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Interviews
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David Greig Philip Fisher meets David Greig, writer and co-director of San Diego at the Edinburgh International Festival Top Scottish playwright, David Greig has given very few comments to media in connection with his new play, San Diego. The BTG has been lucky enough to secure an in depth interview with him as the play launches in the International Festival. David Greig must be one of the most prolific and best playwrights in Britain today. That is certainly the Scotsman's view: "David Greig is the most consistently interesting, prolific and artistically ambitious writer of his generation". He seems to generate four or five pieces of work each year. These can be anything from historical plays, adaptations, children's plays, work for radio or collaborations with Suspect Culture. The consequence of all of this is that though he seems to have a lifetime's output already, his appearance belies this. Greig may be in his thirties but he is a young-looking, earnest man who but doesn't even seem that old. His busy schedule requires a 10am meeting which eventually takes place outside the Traverse Theatre since this is the only place to get a coffee and smoke a roll-up so early in the morning! The appearance of San Diego at the Royal Lyceum in the prestigious Edinburgh International Festival is the result of happenstance. It was written two years ago, before last year's Fringe success Outlying Islands, but has taken time to find a production. In fact, at one point, it looked as if the world premiere might be in Portuguese. Greig, while not wanting to dwell on San Diego, is happy to say that "this is an unusual piece of work - a deliberate attempt to write something that relied on unconscious instincts". It needed a very different production process and so, after an initial reading at Glasgow's Tron in 2001 and a one-week try-out, he joined up with co-director Marisa Zanotti. She is well-known in Scotland as a choreographer and movement specialist who has worked in a number of media. Greig wanted to work with her as her whole approach to putting on a play is different. She brought "a way of thinking about the stage as a stage rather than as a representation of a room or a house". This was necessary, as with 27 different locations, San Diego could never be staged naturalistically. The result is that two untried directors have brought a new play to the Festival. It apparently had everything that Festival Director Brian McMaster required. He came to Greig very late in the day having attended the first reading of the play some two years before. Suddenly, a cast of eleven with a relatively small budget and a mere four weeks for rehearsal was engaged. The playwright wryly suggests that one of the attractions was that the original set consisted of a single table - what could be cheaper? In the past, he has avoided directing his own work but has come back to it for San Diego. It has proved hard work and he suggests that he can't imagine forsaking the writing for more directing for a long time. It has been a very collaborative process since he wrote the play unconsciously and therefore came to it almost as fresh as his co-director and designer. The reaction to the play will be of great interest to the writer, as one of the characters is a playwright called David Greig and has his namesake's own background. This has been a challenge for actor Billy Boyd but does not worry the real David Greig. "In many ways, the Greig character is less me than any other that I have written. The way I write, every character is me. I don't write from observation, I put myself into a person's shoes and a voice emerges". The idea of using yourself in art is one that seems common at the moment. Martin Amis has used it in a novel and it was also used in the film, Adaptation. As Greig acknowledges, he got the initial idea of inserting the writer from a favourite film, Our Town, in which Thornton Wilder includes a character based on himself. While Greig is very proud of what people will see when the play opens, he would have loved to have the opportunity for a more relaxed period of preparation. This provoked an interesting digression into some of the problems with British Theatre. Just along the road at the Kings Theatre, Peter Stein has been given the support that Europeans and Americans expect: big budget, lots of rehearsal time and full support from a culture that believes in art. Why, begs Greig, can we not treat our artists in this way? Only then will the British Robert Lepages and Peter Steins emerge. Greig has established himself as one of our leading playwrights, partly as a result of the wide diversity of his work. As he says, "I have an audience now who are on the journey with me. In Scotland, there are a lot of people who have seen at least two or three of my plays. This is helpful, since if they don't like one, they'll come back for the next. It makes you bolder about taking risks". This is good news for a man who likes taking risks. Astonishingly for someone who is as prolific as any, he states that "I think of myself as quite a lazy writer". There is a whole body of work disproving this. His Scottish heritage is a matter that has arisen repeatedly in his work. Having been born in Edinburgh and brought up in Nigeria, he went to Bristol University where he studied drama and soon realised that acting was not for him but that directing or writing might be. The consequence of exile is that he has no trace of a Scottish accent but a real interest in the debate between nationalism and globalisation. He can see merits on both sides but hates to feel that Scotland will ever lose its national identity. Despite the adventurous choice of subjects and styles, Greig is keen to emphasise that he sees himself as on an artistic journey. There are areas of interest that he keeps returning to. For example, San Diego will seem familiar to those who have seen Suspect Culture's work or his early The Cosmonaut's Last Message ..... . It also has some association with Outlying Islands, in particular the imagery of birds. While his plays are packed with ideas, Greig is keen to point out that this is a by-product of the creative process, not its starting point. His writing is generated by feelings that he needs to express, rather than specifically from a wish to explore ideas. He sees images, such as a boy holding a dead goose that is central to San Diego, and works with these. From them, the play is developed and the ideas generated. Greig has written screenplays and would like, at some stage, to write a novel but believes that the disciplines and motivations are very different. He had lengthy discussions with Zadie Smith with whom he shared a retreat while he was writing San Diego and she The Autograph Man. "Dramatists share their roots with poets. Novelists are closer to screenwriters". He continues, "Drama is ultimately about words spoken on a stage and images placed next to each other, while novels are primarily concerned with stories and dreamlike imagery". Greig's true passion is for the stage. He is a man who is almost fanatical about theatre. "I really love being in a theatre. It's my passion. I enjoy novels and movies but it isn't the same experience - I even enjoy sitting in a theatre watching a bad play". His influences are interesting: Barker and Brecht and, more recently, Koltes, Crimp and Churchill. The theme running through their work and his own is a willingness to experiment and explore ideas rather than rely on tried and trusted formulae. He also puts in a word for the "consistently fascinating" David Harrower. His favourite play at the moment is One-Two ... by Suspect Culture at the Traverse. This may not be so surprising since he has worked with the company since leaving university and has a new project, 8,000 Meters, with them that is expected to appear next year. He also has a new play entirely his own called Pyrenees that will be produced by Paines Plough next spring. David Greig is a modest, hard-working man with great ideas . He says of Caryl Churchill, "If I can be a quarter as interesting as she is when I'm 60, I'll be very happy". One imagines that even Ms Churchill would rate him far more highly that that already. In any event, he will probably have produced another 100 interesting plays by the time he gets to 60!
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