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Interviews
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Claire Dowie - Stand-up Theatre Peter Lathan chats to Claire Dowie about stand-up theatre. I chatted to Claire Dowie over a drink after a performance of her latest play H to He (I'm Turning into a Man) at the Drill Hall on the last night of the run (5th to 15th February). There's no review because this wasn't really a proper performance, even though she was playing to a full house, for the play is a work in progress, not a finished piece. I first came across her work in Edinburgh some years ago when I saw a Birmingham youth theatre present Adult Child Dead Child, and was knocked out. I went on to direct it a year later, having read the complete volume in which it is printed, Why Is John Lennon Wearing a Skirt? A couple of years ago, again in Edinburgh, I saw The Year of the Monkey and we had a drink together after the show, along with her agent/director Colin Watkeys. So when I discovered that she would be performing at the Drill Hall at a time when I would be in London, I hastened to get a ticket. H to He is a very different piece to the work she's done before and I wondered what led her in this direction. "I woke up one morning and there it was in my head," she said. "Possibly I'd dreamed it! I'd been reading Metamorphosis and that clearly had an influence, but I wasn't consciously echoing Kafka, although the mention in the script of a cockroach is a deliberate reference." She admits to a Beckett influence in her work but shies away from any reference to Pinter, even though both Colin and I saw Pinteresque elements in the piece. She is not a fan! It still needs work, she admits, although the the themes are coming across loud and strong. It's a play about aging and the menopause, about one's self image and those awful moments when you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror or a reflection in a shop window and you think, "That isn't me!" She also admits to finding it difficult to learn: not that her memory is in any way failing - she found learning the "live remix" of her first novel Creating Chaos, which premieres at the launch of the book at the Drill Hall on 3rd April, just as easy as any of her previous works - but because this is a very different kind of piece from anything she has done before. It is still, however, stand-up theatre, that concept for which she is well known. "I'm sometimes asked," I told her, "to explain what stand-up theatre is. People say, you're a fan of Claire Dowie: what does it mean? So, how do you define it?" "Like stand-up comedy, only it's theatre. Or, at least, like stand-up comedy as it used to be. Stand-up comedy is changing and there's not always that direct connection between comic and audience that there used to be." Is it, I asked, that it's becoming formulaic? "With a certain type of comedy, yes." Going back to stand-up theatre, she said, "The actor is talking directly to and interacting with the audience, responding directly to them in a way that doesn't happen in a normal production. And that means if something goes wrong, you make something of it rather than try to cover it up. It's a bit like pantomime in that way. "It's always seemed to me to be odd that drama schools teach so many skills but the most important of all, the interaction between actor and audience, is ignored." And then she had to go, so we said our farewells, but not before she'd extracted a promise that I'd see Creating Chaos when it comes to the Stephen Jospeh in Scarborough in April. On my birthday, to be exact. A nice little birthday treat! And that will be reviewed.
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