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by
BBC South Yorkshire's
Oonagh Jaquest |
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You've
written your first play for the Crucible, Bird Calls, what's it about?
I spend
quite a lot of time up in Orkney and I've got a house up there.
And when I first went up there I was told about two women who lived
on a tiny island, just the two of them for thirty or forty years.
Old resentments and a secret come rising to the surface and
rip through the skin of the way that they've lived and cause
a rupture.  |
| Lesley
Glaister |
I don't
know exactly how long, there are various different stories. I was
just very fascinated by the idea of them.
When
Anna MacMinn offered to commission a play from me for the Crucible
Theatre I was very keen on the idea but at first I couldn't think
of a subject!
It's
actually quite a big thing - just to write a play without any stipulation.
And
then when I was up in Orkney I was thinking about it and you can
just about see the island from walking along the shore, the sun
was shining on it.
And
it just suddenly dawned on me that might be an idea for a play,
it would be perfect in a sense - the idea of two people in an enclosed
space.
Your
novels are known for having lots of family secrets. They've been
described as 'suburban gothic' - lots of goings on behind the net
curtains. Are there going to be lots of goings on on an island?
It's
very restricted in terms of people wandering in and out, there are
only three characters.
I decided
to set it at the end of their lives, when they're very elderly and
they've been on the island for more than half of their lives.
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| Two
women: Rowena Cooper and Anna Calder-Marshall in Bird Calls. |
I think
that was because when I first went to Orkney the women had just
moved off the island and I focussed on the fact that one of them
is ill, so they can't stay there.
If
one of them died the other one wouldn't be able to manage. It's
about how they negotiate what's going to happen next.
And
during that, and because they're reaching this sort of crisis point,
old resentments and a secret come rising to the surface and rip
through the skin of the way that they've lived and cause a rupture.
Then
in the second act another character comes in and helps them to resolve
the problem. It's sort of dark as well as funny I hope. It's supposed
to be dark, sad and funny really.
You
live between Sheffield and Orkney. How does that work?
We've
got a house there, my husband and I. At the moment I'm mainly in
Sheffield. I spend all the school holidays - from the minute I can
leave - I spend every minute I can up there.
He
spends a lot more time up there, because he's a writer too we find
it works better to spend some time apart.
Does
that give you space to get on with your writing?
Yes,
it does really. It's quite intense I think if you've got two people
working at home doing quite creative stuff. It can be quite overheated.
You
said the idea for this play on Orkney, because of some characters
you'd come across there.
Do
you ever find you get that sort of inspiration in Sheffield, from
what's going on in people's lives that you see around you?
Oh
yes very much so. Several of my books have been sparked off by people
I've seen.
When
I wrote my second book Trick or Treat, I was living in - I still
do - a row of terraced houses.
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Several of my books are set in or around Sheffield, so it's
been very much an inspirational place for me |
| Lesley
Glaister |
It
was about just watching from the outside - the characters coming
in and out of them - and I was giving them a story.
There's
an idea of a terraced house where everything looks the same from
the front but different things are going on behind the bay windows.
So
that book was very much based on people around Sheffield. Several
of my books are set in or around Sheffield, so it's been very much
an inspirational place for me.
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