How Did It Come To This? – A Biography of a Playwright

Its funny, but in my life I’ve worn roles like a set of clothes. I’ve been like Mr Ben. And back in 1995, I was at a point in my life when I wanted to do something…..else. Just something else. Didn’t know what. Just something else.

A friend of mine, Aran, had been going to this drama group that met down the local arts centre, for a little while. He’d been pestering me about it since he started going: “Come down, man. Its cool”. “Nah, shut up. Sounds bollocks”, was my reply pretty much every time. I can’t actually remember why I decided to go in the end. Recalling memories is like nailing air to me sometimes; it can all just be….mist. But I remember going in the end, probably just to shut Aran up. Anyways, I remember that the group were working on doing these pieces that Ken Campbell had written. He was some famous actor/writer from London. That’s all I knew about him. The plan was that James (who runs the frogboy website and has worked for Ken for many years now) was going to direct them. Within two weeks of going to the group, for some reason, which fails me now, I decided to write a play. I’d never done that before. I dabbled in a little sketch writing at university, but it never came to anything. I don’t know why I thought I could do it. I just thought I would. So, I did. I wrote my first play, The Goggle Box, in two weeks. It just popped out. I didn’t know anything about writing a play. Nothing at all. I just wrote one. I know that all sounds a bit oblique – “what, u just wrote a play 'cos u felt like it?”. “Yes”. I remember that it came very easy. Once I had the idea of a telly becoming autonomous and speaking to people to get them to bump off each other, so it could rule supreme in the house, the rest was fairly easy. I didn’t plan it, like I did with subsequent stuff. It seemed to just write itself. Seven tight, compact, scenes flowed out of me. Bang. James helped me collate it together and that was that. Once it was written, I gave it to the group to look at and everybody was, like, “lets put it on”. The initial plan was to co-direct with James, ‘cos I’d never done that before either. However, he got ill soon after and I ended up directing myself. I remember it being really good fun. I remember that. And directing was just another thing that u learnt as u went a long, I figured. By this time, Ken had heard about me and we struck up a friendship. He kindof took me under his wing and before the Goggle Box had even been performed, I found myself working for him on a one-man show he was putting together at the time, called Window of Opportunity. Thinking about it now, that seems a very apt description for what was going on in my life at the time. It was exactly that. We performed that show for a week at the Deptford theatre in London. I played piano in it and was his comic stooge; the straight guy to his warped whatever he is. He told me stories of how he’d been Dick Emery’s sidekick in the early days of his career. He made it sound kindof quixotic, but it just meant he got all the laughs! I was also researcher/editor. I remember that we went to Ventnor to write it. We spent three days in this hotel overlooking the front and just put the thing together. That was my first real connection with the town, as well. Ventnor eventually became my home a couple of years later and has been ever since, even though I don’t live there anymore. It’s a special place to me. Ventnor’s like Cheers: wouldn’t it be nice to go to a place where everybody knows your name? But more on that place later. Back to the memories….they’re floating again and I’ve lost the nail gun for a moment…..ah, yes…..so, by the time The Goggle Box was performed on the 18^th of august 1995 life had changed fairly dramatically for me. It was a crazy time, for sure. Within about four months, I’d written a play, had it performed, and become a freelance writer in the bargain. It really did feel like a portal had opened up into a different world – just like in Mr Ben. I was wearing the clothes of a playwright and so I thought I might as well be one.

The play went down really well. I remember my first review, in the local paper. It was described as “ a work of comic genius”. Yeah, I remember that. A work of comic genius. That was something, for sure. A work of comic genius. Has a certain ring to it, dunit? He-he. I knew everybody involved  at the time totally believed in what we were doing, because it was such fun to do; it never got boring to perform in re-hearsals. However, u never know how audiences are going to react till you've performed to them. But they liked it. They liked it a lot. After that show, down at the old Quay Arts centre, that was it for me. I was a playwright. If the cap fits, u know?

After that, things just kindof fell naturally together. I took over the drama group, called it the Ferret Theatre Company, appointed myself as artistic director, got an Orson Welles complex surprisingly quickly and started putting on more productions of The Goggle Box. As well as writing and directing, I acted and produced. I just picked it up as I went along. Ken taught me some stuff and he packed me off on a Robert McKee course, which helped me understand the principles of script-writing a whole lot more. And I had a good set-designer/stage manager at the time, a chap called Mike Garret, who helped me get what was in my head on stage. But essentially, I just kept trying on all these new clothes in the dressing up box and they all seemed to fit wonderfully. They made me look like…..Shakespeare!!! Oh, yes. I started really getting into Shakespeare. Reading all his plays, learning about his life, how he ran his own theatre company, made money from his art, all about the different periods in his writing. I even grew the same beard. I guess he was the same for me as a lot of musicians are with the Beatles. He was my real teacher. I still read The Tempest every couple of years to remind me what it’s all about.  Around that time, I also had a few people who helped with raising funds from various “arts” places and the Quay Arts centre became our “den”.

I wrote Writers’ Block in a three-month period sometime between April and august 1996. It was a very different play from Goggle Box. I think it marked the point when I began to truly believe in the role I was playing. I took it very seriously – I lived and breathed that play. I planned it meticulously, something I hadn’t done with the first one. I also applied some of the things I’d picked up from McKee: how to bring real depth to the characters, open up the story a bit more and how to structurally pace the plot. The funny thing was that when I went on the McKee course it’s not that he specifically taught me how to write – he just kindof helped me realise what I was doing right and wrong. Looking back at the Goggle Box, I’d somehow stumbled on a lot of things naturally that McKee defined for me. He clarified my thinking much more than shaping it, but Writers’ Block certainly benefits from that. By that time, I’d also began to develop a growing interest in existentialism. I’d discovered Dostoevsky  and hungrily devoured pretty much all of his stuff. I think I read Brothers Karamazov first and it’s still my favourite of his. It’s a great book. The characterisation is just awesome and the story resonates with me – three brothers, all very different, and how their lives merge together in one defining moment. That’s another thing I read every couple of years just to remind me how it’s done. So, yeah, I got into Sartre big time, Nietzsche, Camus (who didn’t really do it for me, to be honest), Heidegger and especially Keirkegaarde. He really spoke to me. I particularly liked his idea of the Leap of Faith, the notion that there is an end to reason and what lies beyond is a choice, which we are compelled to make, but one without any guarantees of knowing whether we’ll be right in making it. He was essentially talking about faith in God and Dostoevesky, too, was also concerned with this subject. In the Brothers Karamazov, there’s a chapter called The Grand Inquisitor, which is often lauded as one of the greatest cases ever put forward for atheism. And yet, Dostoevesky was a believer, as was keirkegaarde. I think these two writers have shaped my thinking the most, because they both share an amazing degree of honesty and integrity in their spiritual quest for truth. They were both very deep thinkers ,who wouldn’t settle for pat answers and were prepared to live their philosophy – to put their money where their mouth is. Dostoevesky had some life – he became instantly famous with his first book, The Poor Folk, got into radical politics, was arrested, sent to Siberia, and nearly executed for plotting against the government. After his release, he became famous again, had at least two wives who died on him and had a terrible battle throughout his life with a gambling addiction, which accounted for most of his money. Now that’s some adventure. It kindof hits a chord with me, I have to say! I like writers like that – people like Hemingway and Kerouac and Orwell, who lived their work, if you will. Nietzsche too, I guess, has been an influence; perhaps not so much in his conclusions as what he discovered along the way: again the limits of reason, his deep understanding of nihilism, the need to transcend the herd and particularly his emphasis on “becoming” who we are, that we are a work in progress and never the completed article. He was light years ahead of his time and I think the frustration of that, of no one getting what he was saying (he wrote 31 books and sold something like 500 copies all together) played a big part in him going nuts for the last 10 years of his life. Can you imagine being unrecognised for the entire duration of your career? Like Van Gogh, I guess, who also went mad in the end, arguably for similar reasons. I’ve tasted something of that in my career to understand what that must feel like. Granted, from the beginning, I was lucky enough to attract audiences who liked my work, which gives you the confidence you need to keep going. However, the “gatekeepers”, the people who control what we get to see on a large scale, they’ve often blocked my path, refused to provide a platform for a wider audience. Why? Well, without trying to sound like sour grapes, I think it’s pretty much all about the benjamin's. The entertainment industry basically comes down to what works, what formulas succeed the best, ‘cos they know these are cash cows they can constantly milk (if you’ll excuse the poor pun). Consequently, any artist trying to do anything outside those parameters is immediately up against it, by definition. The theatre world is no different. It can be a very closed shop – the amount of Pinter, Bernard Shaw, Ackyborn, Lloyd Webber, even Shakespeare revivals goes some way to proving the point, I think. It has caused me a lot of frustration in the past, even made me stop writing plays and it contributed in hastening a nervous breakdown. But I pray I’ll never have to deal with the frustration guys like Nietzsche and Van Gogh had to live with.

I’ve explained all the above because Writers’ Block was an effort to distil all these influences into a cohesive philosophical piece. It’s an ambitious effort, for sure. It was my first real attempt at dramatising something of my philosophical beliefs. Its splattered with comedy, because a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, and I always find however serious I try and be comedy just tends to fall through the cracks. It’s got loads of movie references in it because I love movies. Its surreal because from the moment I started playing with the dressing up box, I found surrealism was a pair of socks that fitted.  And it’s postmodern because it was a postmodern world I was talking to (still is, of course, but there’s a case for saying it’s more nihilistic now –  see new play for details). Therefore, because or in spite of all this, I’m very proud of WB and consider it my best achievement to date.

Anyways, we performed the play in September 1996. I was in it, along with Colin Carmichael, who later became quite famous with those 118 ads. He’s the guy holding the kid in his arms in the rocky pastiche they did. We actually fell out for many years because I blamed him for ruining it! The Orson Welles thing was kicking in big-time at this stage. When WB was first performed, I had to do a lot of re-writes because we hadn’t managed to nail it in re-hearsals. I had to chop about a quarter of the script, which was like sawing off my arm. It was an artistic regret for a long time and there was always a voice in my head that said, “you must do it as it was originally written one day”. To have finally done that now has been a truly exhilarating experience. Something I began eight years ago has been finished and it feels very good.

So, where were we? Mist….all is mi….ah yes. After Writers’ Block, we did more productions of The Goggle Box, but we also experimented with different ways of staging it. I’d made friends with a guy called Chiz by then, who was in a band called The Godsends, and after a few drinks one night we decided it might be a hoot if I wrote the band into the play, Young Ones style. I think the premise was they were rehearsing in the front room, which I used to set-up a couple of interesting interactions between them and the cast.  Rock’n’roll theatre, type thing. It made sense ‘cos I was attracting this type of crowd to the shows anyway, so it was a logical extension.  We toured this production around a few universities/colleges and audiences really liked it. I also remember us doing a Saturday Night Live kindof show around this time, with sketches and bands all mixed up. As I recall, it left a few people scratching their heads, ‘cos they’d never seen anything quite like it on stage, but one or two cud see beneath the chaos and dug it. I’ve not tried anything like that since, but maybe one day. I should add, here, that soon after this gig, The Godsends split up and Chiz and I, along with a guy called Russ Wendes, who was an actor in the company at the time, formed a new band called The Jones'. We became quite well-known on the Island for a while. There’s all sorts of stuff about us on www.iowrock.demon.co.uk. But that’s a whole different story, a whole different set of clothes. Suffice to say, the synthesis between theatre and rock’n’roll was now complete.

By this time, the Ferrets had got a bit of a name for ourselves and one or two “gatekeepers” had heard of me. We blagged a bigger swag of cash and at the beginning of 1997 I began work on my third play, The Revenge of The Goggle Box. I was in my populist period by this time! I wrote that play specifically to give the audiences we were attracting exactly what I knew they wanted – pan gags! I’d learnt that sitting and writing an amusing gag or set piece was all very well, but was only for my benefit. Audiences liked pan gags – people falling over, being hit in the face with a pan/wet fish/giant orange/”fill in gap”. Calamity, chaos, mayhem and pain. I used to get right arsey about it! “I’m a serious artist and all they want are bigger pans”. Bollocks, in truth, but one learns. With Revenge I gave in and gave’em what they wanted. However, by then, I had hit upon something of a thematic balance in my work. I was able to merge my philosophical concerns with the surrealism and farce/slapstick, to create a cohesive narrative. In Revenge, I examined the role of the media in our lives, how television works psychologically, the nature of evil and my usual concerns on the existential human condition, whilst making the pans bigger, as it were.

We debuted the play in the summer of 1997 and it went down rather well. I was beginning to get real confidence in my ability to write for audiences and all sorts of plans were afoot. Edinburgh, television opportunities, more money from funders, publishing deals, in-house production work. All exciting stuff, but for one reason or another things stalled. Living on the Isle of Wight didn’t really help, for one, but moving to London never quite worked out. I guess you have to see Writers’ Block. It all makes sense to me now and that play is definitely my most autobiographical thus far. I just remember that by the summer of 1998 it all seemed such hard work to keep things going. We’d just filmed an adaptation of the two Goggle Boxes for a local television station, which had a certain naive charm but ultimately sucked badly. I was knackered, disillusioned, the inspiration had dried up, the clothes were looking a bit shabby on me and I wanted to try on a new set. Do something…..else. So, I did.

And now, after all this time, I’ve returned to the wardrobe. I wasn’t sure if I ever would, if I ever wanted to or not, but you just don’t know what’s round the corner sometimes, do you?  Those socks seem to fit better than they ever did, and I reckon someone’s given all the clothes a good wash and mend, ‘cos they look shiny and new to me. Game on, then. It’s a strange old world. For sure.