“I take each job as it comes. If it’s the National doing Jerry Springer or if it’s Chichester doing Singing in the Rain, each one is an absolutely unique experience. Fringe is probably the toughest, it has the least accoutrement, it’s the bare bones of theatre. It’s about the writing…you are displaying the writing for industry. In fact I did one the best plays and the best parts I’ve every played right here at the King’s Head, Wet Weather Cover, written by Oliver Cotton, it got fantastic reviews. It went from here to the West End, but we ran into problems with the theatre management…that play should have been on longer, I’d like to bring it back, and it’s one that would work in the US too. ” Is the fringe scene in his native US less robust than here in the UK? “I think you could have said that maybe ten years ago but not now. I’ve seen fantastic stuff off,off-Broadway.”

Michael Brandon as Jake Price in The Long Road South
photo by Truan Munro

 

 ”There was a time when I was just that bit older than the lead role, but I wasn’t old enough to be the older guy. I was in limbo for years.”

 

 

 

 

 

He was introduced to British audiences in the 80s as the tough NY cop in Dempsey and Makepeace, but in the years since, alongside the many films and plays, he’s also carved out a niche popping up in comedy series, including sketches with Catherine Tate. His face lights up at the mention of the forthcoming fifth series of Episodes, the sitcom that lampoons the television industry.
“Elliot Salad returns! He’s still in charge, though there’s nothing much I’m allowed to say about it, but it’s really good writing. What makes it incredibly funny is that Matt (Le Blanc) takes the piss out of himself, playing it like that. When we sit and do the table read through with a hundred people, the entire crew, it’s hysterical, that in itself should be filmed.
“I’ve also just done the Tracey Ullman show, which I loved. I always liked drama in my early years,drama feels like acting, but comedy is more difficult in a sense. Life changes and you realise there’s enough drama in life that it’s nice to make light of it.
“I’m writing myself, I’m working on a book, I’ve done two film scripts.I did a lot of writing on my first wife’s show (Lindsay Wagner in The Bionic Woman), there wasn’t a lot of humour in it so I used to put in the funny lines for her. I always do the best I can with a script, if you have something to offer and they’re open to receiving it. People want contributions in certain jobs, but you can’t do it in everything, for example Oliver (Cotton) wanted everything exactly as it was in the script. In this piece you might have noticed, there’s no cursing, but I play it as though everything is a curse..all that frustration and anger.”

The conversation turns to diversity in the industry, how some Black and Asian actors have left the UK for the US,but he’s keen to stress lack of parts is not just about race.
“If I was a 55-year-old actress, that would be the same story. And the same for older white guys.There was a time when I was just that bit older than the lead role, but I wasn’t old enough to be the older guy. I was in limbo for years. You could be the dad of the lead or his lawyer, doctor or shrink or whatever, but there had to be a difference, you couldn’t be his contemporary. And if you’re a leading man, that’s a hard transition.
“The actors who have gone from here to the US, including the white actors, they’re having a good life over there! I’m the odd story – I’m the guy who came this way. Thirty years ago I came here – I’m now British – but I came here when everyone else was going there with “I’m gonna make it America”. I guess I’m the salmon swimming the wrong way! But it’s been very good for me. I get the opportunity here to play a lot more varied roles than I would in America, because over there we cast by type. I go up to play parts like Lyndon B Johnson, or a heavy, buzz-cut, commanding officer, opportunities that I would not get over there.”

And we can’t let the conversation pass without talking about *that* series, though it’s been thirty years since he played tough guy American cop Dempsey to (now wife) Glynis Barber’s upper-class English play-by-the-rules officer. The will-they-won’t-they kept fans entertained both on and off-screen. They have performed together since Dempsey and Makepeace, in both television and theatre, but would they look now at stuff written for both of them, or would it feel like too much of a novelty?
“No, there’s always a conversation about it. One came up only a week ago by a big writer/producer, asking us about that and the rights to the series. We once made a little short to demonstrate where we are now – not being Dempsey & Makepeace, but being ourselves. We had a producer option it, but it didn’t go forward at the time, that was a while ago. But now, I’ve shown it to someone who said she wants to produce it.
“Dempsey and Makepeace was great to do, we had 20 million viewers. It showed in 75 countries, translated into Japanese and German…It was even more popular in France than it was in the UK and because of that I got to do four movies back to back in France.”

His fondness for his days of catching the bad guys by rolling out of moving cars and shouting ‘freeze’ is obvious. And almost as if nothing has changed in thirty years, he has to go – he’s got a fight scene to rework.

The Long Road South is at the King’s Head Theatre until Jan 30th
The Tracy Ullman show is currently on BBC 1 and Episodes returns in the spring.

Carly Bawden as Alice
 and Lois Chimimba as Aly in Wonder.land
photo by Brinkhoff Mögenburg

On being Scottish and mixed race
I’m not from an acting background, both my parents are engineers. I think I was about 15 when I said to my mum seriously that I’d like to do acting for the rest of my life and I got a relatively stern talking to about how unstable my life could be, I might never be able to buy a house… so I got all the warnings, and I still get the warnings, but they’re very much on my side.

I never thought about being mixed race when I was in Glasgow, because I sounded the same as everybody else. It was when I came to London that I became aware of it myself because there are a far wider range of cultures and races in London than Glasgow, so my eyes were opened a bit. But I became particularly aware of it at drama school – I was reading more plays and it’s quite rare that a character is described as mixed-race and very, very rarely as mixed race and Scottish (laughs). I came to realise it would either work in my advantage that I would be different to a lot of other people, or to my advantage that I don’t necessarily sound how I look. So far, any theatre I’ve done, I’ve been asked to do another accent, whereas the tv I’ve done has been in my own accent.

On arts funding: “Minorities and the working class…don’t even have the dreams any more, because there’s no way for them to fulfil them.”

On the issue of lack of diversity in acting
It’s an issue that seems to be backed by not only those in the industry from ethnic minorities, but also from white, middle class backgrounds – they support the cause as well – but it’s a difficult one, I feel that it’s chicken and egg; where does the movement need to start first? When I was in drama school, I was one of two mixed race people in a class of thirty, and there were three Black students, and that was the only ethnicities we had. So when people are graduating, what casting directors have to pick from is a far larger majority of white actors than anything else – but also drama schools are taking in less people from different backgrounds because they know there are less plays that have parts for them. So it’s almost like writers need to write more diverse things, but then they need the actors…it’s sort of who has to move first for us to all work together?

At drama school, in my year there wasn’t a single Asian person, or the year above and I don’t think the year below either, isn’t that shocking? It’s so difficult now that drama school fees are increasing every year. When I was at drama school, you had the Dance and Drama awards, which took my fees down from something like £13k a year to something like £1100 – I wouldn’t have been able to go if I didn’t have that. In my year there was something like eight to fifteen of these awards; a lot of people had them. But the year I was leaving, only two or three had them, because I guess arts funding was cut so badly. If you don’t have a family to support whatever industry dream you might have it can be really difficult – I think that’s what closes of minorities and working class more. People don’t even have the dreams any more, because there’s no way for them to fulfil them.

On her own writing
I have three close friends that I try to write with. We write mostly comedy and we’ve been trying to work on a tv idea that’s about young women. America has Girls and in our culture we’ve got things like The Inbetweeners – it’s always about young boys and they might behave badly or have romances, but we don’t see so much about young women I don’t think.

On the highlights of Wonder.land
We had a matinée on the day of our press night… Bloomberg brought out the whole theatre and gave all the tickets to children in schools local to the National. I’ve been doing shows since I was eleven, and I’ve never had a reaction like that…they were 15/16 years old and had absolutely no sensor – I wonder as adults exactly when we develop that, that shutting yourself up mode. But with these teenagers anything they thought, they vocalised. At first it was a bit of a shock but it made you feel everything so much more as the character – sometimes when its an issue that is important for kids or teens adults audiences don’t care or don’t connect with it, but teenagers are feeling every moment with you. It highlighted the peaks and troughs that are meant to be there that we maybe didn’t realise with an audience of grown ups. At the end, they cheered so loudly for us that we wanted to give them a cheer back – they should tour as an audience! Actors should get to see how lovely it is to have an audience so much on your side.

On what’s next
Wonder.land runs to the end of April and then it goes to Paris for a couple of weeks in June. I’m about to workshop a play with Out of Joint – I have a great relationship with Max Stafford-Clark, he gave me my first professional role – and actually for the first time for me in theatre, it’s a Scottish part!

Wonder.land runs until April 30th at the National Theatre www.wonder.land

IR: It’s nothing like I expected. It’s one of things that if you really knew what it was like – like childbirth – you wouldn’t do it. It’s been completely surprising, completely exhausting, exhilarating…a whole mixed bag. It’s pushed me and taught me a lot.

The most personally challenging thing has been learning to be tougher, to stand by my instincts and keep going. The hardest thing is the financial situation – how do you make work without compromise? And it’s to make sure I take risks no matter how scary, balanced out with careful thinking of course, but if you don’t keep taking risks or scaring yourself then you’re playing safe.

Indhu Rubasingham

“If you’re a person of colour with any kind of ability, you’re immediately pounced upon to be representative, to be political, to be a spokesperson in a way that your fellow white artists are not.”

She’s delighted when I tell her that I’m not going to ask her what it’s like to be a British Asian female artistic director, but she has plenty to say about the diversity debate and the expectations put on her as a person of colour in a position of influence.

IR: You’re never going to please everyone, so I don’t really engage with expectations put on me, only the ones I put on myself. What really drove me right from the start of my career was seeing people like me in stories, or in an examination of the British identity. As I’ve gotten older what’s driven me is different stories, unusual stories, a different perspective, having to stand in someone else’s shoes. And also that those stories have a validity to be part of the main stage. I’m deeply political, but it’s personal – the minute I’m driven by an outside political argument, then it’s not an artistic voice.

If you’re a person of colour with any kind of ability, you’re immediately pounced upon to be representative, to be political, to be a spokesperson in a way that your fellow white artists are not. My politics are that I stand side by side but equally with any artist, no matter what colour or background. And that I have the same expectations and pressures as anyone else, not more or not different just because of race.

“Is theatre doing enough about diversity? No, of course it isn’t… Ultimately the fact that we still have to have the diversity debate is a sad indictment on the insidious barriers in our society.“

None of Tricycle’s programming has been purposefully focussed on BAME work, but the inherent diversity in the programming and her approach are evident, for example casting an Asian actor in Handbagged, who at one point plays an American First Lady.

IR: I want there to be varied stories in the programming. I want to always challenge a preconception or expectation of the audience, so the least likely story that I’m going to be interested in one populated by white, middle class straight men. That’s why I programmed our current show, The Colby Sisters of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, it’s about a very different, unusual world. Being a person of colour, I want to see that kind of variety on stage, but I hate being restricted or constrained by a label from outside.

Looking at the current debate and campaigns around lack of diversity in television – If the problem is in television, does it start in theatre? As that’s where many writers and artists start their career.

IR: Is theatre doing enough? No, of course it isn’t. I think training and opportunities for young people of different background and class is just as important as race. We’ve got real problems ahead if we’re not training and giving opportunities to young people; we’re not creating diverse voices in the industry. For me, as an AD, plus the location of the theatre, I have to take that very seriously. Where are the future artists coming from? Our young people’s programme is very geared towards removing obstacles for those who don’t naturally feel entitlement to the arts.

There are a lot of things that theatres should and could and must do and I think a lot of theatres are trying to do more, but yes of course the problem starts in theatre. Having said that, I do think the theatre landscape is richer than the film and tv landscape, purely because at least we’re not restricted by the level of financial risk that comes with in film and tv. So in that sense I think theatre is fertile – though there is more that can be done – but I don’t think that always translates to tv and film.

With a background of cuts to the arts, is this the right time to be having a diversity debate?

IR: I think what’s sad is that the debate is still being had. I remember starting out and thinking, ‘oh I’m the last generation, the debate is going to end here’, because it was always being talked about before my generation. But things didn’t change. I think now at least it’s continuing in a different way and hopefully on a larger scale. Ultimately the fact that we still have to have the debate is a sad indictment on the insidious barriers in our society.

Looking ahead to the Autumn/Winter season, Indhu points out The House That Will Not Stand, American playwright Marcus Gardley’s first British premiere, which she’ll be directing.

IR: It’s a new play by an African American playwright,set in New Orleans in the 19^th Century. I’ve never read a play like it – it gives seven stonkingly brilliant parts to women of colour and it’s a big epic story. It’s not the kind of play that you see on stage in this country at all. And the Tricycle is about having an international voice; we’re in one of the most diverse communities in London and it’s a reflection of being a local theatre with an international vision.

What does she say to artists of colour?

IR: You’ve got to be top of your game, but any artist has to be, no matter what colour. Work out what you believe in – what is your voice? Not what you think you should be, but what actually what drives you – what story do you want to tell? And don’t compare yourself; the arts is a long game, you can be a one hit wonder, but how do you sustain a career? I look at someone like Mike Leigh, who never compromises his artistic vision and it’s never been easy for him. You don’t have to like him or love him, it’s about that integrity about what he believes in. It’s like Lolita (Chakrabarti) spending seven years on Red Velvet and wanting to give up all the time, because of being faced with rejection. But if you really have something to say it’s about finding out how to say it and becoming the best at doing so.

www.tricycle.co.uk

Rani Moorthy

 Why did you choose to write about immigration using verbatim interviews? 

I was inspired by African-American actress Anna Deavere Smith (star of Nurse Jackie, The West Wing and The American President) who interviewed people around America with the intention of performing the ‘true voice’ of America. She felt, like me, terribly outside the film/tv and theatre community because of not fitting in – the way you look, you don’t fit in to the expectation of what a black actress should be. She’s mixed race and always found it hard to be cast. I find it hard to be cast here, because being from a Tamil Malaysian background, it impacts things like the way I sound – how I’m speaking to you now is not how I would speak ‘back home’ – but we all go through a process of reinvention.

She was doing her play about the race riots in LA and she interviewed the Korean community and she said that inhabiting the voice of this Korean woman allowed her to really understand race from a different place. Something really struck me about that, so I invited three other artists to help do the intreviews and access voices that don’t often get heard in a British theatre context.

You and fellow performer Curtis Cole are also playing the parts – what are the challenges with verbatim?

You have to trust and honour the dignity of the person you have interviewed. Not to imitate but to physically explain the narrative and to try and capture the essence of the person, but not necessarily be completely authentic, because I think it’s nonsense to say that verbatim that it’s a completely truthful reproduction, you have to have some kind of intervention.

It was also an interesting exercise in how not to Anglicise and make proper grammatical sentences – that wasn’t the point of this. I wanted to stay true to how well people can communicate and negotiate the English language, which actually for a foreign speaker can be a real issue, because every rule that the English language has, it breaks it about five or six times. If you studied the English language like a foreign speaker – like I did, you really do come up against how confusing it can be.

And you’re both playing numerous characters cutting across race, gender and age?

It’s a big risk, it’s a big experiment, that’s what I find really exciting about this. If someone doesn’t go with us on the journey, if they sit down and think ‘Oh God I can’t believe this big Tamil woman can somehow convince me that she’s a slim built Tamil man who is talking about growing up in an asylum camp in Germany’, then it’s not going to work. But I think that most people come to ‘the space’ – it’s a kind of consecrated ground and it’s a sort of hidden contract that we share with the audience, which is to just accept that this is the premise – people generally go with it. If you think of how ridiculous some of the classic plays are – how quirky some of their openings are – the audience do just go with it.

We start with something funny, the citizenship test, which is a book that you study if you want to apply for British citizenship. A lot of Britons don’t know that this thing exists and how difficult it is. We start the show asking the audience some of the questions in the test and it’s very funny because you start to understand that it’s a very long winded, difficult and expensive process to become a Brit.

I never set out to write for any particular audience, but of all my shows, I feel this show is pretty classless because it’s pretty much walking down the street in contemporary Britain and listening to the sound scape.

States of Verbal Undress is now on tour. Details at www.rasatheatre.co.uk

I wrote a piece for the Guardian a couple of years ago about the importance of school plays and it prompted many memories. Whether it was the thrill of being on stage for the first time or the realisation that non-sporty types had found something they were good at, everyone had a strong recollection of their school plays. I distinctly recall the thrill of my first acting experience (being an Oompa Loompa) and then the excitement of graduating to being that narrator in Pinocchio a couple of years later.

Those early experiences were enough for me to know that one day, somehow, I wanted to get more involved in this theatre lark. But back then, beyond a couple of regional drama competitions, there were limited options, let alone opportunities like the National Theatre’s Connections. Connections is the UK’s biggest youth theatre festival, in which ten new plays are developed every year and then performed by schools all over the UK. The festival culminates with a showcase at the National.

Rob Watt, producer of Connections, told me more about how the festival works, the importance of drama to young people, and how he thinks we’re about to hit a tipping point in diversity in theatre. “We start by inviting directors from the schools to come to the NT and give them workshops with a wide variety of skill groups. Each director will meet the writers and lead directors. We condense the new writing experience for them. They then take it away and put their own vision on it. Two hundred and thirty schools are lined up to take part this year and around 50% of this years intake participants are completely new to it. It’s our learning department’s biggest project and it spans every corner of the country.

“The exciting thing that happens is that all the schools get a platform with a regional theatre partner. To go from a school in, say Norwich, to the Playhouse stage as part of a festival is fantastic. You’re getting young people in to watch other young people’s work – they’re all treated as professionals and there is a real festival atmosphere. We do then showcase a selection at the National, though I don’t want that to be seen as the big prize”

Robb Watt

It all sounds positive, is every school enthusiastic?

“There can be a lot of fear and ignorance, depending on the topic. This year we have a piece about transgender, in fact it’s actually the most popular play from our selection this year, over fifty groups are doing it. The reason is that children are talking about it, or they know someone that is going through it; it has relevance for them. But fear still exists; we had an Irish play about abortion and one school said they couldn’t do it. Headteachers can sometimes get quite nervous about the language or how political a play can be – though that is a huge generalisation. We do have a huge online community for all the drama teachers and directors to keep the support going throughout the process.”

How would you describe the importance of doing drama at school?  

“Its importance transcends ‘doing a play’. In my own personal experiences, there was a part of my brain that kicked in that I was able to use in other parts of my life. It’s the creativity that is key – you can use it to unlock a different way of learning. Also, it’s about building empathy; you put a play on and you step into someone else’s shoes. I worked with people who didn’t get on with school and I watched them change. It builds up that broader skillset, it’s not just about a career in theatre. It’s about being able to look someone in the eye.”

How do you ensure diversity in your youth work? 

“The diversity of our Connections writers is a huge consideration; we always have a combination of male and female voices. The plays have got to be good but our diversity is broad, in the past we’ve had pieces from the likes of Lenny Henry, Meera Syal and Sabrina Mahfouz.

“More broadly in theatre, I think we’re on the cusp of diversity shifting, I think we’re going to start seeing that and it’s something that Rufus (Norris, the National’s next Artistic Director) has on his agenda. We’re getting more and more diverse voices coming through. Because we’re working with young people, we’re inspiring and creating role models; we show them videos of our writers, to breakdown that it’s not all older white men.”

Despite that, theatre is still pretty middle class and white…

“I strongly believe that the building should reflect the community. We’ve built four community youth partnerships all in London. We wanted to do something local – for example in Blackfriars we had a partnership that started with us hanging out with the kids – we played pool and then started telling stories. It was only after building a relationship that we took them to the theatre. For most of them it was their first time and their primary concern was ‘are we going to be the only Black kids there?’

“We did a few theatre trips with them and by the time we’d taken them to see ‘Home’ at the Shed, they were able to be more articulate about what they liked. They then went and created their own theatre and showcased it to friends and family on our stage. I know there are at least two or three who could be the next hot writers or actors. They just need to know – for someone to show them – that it is a viable option.”

http://connections.nationaltheatre.org.uk/ Twitter: @ntconnections

Rob Watt on Twitter: @wattnot

Jackie Sibblies Drury photo by Sebastian Venuat

Brooklyn-based American playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury draws an audible breath down the phone from the Bush Theatre in west London when I ask her about the differences in discourse about race on stage between the US and the UK. She’s is the middle of teching for the European première of her play (you’ll need an audible breath yourself here), We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884 – 1915.  “I think when you talk about race in America, it very quickly becomes a Black vs. white thing that ignores this entire other swath of the population. The Black and white experience each become very uniform and so much of that dynamic is also based in slavery, so it becomes victim/oppressor very quickly.

“It seems discussion of race in Britain becomes so complex immediately; there are so many more ethnicities at play that it has to become a multi-faceted conversation. Class is also so much more of a bigger topic here, it seems like it’s focussed on as being more the source of contention. Race here also seems to be tied into a post-Colonial/Colonial discussion here, so the history of it feels very different even though some of the dynamics are the same as the US.”

We Are Proud… is a play within a play, set around a group of actors attempting to tell the little-known story of the first genocide of the 20th Century. As the official blurb describes it: ‘. As the full force of a horrific past crashes into the good intentions of the present, what seemed a faraway place and time is suddenly all too close to home’.

Jackie modestly bats away my question about feeling any pressure about being a writer ‘of the moment’. “I never think about it, so therefore no. ” It must be hard not to think about it; We Are Proud…had its world première at Victory Gardens. It was a New York Magazine Top 10 Play of 2012, and won acclaim in productions across America, while her CV boats a list of awards and fellowships.

She will admit to being proud of the play, but is at pains to explain that this was no over-night success. “The story of the play came from me wanting to write about this Herero genocide. But I wrote a play that I didn’t think was very good. Once I stopped being a little bit sad about how bad the play was – which took a little while – I tried to think about how I felt about failing at writing that play. I then sent a group of actors down a similar but hopefully more dramatically interesting version of those failures.”

She first learned about the Herero genocide in 2005. “I did some research about it and then put it all in a drawer and forgot about it, but I knew I wanted to write a play about it. A few years later I went to graduate school for playwriting and when it came to thesis time, it seemed like this was to me personally, an important play to write. It seemed like a good thing to be the culmination of my graduate degree. I completed the first Frankenstein, sewn-together iteration of the play as it currently stands in 2010.

“It’s about a group of actors, three of the them black, three white who try to create a piece about the first genocide of the 20th Century, which was committed by the German government in an area in the south of Africa before WW1. As the actors are trying to create this theatre piece, they end up having to deal with the racial dynamics that are in room and contemporary racial and identity politics.

Actors rehearsing for ‘We Are Proud…’ at the Bush Theatre. Photo by Richard Davenport

Though she is modest about her own acting abilities (she has a background in performing) much of her writing process was driven by the actors in the room.  “I didn’t spend time writing down verbatim things that the actors had said, but I spent a lot of time talking to the specific performers I had; I really wanted to write to their strengths. I was working with a wonderful actress that has a great ear for comedy, so I gave her lots of parts to play that came from things that she was really good at.

“I myself never enjoyed being on stage but I did love all the backstory and the rehearsal, that’s a big part of what I like about writing, though oddly in this play it’s the opposite in that the backstories are not defined at all. The only requirements for each of the characters is that they are relatively young, three are black, three are white, two are female, four are male. There’s none of the ‘you’re from east London and you’re four foot eleven and walk with a limp’ type characterisation. It’s about trying to invite the performers to invest themselves as much as possible in creating those characters…in their own way, to their own strengths.”

The play’s journey is not yet over, with much work going into re-working it for a British Audience. “We have adapted the play for a British audience and yes, it has changed a lot; the play was very much in that Black/white dynamic and very much set in the US but ends up dredging up images of the American South. But the director (Gbolahan Obisesan, returning to the Bush after the 2011 sell-out run of his award-winning play Mad About The Boy) was very confident that we could translate it to something here; put it in the pattern of imagery that comes from contemporary British history.

“The play is going to be much more global than I ever anticipated it being. In some ways, it’s a totally new play here, which is very exciting. Some of the changes have been ‘should we say railroad or railway?’ but other things have been much deeper and broader conversations. The translation process feels incredibly collaborative because I’m not an expert on Britain.”

Having worked through so many changes and now mid-tech, I note that she sounds decidedly cheerier than most writers might at this point. “I’m so excited – tech can be such a hopeful time! I can’t say that everyone that sees it is going to love it, but I do think that it’s going to feel like an event.”

We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884 – 1915, 28th Feb-12th April, Bush Theatre. www.bushtheatre.co.uk

Jez Bond, artistic director of north London’s Park Theatre, and Park Artistic Associate Mark Cameron are in fine mood. Sitting in the auditorium of Park 200 as they rehearse for Park’s first panto, the pair’s friendship, shared history and artistic relationship is clear as they tumble through a series of private in-jokes, catchphrases and lines of script. They have co-written Park’s first panto, Sleeping Beauty, with Jez directing and Mark playing the Dame. In keeping with the spirit of fringe panto, this is no straight story and there are no star names in the cast; instead they’re putting on offer a ‘very different kind of show’.

The cast of Sleeping Beauty at Park Theatre

How long have you been working together?
JB We met about ten years ago at some comedy workshops – those workshops never really got anywhere but…we did.

MC Partly because the people at the workshops didn’t understand that you don’t just turn up and get the glory of the laughter without lots and lots of hard work. So a work ethic bonded us

JB A few years ago we worked together on a production of Sleeping Beauty at Salisbury Playhouse which was not a script that we wrote but one that we were handed and did a fair amount of work to tweak it, but it really made us think wow what if we had a blank slate and did it all exactly how we wanted to do it from the beginning. And that’s why we wanted to do Sleeping Beauty now because it’s a story we know really well, but we’re telling it in a completely different way, it’s utterly different to anything you would imagine when you come to see this.

It’s a family show in the sense that you would watch a Disney film together or that you would watch any clever cartoon; it’s got different complex layers and it’s for everyone. It will look and sound beautiful, it’s got all original music. It’s written like a bonkers farce, mistaken identities, all sorts of nuts things going on. None of the very base things that you get in some pantomimes – there is no actor saying a line just to move a plot point on, it’s got a proper script darling!

MC This is the first full length script we’ve written together. We did a sketch comedy show for internet show called too big to play and that had about 110 sketches in it that we wrote together with another guy and we filmed all those. And I’ve just started writing sitcoms with someone else, but we’re planning to write a panto together for the next few years.

JB And this first show has had interest from NY and Dubai already.

Mark Cameron (left) with Jez Bond and the safety flannel prop from their show

Panto is a pretty crowded market…
JB As a new venue, it’s going to be difficult because we don’t have a Park theatre audience that have been going 30 years, we have to build that audience. So like any show we do, we have to work hard to sell it, but all our shows have been selling well, we’ve had great press reviews for all our work which is wonderful. So we’re hoping that the good reviews here will make it pick up. And word of mouth is really key too, so we want to try and get people to see it as early as possible as it’s running til the 19th of Jan, so it’s quite a long run.

So what’s your new spin on Sleeping Beauty?
JB It begins on the 18th birthday of the princess. In another land next door we find a young prince who’s grown up into a fine young King – and keen quilter. And one of the key things about our story is that he falls in love with her but he’s so shy and inexperienced that he’s afraid to be himself so he adopts a persona of ‘the professor’ – who she then falls in love with. But of course she’s in love with the persona and not the real him… so he has to come out and be himself. And all of this is a big sub plot underneath the whole usual Sleeping Beauty story. There is of course a big message about ‘hey kids just be yourself, we love you as you are’.

MC Good does triumph, but not in the way that you’d expect. We set this in the Land of Waaaaa (he holds the note for quite a while…) within which there are two kingdoms – Pilli Pots and Babuus. Methuen are publishing the script and we’ve created a whole raft of foot notes because we introducing a whole new language. It’s a great boost for us to have them publish this – they’re going out on a limb, pantos don’t normally get published, but they read the script and loved it.

The long-term is that next year and for the next five or six years, we’re going to do the whole cannon of traditional pantomimes and they’re all going to be set in different parts this world that we’ve created and they’re going to overlap. So eventually, somewhere like year eight, there will be a pantomime that has every character from traditional panto and they’ll all meet.

See trailer for Sleeping Beauty http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FFr_qDB22J8

JB Shall we teach you how to say the cat sat on the mat in Pilli Potsian?

YK Sure…

At this point they both bound up on stage and start explaining the intricacies of Pilli Potsian – in which they recite phrases including “the rabbit jumped over the fence”. Which of course the audience will be expected to join in with in the show. They ask me a question and want me to respond in Pilli Potsian.

MC Just make up some words.

I oblige

MC “You’re a natural. You’ve got a PhD in Pilli Potsian!”

The language, the footnotes, the noises; the pair’s Tolkien, Pratchett and Python influences are apparent.

JB Other people have pointed some of those references out, which are great, but we haven’t knowingly picked up influences, just whatever’s in our heads.

Give me your sales pitch then
MC It’s all original, there aren’t any stars in it, it’s all hard-working actors. Original music, original story…and a dog!

JB When you go to the kind of pantos in which there are people who’ve, say, been in a particular soap, then certain liberties will be taken with the script to get those sorts of jokes or references in, and that’s absolutely fine, but it’s not something we want to do. This is a new theatre with a new angle on hopefully lots of different things and this always had to be a totally new take on things.

Sleeping Beaty is on at the Park Theatre now until Jan 19th
http://parktheatre.co.uk/whats-on/sleeping-beauty

I still recall the ‘I’m staying over at a friend’s so we can revise’ lie I told when I first snuck out to go to a Wet Wet Wet concert. My mother eventually cottoned on and used to berate me for spending all my time ‘going to see that Wet Wet’. She never quite made it to the third ‘Wet’, perhaps assuming that if two Durans were enough, then two Wets was also plenty.

I went on to pass a few exams while Graeme Clark, Tommy Cunningham, Neil Mitchell and Marti Pellow went on to sell in excess of 15 million singles and albums and play to more than four million people in over 25 countries. Success included of course the seemingly never-ending number one Love Is All Around, which they’ve gone full circle with, from love to albatross to re-embracing – perhaps mirroring the band’s own relationship, which included a period of not communicating.

Following a 25th anniversary show in their home town of Glasgow last year, they’re now back with a greatest hits album and are touring for the first time in five years. Mid-rehearsals and tv interviews, I talked to bassist Graeme Clarke about playing old hits, the age of Saturday morning television and whether this is their last outing as a band.

So the new album is greatest hits plus some new tracks. Has the way you write changed over the years?
We all do different things now so it has changed in some ways. (Lead singer Marti is focussed on musical theatre while Graeme has recently started doing solo material) When I think back to the 80s, it was a lot of big production, studio-based sounds and when you first start you try and emulate that. Now it’s more about sitting together with a few instruments and throwing ideas around. We’ve each got such different taste, and we always did, we don’t all listen to the same stuff, but there is a distinctive Wet Wet Wet sound that we create.

What’s it like looking back on your success?
I never thought about industry pressure at the time, which is a good thing. Being a working class lad from the west of Scotland, it’s instilled in you that you were lucky to get out and go and earn a living playing music and to remember that it might not last for ever. Back then I had a lot of friends who were losing jobs and real pressures like that, nothing like us worrying about whether or not our new song would get released. When you’re in it, you don’t have time to stop and think, you’re just kind of doing it. It’s only really now that you talk to people and they tell you that you had an impact on them in the late 80s and 90s, that you realise we were on people’s radar.

Your first album came out in 1987 – the music industry must feel like a very different place now?
We were signed in 1985 and didn’t have a record out til ’87 – we had a good 18 months of writing, playing crap gigs, learning, just spending time together to learn how to be a band. Something you don’t just get these days. And even that word, band, it’s a bit of a lost word – to me there is a difference between a band and a group. That time we were given was such a good grounding for us. It wasn’t about getting a quick return in those days. I’m not saying ‘oh in our day it was better’ but in the 80s and 90s people went into bands to entertain their mates. People don’t seem do that anymore – to just join bands just to make music with their mates. It seems to be just about getting something up on YouTube, and I get why that’s important but things were so different for us.

We would release a single, go on Saturday morning tv to play it and suddenly lots of kids in the UK would have access to you. They would get their pocket money the same day and then go and buy your records Saturday afternoon in an actual record shop – even those don’t exist any more. It’s a changed landscape entirely. We’re lucky in as much that we can still get out and play live – and that’s how we sell our records now, by getting out on the road.

Any regrets?
There are always regrets. There are things I’ve said in the past that..the unfortunate thing about YouTube is that you can stick our name in all manner of interviews come up that…it’s all there documented. But I’m a believer that at any given point, you are where you’re supposed to be. I think there are times when maybe I could have dealt with things better, but I’m human. We’re lucky, we still have a relationship with each other – we can still sit in a room and still talk and we’re still friends. We started out as friends who liked music and that still stands. It’s like each member of the band is holding an elastic band – each member is pulling the tension, and that’s how we create, everyone pulling in their own direction. Luckily we’re through all the messiness (the ‘messiness’ included them not speaking for some time, re-uniting at Marti’s mother’s funeral) and now we’re at a point in our lives where we’re adults and we can talk.

I’m a songwriter so I need that outlet for my creativity and Wet Wet Wet is a great vehicle. I can go out and say ‘I’m Graeme Clarke’ and that carries a little bit of weight, but if I say ‘I’m Graeme Clark from Wet Wet Wet’ people’s ears prick up and they say ‘oh we’ll give you a listen then’. So I’m incredible lucky that I can do that. Wet Wet Wet is an on-going thing, obviously it’s slowing down the older we get and the less energy we have, but at the same time new songs and new music is our lifeblood.

You’ve just released your greatest hits, is this one last hurrah for Wet Wet Wet?
I’d be really disappointed if I was saying to you ‘this is it’. It gets harder and harder for us to reconvene and get back in that room and sit nose to nose. But I think next year we’ve got some exciting things coming up – writing songs and new music is going to breath new life into us. I’m not saying the heritage thing is bad, but we’re an on-going concern. Of course people want to come to the gigs and hear Angel Eyes and Sweet Little Mystery and they say they don’t particularly want to hear new music. I feel slightly disappointed by that, I’m not saying we go and play just new stuff and bore everyone, but I think there’s room.

We set the bar high with the old songs, so if we can hit the same writing standards as before then we’ve got a fair shout. I hope we’re going to do a new album, it’s just everybody has to clear some time out and put the work in. For a start Marti’s a busy boy, but it’s great that he’s here for this tour. His musical theatre is a brilliant thing, we all think it’s amazing that he’s out there and he enjoys it, all power to him. And all power to Wet Wet Wet too, it’s the band that won’t go away no matter how much you try and put it down, it’s still there. We’ve managed to weave ourselves into people’s minds somehow.

‘Step By Step – The Greatest Hits’ is out now. Wet Wet Wet are on tour in December, with special guests Blue. See http://www.ticketline.co.uk/wet-wet-wet#tour  @wetwetwetuk @graemeclark1

One of the most exciting writer/performers taking part this year is Bryony Kimmings. Kimmings is a performance artist who creates full-length theatre shows, cabaret work, homemade music and sound installations. Previous works include Sex Idiot, 7 Day Drunk, Mega, and Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model (winner of a Fringe First). Her show at RADAR, Heartache.Heartbreak, is an endless letter to lost loves across the world. As part of RADAR, Kimmings lands in Shepherds Bush and asks its residents for its cures for heartache. Kimmings then creates small pieces of performance for those who help her.

She took a break in The Rehearsal Room to talk heartbreak, hugs from strangers and tackling loneliness

What inspires your work?
I always say I am fascinated by the taboos and anomalies of British culture, I have been saying it so long I sometimes forget what I mean, so this is a good question for me. I am inspired by the subjects that seem too big to begin, the subjects that make our toes curl up, our neck shrink into our collars, the topics that we hope we don’t ever have to talk to our mum about. The things that make us tick. I like to go at the meaty subjects as I have found over the years that my style of work, and my style of address seems to make people feel ok for being a dirty human being. I seem suited to soothsaying and calling a spade a spade. More and more recently I am driven by injustice, less by the frivolous and more by the political.

Tell me about Heartache.Heartbreak – how did it come about and how will it work, it’s based on residents cures for heartache?
This piece of work is dear to me and somewhere gradually evolving. I usually scheme up a big project and dedicate my life to it for two years, with big budgets, stupidly huge aims and lots of huffing and puffing from funders and supporters. THIS is different. This work is all about local communities, the free, the exchanged, the currency of emotion, the little things that unite us. It began in Portugal on a residency and I keep on chipping away at it simply because I like the process and the idea, and it seems about as close to comedy as I can get. I am never going to be a stand up, but I love making people laugh (mostly so I can punch them in the stomach about something later admittedly). I was at the time heartbroken, unable to leave my hotel yet on a residency where I was expected to make something in a week. I cried on park benches, drowned my sorrows in empty bars, asked for hugs from strangers… and I was overwhelmed by (even in a country where the language was not my own) the generosity of strangers. When you explain your heart is broken MOST people have instant sympathy, advice or just a knowing squeeze of the hand for you. Love (and its naughty sister Hate) is universal, cheesy as that sounds. It unites us, heartache, it makes us shells, it makes us extend our hand to others… what this piece of work is fascinated with is the advice and stories given by strangers. I will spend 3 days with my team on the pavements of Shepherds Bush and I will gather pockets of advice. I will then create a piece of art for each piece of advice given and I will present them to an audience, with narration, stories and recordings of the encounters. It is a fun evening of sharing, caring and laughing. Something I will keep re-visiting.

What can we expect to see in the piece?
Me dressed as powerful female characters, lots of cheap props, people that you don’t usually see at the theatre being involved, lots of word plays and more than a little bit of lonely wanking probably. It’s funny and raw.

The copy says the piece it seeks to eradicate loneliness, why was this something you particularly wanted to tackle?
I find that we live in a city where we very rarely look a stranger in the eye. Why is this? What are we scared of? When you are at your most heartbroken, that is when you need support, this is a cataloguing of help and advice played out as a kind of self help hour. If you want to think about humanity and how man should look one another in the eye, this is for you. And if you like shoes on fire.

Words like outrageous and dangerous are used to describe you – do you see your work like that?
Naaah, I don’t see myself like that really, its just a way of talking utilised by me and others to sell tickets. I think if I didn’t push at boundaries I wouldn’t be doing my job as a performance artist, I am not a theatre maker. I make experiences happen, if they seem dangerous it is because sometimes they are new and new is scary.

Is this your first time at the Bush?
It sure is, I am very excited about my visit. I like this show as it is so unpredictable and exhilarating, I like walking on stage and for once being very free to just play. Magic happens. We become humans in a room.

What are you working on next?
None of your business. I am touring Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model and continuing the fame project that I am currently winning for a while. I have plans but they are secrets. The next show needs to be amazing, thanks to the success of the current one, so I am keeping it under my hat until its ready.

The RADAR Festival is at the Bush theatre Wed 6th-Thu 21st Nov
www.bushtheatre.co.uk/production/radar_2013/
www.bryonykimmings.com

Billy the Girl photo by Helen Maybanks

Award-winning writer Katie Hims writes for television, radio and theatre.  Her stage plays include Bill (Contact Theatre) and The Breakfast Soldiers (Contact Theatre studio and Finborough). Her first radio play The Earthquake Girl won the Richard Imison Award. She has recently completed a series of five afternoon plays called Listening to the Dead, to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2014. Her new play, Billy The Girl, produced by Clean Break, opens at Soho Theatre today. She stepped into The Rehearsal Room for a chat.

Tell me more about Billy The Girl
It’s the story of a girl or a woman called Billy who has just been released from prison. She’s coming home to see her family with a lot of hope in her heart. She’s hoping she can change her life and her relationships with a good dose of positive thinking and a spot of marathon training . . . I wanted to write about someone in the context of their family. To write about where she’s come from and what might have happened in her life in order for her to reach the point she’s at now. I desperately wanted the play to be funny but it’s turned out to be quite heartbreaking in places too. There are plenty of obstacles in Billy’s way, not least her own behaviour but I think the conclusion of the play is optimistic.

What was the inspiration for the piece?
Clean Break is a company that provides theatre based training opportunities for women who have offended or who are at risk of offending. The company also annually commissions a full length stage play from a professional writer. As a commissioned writer I ran writing workshops in HMP Holloway in London and HMP Askham Grange in Yorkshire, which I loved doing. I came across so many women with incredible stories. So when it came to writing my own play I struggled to settle on a single story. I often find the beginnings of an idea in something someone said, in a line of dialogue or a turn of phrase. During the research process for this play so many people said so many brilliant things I had too many beginnings!

Katie Hims

You write for both radio and stage – what are the challenges of both and do you have a preference?
I started out writing for the theatre and I completely loved the whole experience. There’s something fantastic about a live performance and that shared experience with the audience. Which of course you don’t get in radio. I don’t sit and listen to my plays with anyone else. But I do find radio a lot easier to write. I think it’s partly that I am writing so much of it in any one year that I’m a lot more practised. It’s like a language that I’m speaking in all the time and theatre is a language I don’t speak nearly as often. So I have really appreciated working with our director Lucy Morrison and wonderful, generous cast to create the final piece.

What theatre work have you seen recently that’s inspired you?
The last play I saw that I adored was Jerusalem – which is an obvious play to choose – because almost everyone loved it. It’s just gorgeous. And I love the fact that it’s so meandering. It doesn’t have a classic narrative structure or an intricate plot. Yet it’s utterly gripping. It’s just full of loads of beautiful stories and a wonderful compelling central character.

What’s next for you?
I’m working on a project with Radio 4 called Home Front which will run for the next four and a half years and cover life in England during the first world war. The first two seasons will be set in Folkestone because the war had such an immediate impact on this seaside town which went from being a luxury resort to a centre of military operations almost overnight.

Billy the Girl, written by Katie Hims, directed by Lucy Morrison
at Soho Theatre from 29 October to 24 November 2013
sohotheatre.com/whats-on/billy-the-girl

For more about Clean Break: cleanbreak.org.uk