Context is everything. Some of us just aren't equipped to deliver the message - whatever its merits. And sometimes the magic just doesn't work.

I was put in mind by the last few letters of a conversation I had with an artist a about 20 years ago or so. He had just been doing a gig with the late Tony Capstick somewhere south of Watford Gap.

Apparently Tony used the f word onstage. My friend was saying he could see the audience stiffen with revulsion at the language. But he was convinced that it was the word delivered in Tony's northern accent that had upset the crowd. From his tongue the word had seemed brutal and confrontational.

Earlier he had seen another artist with a southern accent actually get a laugh using the same word.

what I'm saying is, that getting up onstage gives us a sort of illusory power. but if an artist is to be successful ,he has to know how how his paricular set of performing tools work and their likely effect. Maybe with playwights its the same.