theatre feature
‘Wrights Write, Right? Joel Horwood
ThreeWeeks meets Fringe playwrights
One of ThreeWeeks’ favourite things about the Festival is the wealth of new writing and so every week we’re asking Fringe playwrights to tell us a bit about themselves and their work. This time Joel Horwood.
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This week we talk to Joel Horwood who is here with his new show ‘I Caught Crabs in Walberswick’. He’s very much on home ground with this one, as the play is set near his home town in Suffolk and is presented by Eastern Angles, the touring company for that region. Joel is equally at home at the Festival though, having won a Fringe First in 2006, and we asked him to share his thoughts about new writing at the Fringe and his latest play.
TW : How and when did you start writing plays?
JH : I started with ‘Mikey The Pikey’ in 2005 at The Pleasance Dome. I never thought I’d be a writer, I didn’t study any relevant courses, I just had an idea that I wanted to see realised on the stage; an idea for a musical, set in a sink estate about the second coming of Christ. So I wrote Mikey simply because I couldn’t see anyone else doing so in the near future. After that I received a lot of focused support from both the Royal Court and The Stephen Joseph Theatre and it’s this encouragement that really got me started.
TW : What do you think it is about the Fringe that makes it a good place for new writing?
JH : Edinburgh feels like a playground to me. It offers the steepest learning curve in the business. There’s nowhere else in the world where your piece will live or die by word of mouth and as such, it’s a great indication of whether your play works or not. But I’ve not just had the benefit of learning from audiences over the past four Festivals, premiering plays here has brought me into contact with the mighty Traverse theatre and such heroes as Enda Walsh, Adam Rapp and Mikel Murfi.
TW : What were your inspirations for ‘I Caught Crabs in Walberswick’?
JH : I grew up not far from Walberswick. Every summer, around the illegal bonfire on the beach, despite the class divides, there would be occasional stolen evenings between the girls who holidayed there, the boys who would never leave and those confused middle-class kids that weren’t really sure what they wanted to do. I basically wanted to write about people who cannot relate to each other at the same time as deeply understanding one another. I wanted to explore what it is that pulls childhood friendships apart to the point where, every New Year’s when you’re visiting the place you grew up, you can only nod at someone that you used to speak to daily.
TW : Did you have the Festival in mind when you wrote ‘I Caught Crabs in Walberswick’ and did that influence your writing at all?
JH : I think it’s dangerous to anticipate what might work at the Festival. There always seems to be a formula but the most exciting thing about this Festival is that the break-out successes are almost always utterly surprising. Eastern Angles commissioned me to write a play that might attract younger audiences, something that they could tour to sixth form colleges and to theatres alike. So in this case the audience was at the forefront of my mind and I tried to write something that I would have liked to have seen when I was at school and that I might be able to relate to if I was finding it hard to communicate with my child.
TW : You did a Pre-Fringe run at the High Tide Festival in Suffolk, how did this help you get ready for Edinburgh?
JH : High Tide was a fantastic opportunity to try the play out for a few performances. It was a pleasure to be on the play’s home turf and the audiences were massively supportive. We took risks, and learned about both the draft and the staging possibilities for the play. Since High Tide we’ve shaved off half an hour and honed the story to a really simple and tight sixty-minutes.
TW : How did you come to work with Eastern Angles?
JH : Ivan Cutting (the Artistic Director) read an early draft of my play for last year’s Fringe ‘Stoopud Fucken Animals’ which was written in a deep Suffolk dialect, and that kind of thing really revs the man’s engines. So we met over a pint of Adnams and tried to work each other out. I’d grown up going to see their plays in village halls and the like so to receive this commission has been like being asked to play for the home team.
TW : What are your hopes and fears for your play at the Fringe this year?
JH : Of course, I want the play to be a barnstorming success, but the most important thing for me every year is that the cast thoroughly enjoy themselves and get the attention that they deserve. I feel like so long as we’re lucky enough to keep attracting audiences then we’ve achieved our aims.
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Joel's play 'I Caught Crabs In Walberswick' was on at the Pleasance Courtyard.
published: Oct-2008
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