Patient No.1 – The Big Issue

Over a long and distinguished career, Chicago born writer Donald Freed has become one of the most astute political commentators of our times, variously as a journalist, novelist, scriptwriter and playwright. He’s been the recipient of a whole host of awards and, for the past two years, he’s been a guest on these shores.

 

“I had a small grant to look for a place to teach so I approached the University of Leeds,” Freed says. “I was appointed as an artist in residence at the workshop theatre there, and that’s when I met Damian Cruden, who’s the artistic director at York Theatre Royal. He was interested in working together. He’s got tremendous talent and generosity and vision, and it’s a great theatre. You could go around the world and not have a better experience than this has been. And so I made these very deep and dynamic relationships at York Theatre Royal, and the culmination of it is this.” What Freed’s referring to is his latest play, Patient No 1, which makes its world premiere at the Theatre Royal next month. In the piece, set in the very near future, a certain George W Bush is admitted to an isolated psychiatric clinic and begins to unravel under a course of intensive therapy. It’s been widely described as a satire, but as the author, Freed fights shy of pigeonholing the play. “These labels – satire, parody, lampoon, cartoon, cabaret, political theatre – they’re all critical labels. I suppose you would call this a tragi-farce. But then again, what is a tragifarce? The situation we’re in is tragic and farcical: you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.” Surely it’s a challenge for any sane artist to put himself in the mind of Bush. “At first blush it would seem that these are mortal enemies politically,” agrees Freed. “But think of the great examples: think of Macbeth, Iago, the Greek tragedies. It’s all beyond good and evil. If you’re a critic then you can simply pick and choose the vices and virtues and add them up to get any sum you like. But if you’re a serious creative writer, what choice have you but to see the point of view of the character?” Freed’s play, then, uses theatre to examine the ultimate legacy of our present-day leaders. “Bush and Blair  never tire of saying that history will judge them, but history is not supposed to be the judge in a democracy. If you conduct yourself so that history is going to judge you rather than your contemporaries, it means that no one is left to judge you except the artist, except the playwright, and except the theatre. So this play is meant to demystify the cartoon version of George Bush and to show him in all his terror and pity.”

 

With the Bush era coming to an end and the American elections looming, does Freed believe they offer much hope for real political change? “You could draw a pessimistic conclusion,” he concurs. “On the other hand, even the smallest difference can have enormous impact around the world when you’re a superpower. It’s a corner of the canvas, it’s not the centre ring, but it is of tremendous importance internationally. And yet if you put all your eggs in the basket of elections you have a great problem, because the repetition of magical words like ‘democracy’ can lull you into some sort of hypnotic state. Both the US and the UK are now what you may term ‘war on terror’ democracies. There are nations dealing with tortures and secrecy at a level that means that they could be as dangerous or as transient as the so-called democracy Greece was, or the Republic of Rome.”

 

During the 1970s Freed worked for the Citizens Research and Investigation Committee, and as a journalist he wrote extensively on such highly charged subjects as Nixon, Watergate, the Black Panthers and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. Now, at the age of 75, his twoyear British sojourn is about to draw to a close, and he’s set to return to the United States to teach creative writing at the University of Southern California. He’s uniquely placed to comment on the UK’s changing political landscape. “As a visitor over several decades, I do see a difference, and I’m quite struck by it,” he says. ”The Labour Party has been so warped, it seems to me, by power and by vainglorious visions of neo-colonial messianism. Everybody can sense that something’s wrong. One moment it’s banking, another moment it’s something else: there are all these signs.” However, Freed does express his strong approval for this very publication. “I’m a great follower of The Big Issue,” he says. “I first became aware of it in talking about it with Harold Pinter. It’s an honour!”