Confessions of a True Thesp

This Saturday I’ll be travelling up to Edinburgh ahead of the start of a two week run of a play I’ve written. I’m quite excited about this. This shouldn’t be all that surprising; but taking into account my past experiences of both going to Scotland and doing theatre, I’m at pains to explain to myself why I’m not quaking with cold dread.

Until last year, I’d never visited the Edinburgh fringe. In fact, I’d only ever been to Scotland once, on a family holiday to some remote Hebridean farmhouse when I was ten. All I can remember about the week was somehow getting a tick embedded in my forearm and losing my new kite at the beach. Returning home heavy with grief and convinced that I was about to die at the hands of some obscure blood-borne pathogen, I suggested that we never venture north of the border again. So we never did. Until my pretensions of artistic validation got the better of me, that is.

Such pretensions are also a relatively recent development. We weren’t a big theatre-going family – the one notable exception being the time my Dad took me to see the musical RENT when it came on tour to Sydney, where we then lived. In case you’re unaware, RENT is a musical about a community of artists and bohemians living in New York’s East village and coping with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. I was five years old. The usher had to get a padded cushion for me to sit on just so I could see the stage. He probably needn’t have bothered; I was so ignorant of what was going on that all I can remember about the show was confusing a transvestite called Angel for an actual angel. Even now I’m at pains to understand quite why my Dad thought this would be a suitable induction into the world of theatre, though since in the same year I was enrolled in ‘Street Funk’ dance classes and was taken out of school for the day by my mum to see the Spice World movie, I can only conclude it was part of a brief assault on my heteronormative sexual development, and a partially successful one at that. Despite turning out basically straight, I was still the only five year old boy I knew who had a favourite Spice girl (Baby, if you’re interested) and pictured God’s spiritual helpers wearing thigh-highs and fishnet stockings.

Having become, in my Uncle’s words, ‘a bit of a nancy’, it seemed fitting that I got my first big break as an actor a few years later playing Nancy in a junior school production of Oliver! Never one to pass up a chance to emasculate me, my mother promptly went out and bought me what she considered to be a suitable costume – a bright red bodycon dress with the word ‘SUGAR’ spelled out in sequins across the front. I narrowly managed to avoid wearing it on the grounds that it didn’t fit the period, an argument that wasn’t able to spare me from the non-sartorial demands of the role – breasts, make-up and long hair being pretty much ubiquitous throughout recorded history. I stumbled out to meet an audience of around three-hundred doting Cheshire parents looking a bit like Jodi Foster in Taxi Driver, and though nobody ended up shooting a major world leader in an attempt to win my heart, the night wouldn’t have gone that much worse for me if they had. Actually, it would have been a welcome distraction. I haven’t had the twenty or so years of therapy necessary for me to relate the story in full here, but it involves such fun moments as 1) me leaving the stage twice in tears 2) the Headmaster apologising to the parents on my behalf and 3) a kindly old man sending me a letter encouraging me to keep away from tall bridges and train platforms from here on out. Or words to that effect.

I only really came to consider drama as something enjoyable and relevant when, despite having vowed never to tread the boards again, I was enrolled in a production of The History Boys during my first year of Sixth Form. For some reason I found playing a pupil at an all-boys northern grammar school less of a stretch than attempting to portray a Victorian-era sex worker, and at the same time began to see how I might write something that reflected my own experiences. Before this moment, the world of theatre never seemed to contain anything I could related to on a personal level. Much of what had been avant-garde only a generation or two before now seemed dated and foreign. How could my generation sympathise with the listless plight of Vladimir and Estragon when we’d been raised on Mario and Luigi – two other displaced persons of dubious trade who coped rather better with their lack of personal agency? I mean, why wait for Godot when you could go and save a princess or curbstomp a turtle to pass the time?

Appropriately, my first produced play was set in a school – a largely unbroken stream of cock-jokes masquerading as a penetrating exploration of teenage idealism and political radicalism. I’d like to say I’ve matured since then, but on the face of it I’ve only become, if anything, more juvenile. I’m currently in the process of assembling the props and costumes for the latest one, and have spent the afternoon diligently whipping up a batch of fake semen. That’s right. Fake semen. Well, I say faked. I guess you’ll have to come and see the show to find out.