(gentle music)
- My name is Jack Holden,
and I'm a playwright and an actor.
When I'm writing a play,
it's generally the story that comes first.
Characters on their own can't really tell a story.
The story is the building block and the motor.
Around that, an actor can build something.
You see a certain characteristic in someone
or you hear the rhythm with which someone speaks,
or you overhear, I love ear wigging,
eavesdropping on the bus and I hear the way someone speaks.
And I don't know, that all sinks in
and then you have this kind of dramatic mental soup
that I kind of have to dunk into every so often and go,
"Oh yeah, that, where did that come from?
"That was", and actually what was most interesting
about "Cruise", my play, was that afterwards,
loads of people said,
"Was that person based on this person?"
And I was like, "Oh yeah, I suppose they were in a way
"but I hadn't thought about it that consciously."
So yeah, I think the subconscious
does a lot of the work there,
as long as you're just sort of observant and listening.
(cinematic music)
I suppose, in life, as in art, people do unexpected things.
So it's not about a decision being expected
because if that happened,
it wouldn't be a very exciting play.
In fact, it's about maybe setting up that rhythm
or that type, and then breaking it.
You sort of have to come back
to how real humans make decisions,
and that is very often inconsistently,
and we all behave irrationally.
Dave is taking deep breaths.
He looks up at the stars and says,
"I'm gonna sell the flat."
"You what?"
"And I'm gonna quit my job."
"Whoa, hang on, Davie."
"Jackie's right.
"We have to live our lives.
"We have to thrive, not just survive."
In plays especially, kind of what we're there to see
is humans behaving in a specific, dramatic, unhinged way.
You can think as sort of creatively as you want,
really crazy stuff might happen to your characters.
But what defines those characters authentically
is how they react to those situations.
We have to live our lives like normal.
No, better than normal, wilder than before.
And I might get sick and I might get weak,
but you have to promise me one thing, Mikey,
that you'll never make me go home if I don't want to go.
You'll let me stay and dance and drink and live.
Can you promise me that, Mikey?
Even as he says it, he's trembling a little.
His face is pale, almost grey.
All I wanna do is look after him,
give him a hug and tuck him up in bed.
I love him enough to give him anything he wants.
Okay.
I promise.
It's whatever works for you.
If you need to know where this character has come from
or why they behave in a certain way,
down to the last detail, then go ahead and map it all out.
Approaching a character as an actor,
you don't need all of the detail.
You don't need every question answered.
You just need kind of anchors in the character,
fundamental things that you can build the character around.
There are plenty of actors
who don't do any background, backstory work
and they still create amazingly powerful performances,
and there are actors who go away
and fill notepads with the backstory.
So as a writer, I know that I don't have to
fully detail this character, their entire life story,
every waking second of their life.
I need to give enough detail that the character is plausible
and interesting and exciting.
People enter our lives all the time
and we don't know every last thing about them.
But if you can bring in these characters
and they feel real with only a few details,
then that's fine.
They don't need to know everything about everyone.
And in fact, a little bit of mystery and ambiguity
is sometimes very exciting.
This is the second time I've called this number.
When was the first?
Few months after me and Dave met.
What did you call to talk about?
Well, let's play it out, shall we?
I'll be me, you be an 80s version of you.
All right.
All right, ring, ring.
Hello, switchboard.
Yeah, hello, my name's Michael.
Oh, hello, Michael.
My name's Phillip.
What?
Why can't you name just be Jack?
I don't know, carry on.
All right, yeah.
Just wanted a bit of advice really.
Okay, what do you want advice on?
Me and my boyfriend.
We've just been to see the doctor.
We've both been diagnosed with this gay cancer.
The gay plague.
That's what the papers are calling it anyway.
You mean HIV?
That's right.
How old are you?
I'm 22.
Christ.
Right, that's not the reaction you're meant to give.
My favourite Shakespearean character is Iago,
And I think the reason I love him so much
is because you, as an audience member,
can immediately identify what the game is,
what his objective is,
and he shares that with the audience,
and because he shares with us so directly,
that's compelling.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag character is iconic,
and kind of changed the form of modern theatre.
And again, actually, in a similar way to Iago,
there's a lot of direct address, soliloquy,
and therefore we are just let into her world.
And also, yeah, she's kind of a bit of a messy character
like Iago, and that is very relatable
and she does irrational things.
Yeah, I took a lot of inspiration from Fleabag.
My key piece of advice would be,
don't be afraid of big characters going big.
I mean, they're really fun to play as an actor,
and the theatre is a space where characters can be big
and we can explore the upper end of characters.
And I think you can always tone a character down.
You can always bring, reign them back in,
but I think you've gotta go there,
even if it's just to explore.
But I think by going there,
you'll make some really interesting discoveries about them,
the play, the world of the play.
So be brave, go big.
We rent a flat in the heart of Soho
and with the money we have, we don't want for anything.
We eat out every night, drinks every night,
buying things we don't even need just for fun.
Treating our friends, treating ourselves.
We get to the point where it seems to make perfect sense
to buy a 128 piece set of silver tableware and cutlery
inspired by the Viennese Banqueting Accoutrement
of Empress Elizabeth of Austria,
and we live in a one bedroom flat.
The way I told the story of "Cruise"
was with just me playing many characters,
and so that meant there were two handed scenes
where I was talking to myself, which sounds weird,
but hopefully you'll see how it works.
And in this scene, the main character, Michael,
has stumbled into this bar,
which feels like something from a different era,
and he meets this very colourful character
called Palari Gordon.
Oh, Vara, the eke on that.
You just troll in here, did you, dollie?
This is meant to be a member's club.
Should have to have Palari
with that Misa butch queen on the door.
Still, you're in here now.
Yeah, Ida, two more veras.
Gotta make 'em strong.
Come hither, chicken.
Take the weight off.
I don't how it happened or how I got through,
but I'm up in the Colony Room Club,
a tiny little place up some winding stairs
full of smoke so thick,
you can scrape the yellow off the walls.
Before I know it, I'm sat on a bar stool
with a G and T in one hand, Dave's plastic bag in the other
and this bloke in a maroon three piece plus matching hat
talking at me in a foreign tongue.
So what is it?
Scarpering the Lilly?
Shushed something you shouldn't have?
What a dilly boy are you.
Well, never you mind.
Sip you Bavari and relax.
Gordon will look after you now.
There's no coming through that door.
Never has been, never will be.
This fantabulous saloon is safe, the safest place in Soho.
What's in the bag?
Just things.
Well, I gathered that, chicken.
You all right?
Your orbs are looking mighty bloodshot.
Are you mashugana or just dizzy?
I don't, what?
Are you a lunatic or are you just a bit lost?
Oh.
Lost.
I'm just lost.
Well, there are worse places to find oneself lost.
Chicken, we're all lost in one way or another.
It's how you cope in the wilderness that counts.
We're told we should be found,
that knowing where you are is the paradigm,
the promised land.
But I often find it's the people
who know exactly where they are all of the time
who aren't much fun.
It's just, I had a really good travelling companion,
and now I don't.
Gordon looks at my plastic bag again.
He frowns at it, sees Dave's gold chain curled up
and pressing at the underside.
You've lost someone very dear to you.
He knew you better than anyone.
Well now, there's nothing quite as naff as that.
Ida, two more on the double
and source us some Mongery too.
He's wasting away, poor Philly.
I lost someone once.
Not in the same way, but just like you,
he had helped me find myself.
He was my journal, my mirror, my shrink,
the keeper of my history, and I was his.
And when he went away, so too went the pages of my journal,
the mirror smashed into shards,
some of which I carry with me,
some of which I left on the ground.
Well, you can't keep a pocket full of glass.
It felt as though my story had stopped.
Without someone to witness it,
was it really happening at all?
Who am I now?
Am I in the world?
Am I real?
Two gin and tonics replace our empty ones.
I take a sip
as the warmth of the first starts to spread through my body
and make the edges of everything look blurry and soft.
Cheers.
The thing is, you are real.
You exist in your own right.
It's much too soon for you to know this,
to truly comprehend it in your gut,
but your path hasn't changed at all.
He, the man who wore that chain, he had his path too.
And for a time, for a sweet, precious time,
those paths ran perfectly parallel to one another.
His path stopped, but yours carries on
and what you have to do, what do you absolutely must do
is keep on walking.
Every day, another step.
That's all it takes.
I take another big gulp of gin.
My eyes are prickling with moisture.
The barman slides a plate of sandwiches onto the bar.
Gordon nods at them and says,
Right, fill your boots then scarper off home.
This is a member's club after all
and I'm not made of metzas.
Need me again, you'll find me here,
or occasionally in the Ajax Cazi.
Ask for Palari Gordon.