theatre feature
‘Wrights Write, Right?: Adam Brace
ThreeWeeks chats to Festival playwrights.
One of the best things about being the biggest reviewer at the Edinburgh Festival, is that you get to find all the plays and people that make the Fringe such an exciting place. This year, we couldn’t help but notice playwright whose two Fringe shows both gained excellent reviews from our team. Adam has been bringing plays to the Fringe since 2003 and this year he has teamed up once more with Velocet to present ‘Because It’s There’ which examines one man’s struggle with his addiction to climbing. This show received a 4/5 from our reviewer but there were top marks for Adam’s second show ‘A Real Humane Person Who Cares And All That’, concerning three British writers who go missing in Central Asia. We spoke to Adam and asked him to tell us a bit about himself and his 5/5 show.
TW : How and when did you start writing plays?
AB : I started writing plays for my class to act out at the age of eleven. My first play was called ‘Redmen Deadmen’. It involved me, Nicholas Snoek and Matthew Attfield hunting and then killing Russian communists and then having sex with their wives. This sounds absurd, but it is entirely true.
TW : Did you have the Festival particularly in mind when you wrote ‘A Real Humane Person Who Cares And All That’?
AB : I only wrote the play after we’d booked the venue, paid the money, thought up the title, cast it and got a director involved. Then the director had to visit me every day for about a week to make sure I was writing it. So yes, I did have the Festival in mind.
TW : Was there a particular event that provided the inspiration for the story of the missing British citizens?
AB : There was this time when Hemmingway lived in Cuba and he was visited by Tennessee Williams, Ken Tynan and the very good boxing writer, George Plimpton. They were offered the chance to go to an execution. That scenario piqued my interest. Also I used to knock around with a bunch of embassy workers when I lived in Seoul and I noticed how bored they got and how black their humour was.
TW : What place do you think awards have at the Fringe?
AB : The place they have is they help you sell your show. But any writer who genuinely cares about winning an award is a tool with skewed priorities.
TW : What are your hopes for this year’s Fringe?
AB : In the ThreeWeeks Review for Jollie at the Underbelly, Ollie Birch is reported as being not fat. He is fat. I have known him since I was sixteen. And he is fat. I hope for an official correction.
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'A Real Humane Person Who Cares And All That' was performed at the Hill Street Theatre while 'Because It’s There' was performed at the Underbelly.
published: Oct-2008
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