’ve heard incredibly personal stories of break-ups and bust-ups and some truly inflammatory gossip that I will not repeat!’ Gray said. ‘What I will say is that when me and Kelly were researching this piece, we went to a nearby nail salon and got the goss from some of the nail techs. One of their stories made it into the play… I won’t say which, but you’re welcome to guess!’

The reality of the UK writer pipeline

Writing for a large youth ensemble provided a rare opportunity in a theatre industry increasingly defined by austerity. ‘It’s such a thrill to write for a large and diverse cast — it’s not often that we get the chance to write for big casts anymore,’ Gray said.

While initiatives like StoryFest provide page-to-stage opportunities, Gray is frank about the broader structural challenges facing contemporary writers. Having passed through development schemes at the Orange Tree Theatre, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, and the National Theatre Studio, she views the current pipeline for emerging and mid-career dramatists as fundamentally broken.

‘At a time when you can do your entire weekly shop and never speak to a soul, places like nail salons and hairdressers are increasingly important sites of community and connection,’ said playwright Afsaneh Gray.

‘I think it’s a terrible time to be a writer in the UK,’ said Gray. ‘Yes, there are a few schemes still for new writers, but much fewer than when I started. Then, if you manage to make a start in the industry, you run up against a lack of ongoing opportunities. Schemes for emerging or mid-career writers, like the Orange Tree and the NT Studio, and indeed the Bush Emerging Writers Group, where me and Kelly met, are hugely important for keeping people in the industry and building networks. We need them, and we need more of them. But they only go so far.’

Gray pointed directly to commercial pressures driving decisions away from original new work. ‘Writers are having to think about things like star casting instead of writing the plays we want to write, something which disproportionately affects those of us from marginalised or minority groups who want to see themselves reflected on stage,’ she said. ‘We urgently need arts and arts education to be taken seriously and for funding to reflect that — we can’t just assume that artists will always find a way. A lot of times, they won’t. I know so many talented people who have already had to leave the industry because they just can’t afford to keep making work.’

Adapting television mechanics for a Holloway Road shopfront

It is against this squeezed backdrop that Nail Bar asserts itself, bringing screen structures into a disused shop and forcing technical adaptations. Without camera angles to frame close-ups or cuts to move between subplots, the physical layout became central to the writing.

‘Both me and co-writer Kelly Jones were really aware of the space when we started thinking about this story — how it would look and feel, the rhythm of people having their nails done, and how the audience might fit into that,’ said Gray. ‘We always wanted an opportunity for at least one audience member to have their nails done during the show, so we had to think about which character would be doing that when. Then, once we saw the space, which was beautifully designed by Philippa Brocklehurst, that opened up more possibilities that we were able to “retrofit” into the scripts.’

The writer pair established a collaborative rhythm that carried directly into the production’s multi-part format. ‘We took a lot from continuing drama structure when thinking about Nail Bar — from the writing process itself to the structure of the episodes,’ Gray said. ‘We started with a wider story conference working with NYT members, then me and Kelly spent a couple of days storylining the three episodes and breaking them down beat by beat before dividing up to write episodes 1 and 3 (me) and 2 (Kelly). We then swapped scripts and took charge of different storylines and character voices to make sure the piece felt internally consistent.’

They structured the piece using traditional television frameworks. ‘We knew all along that we wanted a serial strand that carried across all three episodes, and a story of the day strand, which resolves in some way by the end of the episode,’ Gray said. ‘We knew we wanted guest characters and regular characters, and that we would end each episode (including the last!) on a cliffhanger. We built the world to be durable, with an eye to more episodes, and more seasons.’

Physical limitations also dictated how characters held conversations. In a single-room retail unit, secrecy requires clever staging. ‘How do you have a private conversation that no one else hears? Or a moment when a character discovers something that no one else sees?’ said Gray. ‘That’s where our director, the brilliant Natasha Haws, comes in. She was great at embracing that challenge and helping us to find solutions.’

Sound design, audio rules, and character-led politics

The physical constraints of the venue required some unconventional technical choices. Retail units do not carry theatre lighting rigs, forcing sound design to do heavy lifting. Gray, who has written extensive audio drama including Audible’s The Other Woman and instalments of British Scandal, brought a trained ear for acoustic world-building to the rehearsal room.

‘I approach writing for audio in a very similar way to writing for screen,’ Gray said. ‘In many ways, it’s a visual medium — you’re painting pictures in the audience’s mind. But the budget constraints are (hopefully) less — you can take the audience wherever you want to go, through time and space. You do have to think about sound in a very specific way, which I love because I think quite aurally when I write, anyway. For this piece, Natasha immediately identified that sound would be key because there’s limited lighting options in the retail space we’re using as our nail bar, and our sound designer, Pouya Ehsaei, has done a great job helping us build the world of the show, set mood and direct audience attention.’

Beneath its fast comic pace and soap homages, Nail Bar tracks characters seeking refuge inside the salon to protect the sanctuary they have built. The narrative touches on grief, queer identity, immigration, and the physical decay of UK high streets. Yet Gray remains wary of heavy-handed moralising, opting instead for a character-led focus that mirrors serial television.

‘It’s such a thrill to write for a large and diverse cast — it’s not often that we get the chance to write for big casts anymore,’ Gray said.

‘I think Nail Bar does what great continuing dramas or indeed sitcoms do best — it’s fun, entertaining, and it pulls on your heartstrings in a way that’s political with a small “p”,’ said Gray. ‘If an audience cares about the characters you’re writing, and then you put them in difficult situations because of the systems that surround them, then hopefully they root for those characters to overcome those challenges.’

She added: ‘Without shying away from acknowledging harsh realities, we also wanted Nail Bar to feel warm and aspirational, in the way that Heartstopper or Heated Rivalry does — there’s something beautiful about putting the world as you wish it were on stage. A moment when we can collectively imagine a different, better reality is also a political act.’

StoryFest is supported by STUDIOCANAL and Urban Myth Films.

Featured Image: NYT-NailBar – Shot.by.charlie