Old Stories New Plays
thoughts on writing Peter Grimes
image by Daniel Karaj
It is December 2014. It is cold. I am in Walberswick. My family and I have retreated to this tiny suffolk village after a busy year, hoping for a moment of calm before the chaos of January. But we’ve decided to go for a walk because there’s little else to do in tiny Suffolk villages. Honestly, there is almost nothing else to do if, like us, you have visited the same spot year-in-year-out for a decade. I know these sands, this harbour, that hill, that pub better than anywhere else in the world. There are no surprises left here, and that’s what makes it so perfect.
But then, as I mindlessly catalogue the contents of a gift shop that I have visited hundreds of times before, I spot something new. It is a small book, probably handmade, and it is beautiful. A quick glance inside the cover reveals the exquisite illustrations to be recent linocuts by James Dodds, accompanying a centuries-old poem. George Crabbe’s story introduces Peter Grimes, a troubled fisherman, and tells of his tortured relationship with his father, his village and his apprentice. I already know and love the Benjamin Britten opera, Peter Grimes, but this version is new to me. I buy the book and head home to pore over the poem and the illustrations. These two versions of the story sit so uncomfortably: Britten and Crabbe set their allegiances in such different places, blaming such different forces. I start to investigate and discover that the Peter Grimes character predates even Crabbe, starting life first as a folk myth. And now I’m hooked. I can’t help it. I want to have a go at writing this story too.
And so I sketched fisherman’s huts in my notebook, and painted little scenes. These became character studies, and slowly a plot developed. New characters emerged; old ones got swallowed up by the tides. And after a year, I had written the play. It was then time to show it to someone. I cannot thank Aoife Kennan enough for her insight, her support and, frankly, her good ideas. With her help, the play got its first reading. Sitting round my dining table listening to those first actors speak my words was thrilling. And also hugely embarrassing: there was still much work to be done. There always is.
The ADC Theatre and CUADC took a massive risk in backing me and I’m incredibly grateful. New student writing is always going to be rougher around the edges than the standard, practiced canon. But it is exactly what this building and these societies exist for. It has been a joy and a privilege to collaborate in such a creative and ambitious environment for the three years that I have been at Cambridge. And yet, this doesn’t feel like a culmination, but rather a beginning: here are the first six performances of a new play. I hope you enjoy what we have made.