Glyn Maxwell is author of THE ONLY GIRL IN THE WORLD at the Arcola
Biography
Glyn Maxwell is best known as a poet – among his books are The Sugar Mile and The Nerve, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 2003 – but several of his plays have been staged in London, Edinburgh and New York, including The Lifeblood, which was British Theatre Guide's 'Best Play' at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2004, Broken Journey, a Time Out Critics' Choice in 1999, and Liberty, which premieres at the Globe this summer prior to a UK tour, and is the Globe's first ever co-production. He recently returned to the UK after several years in New York, and lives in Islington.
What first attracted you to the theatre?
At a primitive, childhood level, it's the amazing paradoxes – the bright lamps in the night-time, the make-believe that seems truer than life, the people who marry or kill or die, but then smile at you and bow. Some children want to be around that firelight forever. As Peter Brook reminds us, it’s called play.
If you could pick any one person or theatre company to work with on your next project, who/which would it be?
I’m too blessed with the actors and directors I work with now even to hazard an answer to that. My writing life revolves around my desk, RADA, the Globe and all the pubs in-between them, so I'm already living the 17th-century dream.
What is your opinion of Off West End theatre, in general?
West End theatre is just a symptom of people as digital, predictable, marketable-to. It will never be more than 1 or 0, which is why of course it has merged with reality TV. Off West End is all the other numbers and the gaps between the numbers. That is to say it's analogue, it's what life is like.
What was the most inspiring performance you have ever seen? Why?
Again a childhood memory.A performance of Everyman in the grounds of a floodlit castle in Germany, when I was about ten. The harrowing voice of Death: Jederman! Jederman! The lights burning, the great dark summons sounding, the lights burning on anyway. I’ve no idea who the actors were, or why we were there – it was freezing, we were starving, we were children, it was in effing German – but I’ve never forgotten it.
What piece of work are you the most proud of?
At the moment it's The Ruins, a version of Euripides currently in development at RADA. I think it’s pretty strong, but I always favour the last thing I did, so my opinion has no critical value. It’s merely essential to me to believe I'm growing.
What makes a really good character?
That they say and do things in their own way, not mine. A sign of a developed character is that he or she starts altering the course I've set out. When I've written in my synopsis that someone should leave at this point – but they don't, they have more to say. Or the other way round: I have great plans for them and they just go, like Lear's Fool: And I'll go to bed at noon. You never see or hear of him again. That’s how I know I have a really good character, but what makes that? A bit of you, a bit of someone else, a posture, the weather in their heads, a relationship to time and space, a level of anxiety, a size of word-hoard – I don't think about this while I do it, I'm just observing what appears. Oh, and a speed of thought – how quickly the words come. In The Only Girl In The World, Mary Kelly thinks quicker and is wittier than I am, Joe Barnett thinks slower and is less witty. But he’s a better man than me, and I’m proud of them both. I’m like the Ed Harris character in The Truman Show, watching his creation pulling away from him forever – this stuff can make you a little crazy.
Are there any actors/actresses you would like to write a play for?
I think that's a confining sort of strategy, to know who's going to have the words. It's in the nature of the business that you end up writing for someone or some people, but I never ever think of someone else's face or voice while I’m writing. In my dream world where money's of no importance I would tempt great stage actors away from doing any more film and TV, as I think most film and TV is barely breathing when set against theatre.
What play do you wish you'd written?
I love King Lear the most.
Can you tell our readers about what you’re doing now/next?
I'm adapting a Dostoevsky short story for the stage. Actually that also answers the question before – I wish I'd written that, as I should have done it by now.
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