the past 6 April 2009
As part of the Rough Magic 25th birthday celebrations a selection of old plays were re-read by a younger generation over the weekend and that was a bit of a blast. Quite challenging at times, though, I found. For instance, last night finished with DIGGING FOR FIRE by Declan Hughes, which was a seminal early work for the company and indeed Declan as a writer. I found it difficult to deal with. He based quite a lot of it on all of our lives at that time (1991) and looking back can be a bittersweet activity. I really do worry that we were utter nightmares then, though I wish we had even a sprinkling of the confidence now that we seemed to have in those days. There is an argument that we got nicer as we got older, or maybe we’re just a bit wishy-washier? Hard to know. Anyhow I beat myself up a bit about it all and Declan quite rightly told me I was getting upset about very little. We move on. Get over it!
It was wonderful to see the selection of old and new work and the breadth of it was astonishing (and this only the tip of the iceberg). I think it’s a really valid thing to have celebrated the 25 years and I hope it has whetted creative juices all over again and will feed nicely into another 25 years of good work.
Of course, having been fab and delighted, etc, we all went and got madly drunk then and everyone is texting sob stories and apologies to one another today – ah yeah, we haven’t changed all that much, actually…nightmares…
