Imagendering II

CW: So the combined space of living room and outside setting in Colder Than Here was the idea of the designer?

LW: I think the director and I had discussed it and we both agreed that we hated plays where people are moving furniture on and off - especially as in this play the sofa has to come on and go off again and come on and go off again - it would have been awful. And we both did not like blackouts, either, when the stage management team all come on and start moving things around and everybody has to wait for three minutes. So we were giving that as a brief to the stage designer and then we needed to find a way of coming up with a solution. We found a way of bringing the trees into the living room and the living room into the fields - it was beautifully matched.

CW: To what degree do you write for particular audiences? Would you say that the audiences of the Soho Theatre and the Royal Court Upstairs differ from each other?

LW: I think Colder Than Here possibly played to a slightly different audience than the typical Soho audience. Demographically, Soho's audience is rather young but as there were older characters in Colder Than Here, we had some middle-aged people coming in. But the new play for the Soho is quite young. I think the characters are all between their late twenties and early thirties, so it will probably appeal to younger people.

CW: So the audience you had in mind for the new play is comparable to the Royal Court upstairs?

LW: I think so, yes. Although the new play is not as harsh as Breathing Corpses and the Royal Court has this reputation for doing things that are quite shocking. Quite daring. I think Other Hands is more quietly unsettling than that one was. A bit more subtle.

Colder Than Here and Breathing Corpses

CW: I'm sure that Myra's attitude towards her death was one of your main interests when writing Colder Than Here. Do you feel that the problems that Myra's family has with her straightforward way of dealing with her impending death represents the way that European societies see death as a taboo?

LW: I am fascinated by death and cultural attitudes towards it. I'm reading at the moment about American funerals and they are very different to the way we do it in Europe. Horrifying in some respect to a European person. I am also fascinated by death rituals in other parts of the world. I could talk hours about that. I think Myra has to be provocative. She has to provoke a reaction from her family in order for the play to have anywhere to go. She is trying to provoke them into action and knows that she has to be shocking and detailed enough so that they will be able to cope with her death. I always felt that she has that in her mind but I don't think that she necessarily gets it right in terms of her approach; sometimes she goes too far. I wanted to write a person that was fallible, because I hate literature where people become terminally ill and than suddenly become a saint. I'm sure if I was diagnosed with something awful like that I'd be horrible to everybody because I'd be angry and sad and resentful and scared.

CW: Is there any particular reason why you left the actual death of Myra out of the play and why there wasn't a burial?

LW: I really didn't want it to be a play about someone who died. I have seen that scene of everybody standing around the grave with umbrellas looking sad so many times. I wanted to do a play about someone who is going to die. I wanted to look specifically at the grief that happens before death.