Gender and Language

JK: Can you talk about your affinities with other writers. Who if anyone is likely to provide inspiration for you?

LE: I realize more and more that I love the monologue. A writer I admire hugely, a friend of mine and somebody much funnier than I am, who also loves the monologue is Bryony Lavery. She has this theory that she can spot my plays anywhere because there is always the theme of a dead child in there. Her theme, she says, is interment, so we agreed that we could work together! I have just written a play that is being done as a rehearsed reading at the Orange Tree which is a comedy. I never dared to write a comedy before. As it is supposed to be funny, it is such a responsibility; if nobody laughs you're stuffed, aren't you? And back again to motherhood, it is set in a crumbling hospital ante-natal class. Principally, many years ago when I was having a child, the comedic value of the whole thing struck me quite forcibly.

JK: What kind of research did you conduct in preparation for writing Once We Were Mothers? You cover such a broad ground in the play...

LE: Firstly, the research on Ali and Flora's story was done with three women who had daughters with Down's Syndrome. This was the starting point as we wanted to have somebody who had a disability. Because of the nature of Down's Syndrome you can have people with huge ranges of ability, and also — despite this being a huge generalisation — people with Down's Syndrome often tend to be quite gregarious and enjoy performing. So when we were thinking what kind of person to come up with, someone with Down's Syndrome came to mind for those reasons. So I researched with them, and most of the stuff they told me was moulded into one family and the material was reordered. It was all their contribution, including the jokes. I wish it was mine, but it was mostly theirs; they were incredibly generous. Secondly, I did my research at the BBC and read books about the war in Bosnia. I didn't want to talk to refugees about their experience during the war. I thought they'd had enough happening to them already. What I talked about with them was their childhood, what were the customs in their country when you get married, what you eat, the festivals, all the happy times, what were schools like, things like that. I research a lot to get the confidence to write something I have not witnessed, in fact I over-research if anything. Finally, the third strand is totally fictitious. There is so much in the news today about Madeleine McCann. Around that time there was an article written by the sister of someone who went missing about what that does to the family. I think Bryony [Lavery, whom Evans greatly admires] has read it too, but luckily I hadn't read Frozen before writing my play or I'd accuse myself of plagiarism. The article was a very moving account of how a family gets destroyed by absence, how it becomes obsessive. It is very hard to be a survivor in such a family. This aspect really interested me, the nature of the relationship the remaining child can have with the mother. For my play I thought that the surviving daughter was the crucial one, the one who stays behind but who is receiving some appalling mothering really.

JK: This is my favourite plot strand, I have to say. Maybe because this was the one I could least relate to personally, I was less exposed to narratives on this topic. I was also mesmerised by the performance of Esther Ruth Elliott as Kitty.

LE: The actress who played the part first time around, Hazel Maycock, came to see the Orange Tree production. It was interesting talking to her because she and Esther gave such extraordinarily different performances! They are different because the performers are different people obviously, but in the initial one the pain was completely contained, the actress was completely bound up physically. In the Richmond production, they went for the opposite; a complete expanse physically, vocally and emotionally. Both work, interestingly.

JK: The only actress who appeared in both productions is Sarah Gordy, playing Flora. And you have worked with her previously as well.

LE: I had written an episode for Peak Practice (long running television series, not on any more), a love story for two young people with Down's Syndrome in a sheltered house. Sarah played a part in that. Then she was in the first production at the New Vic and I kept in touch with her and her mother afterwards, so she was the obvious choice to take on the part again. She is amazing. It was very interesting for her to do the part the second time; she is older, thirty-one now, and is playing young very well (the character of Flora is a teenager!). But she had to go through a different production process this time and sort of unlearn what she had done the first time around, which for someone with Down's Syndrome can be tricky. She was of course up for the challenge, but it was hard on her. One of the things that happened in rehearsal is that when the director, Ellie Jones wanted to try things out with Sarah for Flora and then she didn't choose them for the finished production, Sarah thought she had done something wrong. She kept feeling that she failed. To try and then not have what you've done accepted is a challenging part of the process for her.

JK: How do you see this role being played by others? Do you think anyone could potentially play it?

LE: I hope so. I recently got a card from Jane, Sarah's mother saying that a friend of hers has also got a baby with Down's Syndrome. She is having speech therapy and her mother's ambition is for her to become an actress and play the roles Sarah by then would be too old for — passing on the baton, as it were. In fact, they were introduced because Paula Stockbridge, who played Milena in the first production, had a friend who knew she was about to have a baby with Down's Syndrome and who had some trepidation about it. Paula suggested she meet Jane and Sarah, to witness how they work together and how happy and joyful they are about each other. Now they are sort of role models.