"I never dared to write a comedy before. If nobody laughs you're stuffed, aren't you?": Lisa Evans in Conversation
Lisa Evans has written extensively for the theatre, radio and television. Her stage work includes both new plays and adaptations, and has been performed apart from the UK in Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Israel and the USA. She regularly collaborates with director Gwenda Hughes and has been writer in residence at the Theatre Centre, London and Temba Theatre. She has won, among others, British Theatre Association awards and her work is published by Oberon.
Interview taken at London, 8 November 2007
Jozefína Komporaly: Your play Once We Were Mothers has premiered in October 2007 at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, but it was first produced in 2004 at the New Vic Theatre in Newcastle-under-Lyme. Why this revival now, and what inspired the play at the time of its original production?[1]Evans, Lisa. <em>Once We Were Mothers</em>. London: Oberon Books, 2004.
Lisa Evans: I actually wrote the play well before it got staged, but it wasn't produced until September 2004, when it was a good point in the theatre's calendar to put it on. As you probably know, there are times of the year which are graveyards for new plays. I was commissioned by The New Vic, Stoke-on-Trent, by director Gwenda Hughes, as they'd got the funding and she and I had often worked together before. She was/is my sort of 'theatrical marriage.' The theatre wanted to commission a play that had a part for someone with a learning disability. They wanted this aspect to be part of a regular play, not a special play on disability as such. That's specifically what they got the money for, and it was at this point that they commissioned me. I then conducted research by speaking to three mothers who had teenage daughters with Down's Syndrome. The thing that most came up for them, owing to the ages of their children at the time, was how you let go. It's hard enough to let go of any teenager but with somebody with whom you have had such an intense, protective relationship, it is even harder. We also needed somebody who was the opposite of this, which became the character of Kitty, set in the fifties. There is no way she would let go, ever. And also I heard a piece on Radio 4 about the Bosnian rape camps, so I started to research that, and it seemed a good point in the triangle to actually have somebody who is a good mother, but then does the unthinkable by murdering their own child. All three stories were about different views of motherhood, but also ones that many people would not have necessarily experienced; they were kind of extremes if you like: "this is how it might feel if this were to happen, imagine what it feels like."
JK: How did the current revival come about?
LE: I'd been talking to Sam Walters, the artistic director of the Orange Tree Theatre, for a while about putting something of mine on there [it's my local theatre] but he doesn't do new plays very often. I also spoke to director Auriol Smith about this, and I sent both her and Sam the play. I knew however, that you shouldn't press Sam too hard because if you do he resists. So I was treading a very cautious line. But one night I went to the theatre to see a show a friend of mine was in and half the audience were people I had worked with. I felt terribly old because everyone knew me. Then Auriol said "we are doing a women's season, why don't you speak to Sam about your play?". I did and he rang me up saying he wanted to read some adaptations of mine, as he was thinking about them for that season. I thought he probably wasn't interested in this play then, but he suddenly rang out of the blue and said "Once We Were Mothers is what I want to do." There was some stunned silence from me at that point as I really didn't expect him to go for it.
JK: Were you writing this play with a particular audience in mind?
LE: The audience it was commissioned for, a Stoke audience. I don't really think about a particular audience though, but I write plays with women casts and about women quite often, because there are very few plays with enough good parts for women. Also women buy the tickets. So it seems to me sensible to write about things that might interest them.
JK: Do you see Once We Were Mothers as a women's play or a feminist play in any sense?
LE: I hope that everything I write is informed by my politics, which is feminism, but I don't think it's a women's play. I think it's a play about motherhood, and men tend not to get found under cabbages — they also have mothers!
JK: But there is a relative lack of balance between your male and female protagonists. Isn't this a hallmark of women's theatre?
LE: I try to write more women than men in my plays just to redress the balance. If I had been born at another time, another age, maybe it wouldn't be necessary to do that. I think it is necessary at the moment, still. Also, the men are part of the story, they just don't appear on stage. There are only a certain number of cast members that you can afford, and since the play was about mothers I thought it was more important to have them on stage. The men are crucial to their relationships, but with the exception of Tajib, they were served quite well through being reported as opposed to being actually seen on stage. They are nevertheless a presence, and a positive presence. I needed Tajib, the Bosnian husband on stage, because I needed the very happy first act to contrast with what happens afterwards. I thought it was important to show how happy Milena's sexual relationship with her husband was before the war, and, similarly, to have the same actor play her husband and the teacher she has known most of her life. How these two characters double — Tajib and the teacher (one of the men who eventually rape her) — is actually very positive.