So Here We Are is the recipient of the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2013, the biggest national competition for playwriting. It is a play by a young writer, Luke Norris, who pens plays and scripts in addition to his bright acting career. Goodbye To All That was his debut play in 2012, which was first put on stage in The Jerwood Theatre Upstairs. Both The Guardian and The Telegraph welcomed Norris’ entrance into the playwriting world, both identifying Norris as a talented and promising new voice. He hasn’t disappointed. Amidst a relentless work schedule that also includes the major BBC production Poldark he participates in regular readings and workshops, as well as keeping up-to-date with new productions from emerging and established playwrights. When asked about his inspirations, he gives a long list of British playwrights including Joe Penhall, Dennis Kelly, Roy Williams, David Greig, and Steve Waters, adding that “of course, we’re all the sum total of everyone we’ve encountered. I see a lot of plays and every one influences what I do.” One writer, however, he holds above others: Chekhov. With his themes of life in rural areas and small villages, So Here We Are indeed bears the footprints of a Chekovian influence. It is set in a small village where a group of lads from the same 5-a-side football team sit around on Southend sea wall, reminiscing about their deceased friend, Frankie.
Growing up in a small village himself, the play has a personal note for Norris, “Well I think, growing up where I did there is a very different mentality to growing up in a big city. I think when you grow up somewhere that is a bit more closed off, it creates a different type of person, one who is absolutely, hugely capable of love and ambition and anger and everything like everybody else, but in a particular way.” This, he notes, brought about a kind of “tribalism” that he says he never got away from. So he writes about people he knows, grew up with or has encountered on the way, “It came from me growing apart from the people I grew up with.” The play also points to a subject that is not often discussed, youth suicide. “It came out of the horrendous statistic about suicide amongst young men. The biggest killer of young men in Britain is suicide, followed by car accidents. So I wanted to write something that I thought addressed something that was not really being spoken about.” So Here We Are discusses the matter by looking at the relationship of a group of boys who question their own roles in the passing of their friend. When we discuss how personal the play is, Norris mentions his friend who died when he was in school. The tragic event brought a realisation to Norris about human nature, “It was the first time I really took stock and realised that we are not all invincible. We think we are but we are not.”
Norris started working on So Here We Are three years ago, not hopeful that it would see the light of day. The pace of his writing varies from one work to the next, and he tends to focus on more than one thing at a time. This enriches his works, as can be seen in So Here We Are. While the first draft of So Here We Are came quickly, the play has gone through readings, workshops and redraftings before meeting the public stage. This is not, however, Norris’ first time in the Royal Exchange Theatre. He was here as an actor in 2012, as Val Xavier in Tennesse Williams’s Orpheus Descending. He is, like many, in love with the building. However, his return to the Royal Exchange is indeed quite different this time. Now that he is back as a writer, he feels more responsible for the work. “Suddenly I feel like one of the adults, expected to give answers,” he says, “I have a responsibility alongside the rest of the creatives in a way that I don’t so much as an actor. You do your best at the work, but ultimately get told where to stand and what to wear.” When it comes to it, he prefers the process of acting to that of writing,”If writing meant hanging around in a room with a load of other people drinking tea like acting does then I’d be a writer, but it’s quite lonely and there is a lot of pressure, because you are the only one who is producing stuff.” The excruciating lonely hours of writing where you are the only creator of a work is tiresome, but seeing the end product, says Norris, is worth it all. In his own words, “the feeling of watching, the nerves and the gratification when you’ve written something is much bigger.”
This is probably why he does not enjoy writing in any other genre. When he was younger, he wrote poems, but this was before he discovered the art of playwriting. He says, “people doing things to each other in a space” allows him to most accurately express what he’s thinking. He is currently writing a play for BBC Radio 4, and hoping to see the production of his collaborative movie script with the director Lucy Tcherniak, Jesus and the Jetpack, which tells the story of a man with a messiah crisis and his friends. Actor and playwright, he is a multi-talented man. These two in a way are the two sides of a coin. Norris says the two feed one another, helping him to be a better actor as well as a better playwright. “When I write, I write with an understanding of what an actor needs, wants to say or doesn’t want to say. I think I am always conscious of giving an actor enough to do in a part and making sure that the conversations are active and changing.” Michael Billington of The Guardian seems to agree with this, as in his review of Norris’ So Here We Are, he notes: “Norris writes sharp, fast dialogue that shows a real ear for everyday speech.”
Looking back to his previous works, I notice that one of his earlier plays, Hearts, also connects his characters through football. When we discuss the role of football in So Here We Are Norris laughs, reminiscing about his days of “kicking around but never really playing football seriously.” However, he is very aware of the “universal” quality of football as a great leveller and a thing that means something to almost everybody one way or another. As in Hearts, football in So Here We Are plays a socialising role in small town life. Unlike Hearts, however, which was written as a Connections play in the National Theatre to be performed by 14-15 year-olds, So Here We Are takes a more serious tone and uses football as a centre to discover human nature through the lives of four young men.
As the memories of buried guilt and regrets surface, the blurred lines of human nature are revealed. So Here We Are is a two part play about “secrets” and “lies that we tell each other to get by… Good people doing questionable things to protect other people.” It will be in Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre from 24th September to 10th October.
Şima İmşir Parker