An interview I did for the UPSTART blog/ website.
Playwright Lindsay Sedgwick writes about her relationship with George Farquhar (1677-1707).
The piece I submitted to UpStart was from the prologue with which my latest play opens. The voice comes out of the darkness and walks around three sides of the audience as the actor descends to the stage. We are in the 18th century. The speaker is George Farquhar, one of the most loved and most produced Restoration playwrights. Born in Derry, forgotten in Ireland. The prologue is intended to bring the audience into the world of the play, to put them IN the play.
Up! All of you. I want to see the whites of your eyes and sense the swell and heave of your bosums as the play dances around you.
Smell the underarm sweat. Inhale the odour of horse-shit walked in through the muddy cobbles, mixed with the lethargy of bare arms, the whore-making scent of excitement and desire. You. Are. In. The. Play.
You are the ones with the tomatoes and ale in equal measure in soft-paw and belly, aye with fists to fight and fingers to fondle.
The play is this.
It is all around you – listen to the burps and hiccups and slaps and the swearing and the standing on toes and the rip of lace caught between bench and foot.
You have paid good money to be here. To be part of it, of the smell and tumble, the rawness and nerves and gawking that is our theatre. Let your armpits sweat and your manhood rise – this is all, all part of it.
Pull a wench onto your knee. Steal an orange or drown a gallon of bitter ale so that the words shamble and swell around your head like nectar diving in a hive.
A clash of drums, the reek of thunder in the air, the ankles exposed, the shapely thighs and you haven’t even made it close to the stage yet.
But remember the writer.
Look for the writer when you fall out on the street, all puffed up from the energy of the night –– and trip over the heels of the writers in the gutter pulling poems from their begging bowls full of unsold lines.For it is a poor pastime being a writer… and a GLORIOUS one.
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I was approached two years ago by an actor, Stephen Bradley, to write a play about George. I’d never heard of the actor, there was only a vague notion that a producer would be interested… I was sceptical. These approaches happen.
In one week alone I’d been asked to write a surfing movie, a series about Scandinavian trolls and an animated Wizard series based on the math’s curriculum for 8 year-olds in Texas. I have shelves of material developed on spec for which funding fell through. But Stephen was so enthusiastic that I agreed to look at the material and yes, it was interesting, but I decided to be sensible for once and say no.
George had other ideas. He began talking to me. Page after page of the most wonderful visual language… it was utterly addictive. Before I knew it I had nearly an hour’s worth of material… When the producer up North saw and loved it, I was told to keep it hidden. There was no funding up North for plays already written.
But the funding didn’t come.
I contacted Smock Alley, which was only just being opened for shows – George had acted there in the 1660s; he had accidentally stabbed a fellow actor on stage, which forced him into writing; he was one of their most famous alumni and they were as excited as me. We did a rehearsed reading last June to fantastic
response. Patrick Sutton, Director of Smock said it made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck; Alan Stanford came on board as director…. Funding is still an issue but all being well, we hope to put it on in September, for the official re-launch of Smock Alley.
Lindsay blogs here, for those on you interested in finding out more about George (and those Scandinavian trolls, which we hope aren’t related to the Internet variety.)
From: Drama of the Day: Lindsay Sedgwick, from A Fresh Gale and Cold Chicken
BY KITWORDS ON APRIL 7, 2011 (http://upstart.ie/blog/?p=860)
