 “FEAR IS A DARK, UGLY CANNIBAL THAT LURKS AT THE HEART OF EVERYTHING, NO MATTER HOW WE TRY TO CRUSH IT. IT'S A HARSH WORLD WE LIVE IN, BUT IT IS OURS…YOU CAN CALL ME MR SPINDRIFT. BUT YOU KNOW THAT ALREADY.” Nancy Netherwood is a playwright from South East London and a recent graduate of the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing Programme. She has taken part in projects for young people with the Almeida and Royal Court, and earlier this year was chosen for The North Wall Arts Centre's artist development programme Catalyst, as well as the Pint-Sized Theatre longlist 2018. Goodnight Mr Spindrift is her second play, and we sat done with Nancy to chat about the play, horror in general and her thoughts on the UK Theatre scene Hello Nancy, welcome to Ginger Nuts of Horror, could you briefly introduce yourself to the readers, please? Hello! I’m a 23 year old London-based playwright making my professional debut with ‘Goodnight, Mr Spindrift.’ This play is a pretty good example of what I write - I love using surreal or fantastical touches to explore things like mental health, gender and heredity. When I’m not writing I’m mostly lurking in theatres and taking a really long time to get through books. Why Horror? What is it about the genre that inspired you to start writing about it? Until we did this play for the first time last year, I didn’t actually consider myself a horror writer. I’ve always enjoyed horror fiction - M. R. James, John Darnielle, Shirley Jackson, Neil Gaiman, Mary Shelley and Samanta Schweblin are particular favourites - and I’ve recently plucked up the courage to watch more horror films. I’ve even used horror tropes in most of my writing, but they’ve never been at the centre of my play so I guess it never occurred to me that I wrote Horror with a capital H. But I started writing it for the same reason I love reading and watching it - it’s where some of the most original and exciting storytelling is happening at the moment. And why have you chosen to focus on writing plays over a more traditional form of horror prose? Once I started more actively writing horror, theatre seemed like the perfect fit. The immediacy and physicality of it works so well for the genre - I’ve never felt more genuinely frightened by horror than I have when it’s happening right in front me, and a little goes a long way. There’s no rewind button so you can really play with what people see or think they see. But as said I do love horror fiction and I’d love to write some myself someday. What would you say is the biggest misconception about writing theatre plays, and what do you find to be the biggest challenge for yourself with regards to creating a play? That there are so many stages in your career before you make it to the Royal Court, say, or the National. When I started writing plays I sort of assumed you sent work off to big theatres and sooner or later someone would accept it and you’d be on your way. But it’s a much longer process, and you end up doing short projects, making work with friends, trying and failing a lot as you work out what you’re doing, which is scary but also really exciting. I think my biggest challenge is spending a lot of time on my own when I’m writing. Unlike prose or poetry a script is such a collaboration, and sometimes you get to a point where you just need to get it on its feet. You can spend a lot of time torturing yourself over details when actually you need an actor or director to unlock it. But that’s one of the great things about theatre as well. As a playwright how do work around the confines of a live stage show to deliver the scares, and maintain the tension of your script? This play isn’t a jump scare kind of horror, it’s all about the slow build, which works well in theatre. You have your audience there in the same space as the actors, experiencing the show in real time, and without the advantage of special effects and editing the scares mostly have to be rooted in character, so you want them to be with the characters and experiencing their fear. Your latest play Goodnight Mr Spindrift has just been confirmed for a full run at the Old Red Lion Theatre after a successful showing at the London Horror Festival. You must be over the moon at this news. How did this run come about, did you pitch your play to the theatre or did they contact you? Yes, I’m very excited! Last summer Danse Macabre put out a call for horror plays and chose mine for a rehearsed reading at Old Red Lion. We had a lot of fun rehearsing the play and we got great feedback, but I thought that would probably be the end of it. Then Joe and Sam said they’d love to do a full production if I was interested, and that the Old Red Lion were keen to continue with the play. And here we are! How much involvement with the play once it has enter pre-production and during its run, do you have, are playwrights given more credence than scriptwriters on film shoots? In most cases it’s up to the writer and director to decide. Theatre is more collaborative than film so you generally have a lot more freedom to define the relationship of the writer to the production - personally I like to be in the room for the readthrough and the first couple of rehearsals to answer questions and make sure the director is on the same page as me. Then I leave them to work their magic and come back at the end to help finetune everything. But there’s a big chunk of time in the middle of the process when, I think, my presence wouldn’t help. The director and cast need to feel like they can experiment without the writer breathing down their necks. But all writers have their own preference. If you could change just one thing about the industry with the wave of a magic wand, what would it be? For the industry to be balanced and egalitarian. So many theatres still program more white men than any other writers. Until last year only one play by a black writer had EVER had a West End production. Things are improving but it’s a slow process. I wish we could see all theatres programming work that’s actually representative of the artists working today and the country we live in, and by extension bring in the audiences from those currently under-represented groups. There’s still a big elitism issue with theatre which theatres need to address, and representative programming would go a long way to start fixing that. Why do you think theatre is essential? In a theatre everyone comes together - audience, actors, technical team, stage managers, ushers - and we get to experience something together. I think that immediacy is the thing that got me hooked on theatre. Getting to see your favourite actors give a performance that they’ll never give again, sharing a live, one night only experience with a room full of strangers. That affects you differently from film or literature. Plus the speed with which you can make a show and its relative cheapness mean you can respond to world events quickly and take risks that you can’t in other forms. Anyone with an idea and some friends can make a play and take it to a festival. That’s amazing. Goodnight Mr. Spindrift sounds like a dark dystopian look at life in the UK, what was your inspiration for the play? A lot of things fed into it. I saw the word ‘Spindrift’ on a poster and wrote it down, then added ‘Mr’ because it sounded right somehow. I got very angry about the current government and very anxious about the pressures of being in a relationship. I saw the stage adaptation of 1984 and fell in love with it, which has been a massive influence on my writing ever since but particularly on this play. All those things were sitting in my head for a while and eventually they became this play. Is it important to you that your work has a deeper meaning and a morality core over and above the "horror" elements of your work? I think all horror has a deeper meaning! Even slashers and B-movies are about something, even if that something is never overt. But yes, I definitely use horror tropes to explore other issues - in this play it’s self-doubt and repressed trauma, but I think you can write about anything using horror as a form if you find the right metaphor. It’s a really fascinating way to explore those issues in an inventive and powerful way. And what do you hope that people get out of watching your play? I want to surprise people - I hope horror fans are moved by the relationship drama and straight theatre fans get drawn into the horror. I also want to get them angry on behalf of these characters and themselves about oppression and abuses of power. And that they come out wanting to tell the important people in their life that they love them. Does the title have any significance? You’ll have to come and see the show and find out! How happy are you with finished play? Very happy! It’s hard to ever feel like a piece of writing is finished, but I’ve drafted it several times, done two readings and had good feedback, so I think we’re ready to bring it to a wider audience! Plus Sam and the cast have brought so much to the table, and I can’t wait to see what Natasha and Annabel do with the design - so even though the script is finished there’s a lot more to come which I’m really excited about. What advice would you give to young people interesting into getting into your kind of work? Write every day, even if it’s just one sentence. See and read as many plays as you can. Films, TV, art and books are all useful too, for your work and yourself. Make sure you meet up with friends and other artists when you can, it can be a lonely job, and being around other people is probably the best thing that can happen to your work. What are you working on next? I’m going to be at the North Wall Arts Centre in Oxford for two weeks working on my next play, which will be receiving a rehearsed reading as part of their Alchymy Festival. It’s a much more grounded, naturalistic piece, but there’s still a nightmare sequence and plenty of blood. I’m also in the early stages of a horror adaptation for stage, though I won’t say too much about that one yet... 24th-27 April 2019, 7.30pm Old Red Lion Theatre, 418 St. John Street, London, EC1V 4NJ Full Price £12.00. Concessions £8.00. PURCHASE TICKETS HERE SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS WEBSITE    Comments are closed.
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