Lydia Davis is the best writer you’ve never heard of. She’s been rising slowly, writing and publishing since the 70s when she released her first story collection, The Thirteenth Women and Other Stories. She’s a writer’s writer, which means that she writes deliberately, precisely savouring words. Though not a household name in America, Davis has been published in all major Anglo-American literary magazines: the New Yorker, Granta, the Paris Review. She is the new master of the short story, an elastic form which in her hands ranges from a single sentence to forty pages. They are meandering, densely interior, surreal, poignant, eccentric, humorous, and lyrical.

When she is not writing fiction, Davis is translating. In 2004 her translation of Proust’s Swann’s Way was published, followed by Flaubert’s Madame Bovary in 2010. Davis is also currently translating the very short stories of the Dutch writer A.J. Snijder and learning Dutch as she goes, whilst brushing up on her German. But Davis believes she won’t undertake any other long projects as her ‘own writing had to be snuck in around the edges.’

When I ask Davis about her response to the statement that women have a reputation for working within the ‘miniature’ (coming from Austen’s ‘two inches of ivory’), Davis says that two of her models for working in the short form were men: Kafka’s Parables and Paradoxes and Russell Edson, whose short stories often involve the domestic ‘but in a weird twisted way’.

‘As for my own work,’ Davis says, ‘besides being very drawn to the very short form, I find myself happily expanding into lengths that feel potentially endless and I am currently working on a poem (adapted from a memoir written by a man) that is over 35 pages long and will probably get longer.’ Davis has never felt any pressure to make a particular subject or style her own. ‘I couldn’t write very comfortably if I felt constrained in any way and I don’t feel I’ve adopted certain subject matters because I’m female. It seems much more complex than that.’ Her own ‘apprenticeship’ happened while reading men: Beckett, Kafka, Nabokov, James Agee, Joyce, and Roland Barthes. ‘I studied very closely how they handled language: word choice, syntax, how they achieved their effects.’

I ask whether or not Davis, as someone who has actively participated in American fiction for the last thirty years, has noticed the current literary establishment being particularly masculine. ‘The current literary establishment does still seem to me somewhat dominated by male writers,’ says Davis. ‘Of the young fiction writers who rise to stardom in the US, more seem to be men than women. It is hard to know whether there are simply more talented young men than women – a little hard to believe – or whether discrimination is at work at the publishing end of the trajectory or discouragement sets in earlier, in the classroom and at the desk.’

In considering Naipaul’s statement that he could spot a difference between male and female writing, Davis says she didn’t believe in the existence of a difference. ‘Any good style must be a strong style – firm, clear, confident. I do firmly believe we are all, to some degree, androgynous anyway – we are all mixes of ‘female’ and ‘male’ traits.’

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2010

“Do you by any chance have a vintage stuffed dog?”

“No, but I have a small leather pig”

Now that rehearsals are underway and the cloud of worry that surrounds the beginning of any play is settling, I thought this would be a good opportunity to reminisce about the events that got me to this point.

I stood in the crowded Turl Street Kitchen, craning my neck to seek out a girl who looked like Kate O’Connor, or at least looked like a Kate O’Connor should look, since I had never met her before. That is the real problem with emailing: you can have long and rather informal conversations with someone you don’t know and have never met. I edged my way towards the bar, and the girl who stood next to me was cradling a copy of “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”. I’m no detective, but I thought that was enough to go on.

After some introductions, we sat down and chatted about the play. “The comedy is crap,” she said. I stared; here is a director that has chosen to put on a play which she herself thinks is crap. Great. I wasn’t exactly filled with confidence.

Please forgive my ignorance. Those who are well acquainted with Two Gents will be aware that Launce has a pet dog called Crab. My mind’s eye readjusted to take in “The comedy is Crab”. A rookie mistake. Well, at least I wasn’t auditioning, as it would have generally been awkward if I had spent the entire time cursing.

No crap Crab would do. I was to search high and low for the perfect stuffed dog on wheels. It is on these occasions where the outside world can really scare you. Having typed “vintage, stuffed dog on wheels” into my computer I was bombarded with a host of the scariest toys in Britain. There was one quite horrendous dog which, I admit with slight embarrassment, plagued my dreams that evening. It was bright pink, with round, giant, slightly glazed-over eyes and a creepy over-stretched smile. The overall impression was “buy me or I’ll kill you”. I resisted the threat and can say with a sigh of relief that I haven’t so far been visited in the night by a large, pink, psychotic dog. All in all, the search was becoming rather consuming. I remember coming across a pull-along wooden snail and considered purchasing it – no, Sarah, what use would you have for a pull-along wooden snail? It really is a niche market! Nevertheless, the hunt for Crab continues.

Stuffed dogs aside, the search for actors was also high on my list of priorities, especially male ones. Finding men in Oxford can be difficult enough, but in the Oxford Drama scene where the ratio of girls to boys is 3:1, this was going to be more of a challenge than searching for a date. And then came the Shakespeare. There is something about Shakespeare that causes even the best of actors to stand up tall, puff out their chest and use their “Shakespeare voice”. The era we are setting the play does not call for this style of acting; the language needed to be natural in order to fit in with the American jazz age scene atmosphere. All in all, we had our work cut out.

Thankfully, with a combination of begging, bullying, a duke transforming into a duchess, and many cries of “stop using your ‘Shakespeare voice’”, I can safely say we have a stellar cast and I am excited for rehearsals to begin.

Sarah Leonard is the producer for Barbarian Productions’ The Two Gentlemen of Verona, to be performed May 1st-5th in Christ Church Cathedral Gardens, complete with stuffed dog. Tune in next week for the director’s perspective, and for more information about Two Gents visit their website, www.barbarian-productions.com or follow them on twitter @twogentsox.

The 1980s saw the explosion of the Blockbuster: following epics like Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977), films had to be bigger, more action-packed, and more dazzling. The highest grossing films of the decade, like the two Star Wars sequels, and the Indiana Jones franchise, revel in reckless adventure, with brilliant special effects technology, sophisticated sound tracks, mega-marketing budgets, and costly, highly-paid stars. And yet it’s easy, with the modern tendency to disguise taste under fifteen layers of irony, to only appreciate the 80s with an air of superiority, or at least as a ‘guilty pleasure’. But should anyone really feel guilty for loving Uncle Buck, or for understanding that David Bowie’s Labyrinth is literally the best thing ever? This was a time in film that was about exactly the opposite: unapologetic fun.

After MTV launched in 1981 with the words ‘Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll!’, the impact was seen everywhere in popular culture. As studios pandered to the new and demanding ‘MTV generation’, there was an unprecedented surge in action-packed, flashy, often simplistic movies, such as Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) and Die Hard (1988). But the outpouring of films aimed at a teenage audience saw the establishment of a cinema institution: the John Hughes teen movie. Invariably honest and hilarious depictions of middle-class American high school life, Hughes’ success lay in his ability to simultaneously respect the universal conflicts and longings of his almost painfully ordinary adolescents, and find the humour within them. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) celebrates the importance of seeking joy in life, as Ferris’s rebellious intelligence  charms everyone around him, and even begins to transform his antithetically awkward best friend. But in ‘the simplest terms, the most convenient definition’, The Breakfast Club (1985) is the ultimate teen movie. Exploring the scramble of five members of different cliques to discover a more substantial identity, the movie examines adolescent issues of sex, drugs, abuse, suicide both faithfully and subversively. But if the angst of stereotyping ‘a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal’ feels a little dated, then Michael Lehmann’s Heathers (1989) provides bite and modern wit which still resonates. A dark comedy satirising competitive teen popularity, Heathers takes classroom revenge to its final conclusion: ‘teen angst bullshit has a body-count’. Full of savage one-liners (‘Did you have a brain tumour for breakfast?’) shocking violence, and an incredibly sharp performance from Winona Ryder, this film stands out against its earnest and euphoric contemporaries, and even now remains fresher than it’s descendant Mean Girls (2004).

But the unashamed enthusiasm of the decade is most exuberantly captured in its delight in pop music, as characters across the spectrum dance, mime and sing with youthful joy and playfulness. From the archetypal Adventures in Babysitting opening, to Marty McFly’s ‘new sound’, to the unabashed, childish physical comedy of Beetlejuice’s Banana Boat Song, the vibrant effervescence of the 80s big musical numbers captures the spirit of the decade in cinema. Even touching its darker instances (Platoon’s moment of relief comes as a Tracks of my Tears singalong, heart-breaking in its humanity in contrast with the grim war scenes, and the poignancy of the laughing soldiers belting the lyric “Although I might be laughing loud and hearty, deep inside I’m blue”) the release of musical expression is undeniable. But yet again it’s Hughes who does it best, with the Breakfast Club’s detention disco, Duckie Dale’s frantic Otis impression, and Ferris Bueller’s unforgettable parade scene as 10,000 people twist and shout along with him. In Ferris’s immortal words, ‘Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it’, and this defiant thirst for rebellious fun is what the 80s was all about.