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The 9 Circles

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1 - Which character do you identify the most with in the play No Exit?

 

I can't really remember. If I read it now, I wonder. I'm not sure that Sartre is really inviting one to identify with any of the characters more than any other. Maybe we simply see what there is in us of each of them. I would never feel like taking sides in that play

 

2 - what is the first play you’ve ever read or your favourite play? 

 

Well yeah… two very different things. I have no idea what the first play was that I ever read. In my parents house, there were volumes of George Bernard Shaw’s play that might have been among the first play I have ever read. But when I was 14 or so I started reading Chekhov’s plays and Shakespeare. I suppose they've remained my great passions as far as plays are concerned

 

3 - What is the first book or text that you ever wrote

that was brought to life or publish? 

 

Ah! I think the first published one was a play called 26 efforts at pornography. I wrote it in the late-1960s maybe… 1968 or 1969. And it was first performed there in Edinburgh, at Travers, the old Travers of course not the one that exists now. And then it was done later the National Theatre. 

 

NGY: And what was it about?

 

It's about a young school boy who has been caught writing pornography and this school master who is responsible for the behaviour of the students. He has to interview the boy and punish him or in some way sort out the problem of having a young man writing pornography who is in his charge. It's simply a one-act play.

 

4 - What is the most challenging play you've ever written

 

I know which one is most challenging play. It's a play called 'I won't bite you' and it's challenging because it's a full length play but it's more or less a monologue. It's performed by an actress who has many terrible things to tell us. She's actually telling an interrogator who says his her lawyer. There's a microphone hanging from the ceiling as she's talking to him. She has 2h30 worth of really terrible tales to tell. She's in a prison in South America. It's an extraordinary challenge to any actor. I have a wonderful, brilliant actress called Holly Graff who performed it here in America. I cannot imagine anyone performing it better but I was very lucky.

 

5 - What genre have you never written and

that you would be really interested in writing?

 

(Laughs.) That's a nice question my dear. I suppose there are many genres. I have never written science fiction although that doesn't largely apply to drama (although it could do.) I've written historical drama, I've written drama of many kinds, I've written comedy… I'm trying to think what I'd like to do if I was to go in a whole new direction but it doesn't immediately come to me. You have to remember that I've written more than 200 plays and that's including script and radio plays, television plays, theatre plays, films… I've really had an opportunity to write in almost every possible genre. I've written verse plays… I think I may have more or less tried everything.

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NGY: What's your favourite genre then?

 

I never think about genre. If a story grabs me then I let it find its own way. I would never sit down. Especially if it's to write a comedy or to write a thriller. On some level to me everything is comedy. If I was able to think of something that was not comedy in any way I don't think I'd want to write it.

 

6 - What is the best thing about being a playwright

and a writer in general?

 

Well, they're two very different questions for me. I'm a novelist. I've written a lot of plays but to me of much less importance than the novels I've written. I regard my life of the novelist as my true writer's life. And off-course the joy of that is to the joy of writing and the joy of having something to come home to every day or every night but nobody can interfere with (or they could but they hopefully won't.) Theatre is very different. It's a collaborative art. When you write a play you are hoping that your co-workers will see the play the way to do or even find more interesting things in it than you so yourself. There's a very different discipline. It's beautiful of course and there are times when I miss the theatre but it was never for me really a writer's art. For me that was always the novel. So the collaboration is both the joy and the frustration of a playwright's life.

 

7 - What is the worst thing about being a writer?

 

(Laughs.)To me the worst thing is your own limitation. I don't think that it's bad if you are not appreciated or get bad reviews. That's unpleasant unpleasant but that's not the end of the world. The end of the world is simply the limit of your your imagination, your skills and your powers. But we all have limits there's no reason for that to be anything bad about being a writer.

 

8 - What is something you wish you knew

when you first started as a professional writer? 

 

(Laughs.) That's a lovely questions too. I wish I had known how wonderful it would be and I don't mean wonderful in the sense of successful but wonderful in the sense of rewarding. I would love to have known that just to be reassured that what I was doing was the right thing. I knew it was because there was nothing else that's I could do or was drawn to doing but it would have been nice to have been told, as I have told young writers for most of my life - 'You're making a wonderful decision. If you commit yourself to writing it will never let you down.'

 

NGY: That's very inspirational. 

 

That's the important thing.

 

9 - What brought you to writing in the first place? 

 

I think some people are born to be writers and they recognise words their world. Sartre was something like that from childhood onwards. I have thought about whether there are other psychological factors. For instance if you find as a child in a family that the world around you does not correspond to your understanding of it then I think words are escape words can be placed between you and the confusion that is life and they can serve to try and establish a ground on which you could live. I think there may be an element of truth in that. But certainly you know very early if you're called to be a writer. You just have to believe it. 

 

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Last Words

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Any projects coming up that you'd like to tell us about? 

 

No, funnily enough For the first time in my life. I completed a quartet of novels the year before last. I'd been working on it for 48 years and in between I'd written 8 other novels. But finally I got to the end of what was really my life's work and I thought 'Oh! this is great and I wonder what will be next.' But the feeling that it was great has lasted and nothing has come to replace it. So I just feel great (laughs.) I feel released and under no pressure to do any more. I could do more but I don't feel the hurry. I'm now a publisher. I work for a small press. We publish novelists and poets and this is actually more fun than writing (laughs) because writing you're always a little nervous - 'Is it any good?' When you're a publisher you know it's good you love to work your publishing. Publishing is pure pleasure. Writing is a mixture (laughs.) So that's my news.

 

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