Andrew Kay: Scripted for…

I write – it’s what I do and it always has been.

I wrote as a kid, as a teenager and as a student. I graduated as a graphic designer, worked as an art director and I still wrote, copywriting became a part of the package in my professional life and when I hit my 40s, writing returned in an even bigger way. I started to write on these pages. Firstly writing my restaurant review columns and later expanding into theatre and music and… well all kinds of stuff.

In my 50s, I wrote my first novel, published and well received, then a short story sequel. A new novel is in the revision stages as well as a story for young adults, which is a take on Oliver Twist but set in contemporary Brighton – early days for that one and currently lying in the composter that is my hard drive.
Most recently I wrote a play. I wrote about it here in Latest 7 as I had entered it into a competition and it was chosen as one of four to be developed by Scripted 4, part of Worthing’s WOW festival.

It has been the most incredible experience and one that has given my faith in collaborative working a much-needed boost. That sounds like I had lost faith but not really, working on a magazine you have to work collaboratively if things are to function properly.

Here at Studio Latest we have a terrific team who, despite the pressures of modern media, manage to produce all manner of material, from our much-loved magazine to our very new TV programming and all sorts of other peripheral stuff along the way. Latest as a brand could never be accused of not taking risks or trying out new ventures, that is for certain.

For me, theatre has been a life-long passion.

As an audience member from a very early age, I was lucky enough to go to Liverpool’s famous Everyman. As a teenager, I saw many first nights from exciting writers such as Willy Russell.

I’ve even performed on stage, attended circus school and for a few years designed publicity, promos and sets and costumes for theatre. I guess I’m in love with the whole thing, stage struckz The Worthing project was another chance to dip my toes into the world of greasepaint and spotlights and how I have loved it. On the first day, I met the directors and some of the cast.

They read my play and I had that weird experience of my voices being taken out of my head.

Now, only a few weeks on, I have just seen my play performed. I’m not a nervous person. I can get up and make a speech, although I’m better at that if I am given some notice. I can walk in front of the Latest TV cameras and talk with reasonable fluidity and if you get me on my pet loves, you will find it hard to shut me up. This terrified me!

Working with the cast and director Martin Harris was a fascinating experience. I so admire the way he involved us all in creating the performance. My words became the scaffold on which he hung the play. Our actors became the outward structure and their skill in interpreting the words the colour. Martin constantly sought all our opinions. He asked me questions about the characters that I had to search deep to answer. He asked the same of our cast.

I Will Survive is very personal. It’s a play about a dying woman, a strong woman with strong views. It’s not me but it is about me. It’s about my relationship with my family and my own feelings of guilt. As they have grown older and become fragile, I am not there. I’m nearly 200 miles away and live a life that is full of commitments, many of which I allowed to eclipse that need to be there with my father in his last weeks or with Mum now as she recovers from two strokes.

She is doing remarkably well, up and about and living at home. My all too infrequent visits give her such pleasure that she forgives my absences. I still feel that guilt and, in my play, I have expressed that through a character that is constantly talked about – but never appears. Just like Mum who forgives all that her absentee son fails to deliver.

Picture: Anne Atkins and Dick Douglass in rehearsal

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