Shore of the Wide World – Director’s Notes

As we start rehearsals proper I’m reflecting on the groundwork we’ve done so far… Choosing a cast back in November seems an age ago already – the Sunday afternoon read through in the Black Swan, the acting workshop for some of the young actors I didn’t know, subsequent interviews around the kitchen table, and the carefully worded emails… have all passed.  For several months I have had an Amy McDonald track echoing in my head – a persistent anthem for the play and all it stands for.  I recall my meeting with Simon Stephens in a café in the West End, who despite his ‘man-flu’ and hectic bike journey, seemed genuinely pleased to meet me.  His recollections of the first production in Manchester and rich nuggets of advice are now prominent in the rehearsal file.  There has been the decision too, to focus on sound rather than set to create the many scene changes which are required.  I’ve taken myself on an imaginary journey through the soundscape of the play, guessing what Stockport might have to offer and now have to brief Jon, the Sound Designer, before we take a weekend charabanc across the Pennines.  And the conversations with Sam, bless him, who created the striking poster of the dude on the beach – hell I know it’s not Stockport but surely you can’t quote Keats (the title of the play is taken from his sonnet When I have fears that I may cease to be) across the arches of the town’s famous Victorian railway viaduct.  But then again…

And before all that, there was the decision to choose this play.  Last summer I read Harriet Devine’s absorbing interviews with playwrights from the Royal Court.  The most interesting were those of the new generation of writers, including Simon Stephens.  I didn’t know his work but I liked what he said and I decided to read some of his work.  When I got to On the Shore, I couldn’t put it down.  At the end it was like that moment when you finish the last chapter, in the final book of a series by your favourite author.  You need to know what happens next, but there is no more.  You feel bereft… shaken… but eventually satisfied.  The technical challenges also appealed – a cast spanning three generations, teenage actors working closely with older adults, a play with musicality, northern soul and language which quietly reveals the utter depths and complexities of life.

Hey ho… better get back to planning the road trip.  Maybe we should squeeze in a visit to watch Stockport County?

An interview with playwright Simon Stephens

 

Simon Stephens

 

 

Who do you write for?

Janice Galloway once compared writing to waving. She said that people wave in the hope that somebody will wave back. So they write in the hope that somebody will recognize what they have to say. I like this as an idea. I like the duality of it. It implies that at one and the same time one has to write for oneself and one’s audience. It means it is very important that I distill in my writing my fundamental ideas. In this way I’m writing for myself. I’m writing to clarify and articulate. But I write for others, for all others, regardless I think of class, age, gender, sexuality, in the hope that something I say might make sense to them. That they might recognize themselves in something I write.

 

Current project?

I’m writing a play which is co-commissioned by a Theatre in Essen, north Germany and another in Amsterdam that will imagine King Ubu of Jarry’s plays on trial in the ICC at the Hague.

 

What inspired you to write On the Shore of the Wide World?

A hundred different things coming together at once. The key moment came after being told by my agent that male playwrights write about the death of children as a metaphorical means of exploring their fears of the death of their own talents. I remember thinking I’d happily survive the death of my own talent. There were some things more important. And came to wonder about the nature of recovery. And how people recover from things. I was also keen to celebrate
fathering. My own Dad died eighteen months after my eldest child was born. I lost and became a father within a very short space of time. I came to understand the failings of my own father and forgive them more readily after having become a father myself. I wanted to dramatise that understanding.

 

How did you come to choose the title?

The play was originally called HELSINKI. I intended this as a tribute to Finnish film director Aki Kaurismaki. His bleak alcohol soaked films reminded me of my teenage years in Stockport. But the artistic director of the National Theatre said nobody would come to watch a play called Helsinki and asked me to find a new title. I scoured the play for a new title, aping an approach of Raymond Carver in the titling of his short stories. The line from the Keats sonnet was in the play. It leapt out at me.

 

Any advice for the director?

The key thing in my plays is not what people say but what they do to one another, psychologically. Find and stage the psychological action not the emotion.

 

Fond memories of York??

There were many. Off the top of my head I loved Dj-ing at an indie club night called The Sheep Club which was held at a nightclub at the bottom of Heslingston Road. And I loved Red Rhino Records. I spent a f**king fortune there. I got into huge debt and established my identity there. And working at The Drama Bar at the University. I lost my virginity in York. I wrote my first plays there. I met my best mates there. I first heard Einsturzene Neubauten there. Its an important town for me.

 

Three things that sum you up?

A professor at York once said in an end of term report that he enjoyed working with me. He thought I was bright. And enquiring. But he couldn’t help feeling that sometimes in our tutorials he was in the presence of a large, over-friendly dog. Enquiring, large, over-friendly. That’s three, eh?