Imagendering II

CW: Does the family in Colder Than Here represent a typical contemporary British family for you?

LW: I think a typical family of that class. It is very difficult really to say what a typical family is. Sometimes people ask me if it's my family. There are elements of my family, there are also elements of other families that I know. A lot of people my age came up to me and said: "He's just like my dad." My best friend's father, after seeing the play, went to her asking: "Have you been telling Laura about me?" I know him, but I hadn't consciously had him in my head as a model. So if it's possible for people to draw this connection, than maybe it is typical. But I suppose the aim of writing is that you are as specific as possible. And every family is the only one family in the world that operates exactly that way. You make it as specific as possible, and somehow, by making it specific, it can become universal.

CW: I was wondering how the audiences' reactions were during the run of Colder Than Here and also during Breathing Corpses because you said yourself that they tackle taboo themes.

LW: It's always hard to gauge an audience's reaction - apart from when people walk out in disgust! Nobody left the theatre during a performance of Colder Than Here, but we had a few people leaving in Breathing Corpses because of the violence. A couple of people walked out during the scene between Kate and Ben - we had a fight director who choreographed quite a nasty fight. I'd seen it several times by the time the audience came in and I knew exactly that he wasn't really holding her hair and dragging her around the stage. But it did look quite horrific. I didn't mind that people found it distressing because that was what it was supposed to be like. The reviewer of the Daily Mail said that it was pretty much the most horrible thing he had ever seen and that when he came out in the end, he had to ring his loving wife to remind him that there was some good somewhere in the world. I was delighted. That day we sold out due to that review. We sold every ticket. But some people don't like it and that's the risk you take, I suppose. You rip your heart out and put it on a plate and say, "Here you are. Please criticise." That's what you do. You have to accept it.

But for Colder Than Here, the responses I had from audience members were very positive - which surprised me, because I had expected more resistance. Partly because people knew from interviews that I hadn't written it from personal experience, I was worried that people would come back and say, "Well, you know nothing about it. This play has no resemblance to what that experience would really be like." But I had a few people come up to me afterwards and say that it was very like what they had been through with their family. Those that didn't relate could appreciate that it is a work of fiction, which offers one specific story about one specific family but is not trying to represent everybody's experience with grief.

CW: The characters in your plays that struggle the most are men. Would you agree that Alec and Jim are the most vulnerable characters in Colder Than Here and Breathing Corpses?

LW: I have been fascinated with the way men deal with emotion. The men that I know have been less able to deal emotion than women. In my opinion it is always very interesting to write about someone who cannot express what he is feeling, because you have to find some alternative outlet for that feeling. Men like Alec and Jim tend to submerge themselves in activity. Instead of sitting down and dealing with the feeling, Alec is busy with the heater, and Jim takes all the doors off. I was interested in that but I am not making a pronouncement about men in general.

CW: What is your new play about?

LW: The one I am currently writing for Soho Theatre, Other Hands, is about the way that technology affects our lives in modern society in the way that we rely on all these computers for example but we don't actually really know how they work. I combine this with the idea of emotional paralysis. So, I am not writing about death right now. Partly so that everybody can stop worrying about my mental health, but I still have an interest in death and I keep thinking of brilliant ideas for death plays that will have to wait…

Notes

• 1) Lyn Gardner. "Death becomes her." The Guardian, February 2, 2005.