‘The play is full of energy and laughter’
Evan Placey, the writer of Lifers, his new play being premiered at the Southwark Playhouse soon, grew up in Canada but when he came here as an exchange student in his third year of university he fell in love with the UK, returned to do his Masters at the Central School of Speech and Drama and never went home, making SE London his home, writes Michael Holland.
After spells living in New Cross, Brockley and Nunhead, Evan has, for now, settled in Ladywell where he writes for stage and screen – a line of employment he took up ever since he was handed £100 to write a monologue.
But writing was something he realised he had a knack for when his drama teacher nudged him off the stage and into directing: ‘My teacher didn’t really like my acting,’ reveals Evan, adding, ‘It was through directing, which I really liked, that I wrote a play for a student competition, which was then chosen to put on the stage.’
Realising he could make people laugh and cry with words without needing to be performing was a turning point. Evan wrote more plays at high school, one of which went on to be produced for a festival in Ontario, then later in Edinburgh, where he read English, he did something for the Fringe festival there.
These small successes motivated Evan enough to give writing a real go, so while doing paid work as a Learning Support Assistant in a school he was actively working with theatre and outreach groups to get his writing performed, unpaid. It was Hampstead Theatre offering the £100 that Evan saw as a big moment. ‘From there it snowballed slowly until I could write full time.’
That snowballing led to the National touring his Jekyll & Hyde to schools around the country and to writing an episode of the incredible The Tattooist of Auschwitz series, something that was very close to Evan’s heart: ‘My grandparents were Holocaust survivors, my grandmother was in Auschwitz, so it was very personal to revisit that part of history.’
These days, at this point in a successful career, when he is commissioned to write for all mediums, he still says stage is his first love. ‘I feel at home watching live theatre, there’s nothing like live theatre, it’s the ‘liveness’ of seeing people around you reacting off the energy there, and the actors feeding off that – And it’s different every night.’
I asked if Evan had a favourite play he’d written, and he went for Holloway Jones, about a young girl in foster care whose mum was in jail, but she still managed to become a top BMX rider. The play, which toured schools and won awards, was produced by Synergy Theatre Project who do tremendous work in prisons by changing lives for inmates, ex-offenders and those that are at risk of entering the criminal justice system.
It was researching Holloway Jones that he became engaged with the prison community and believes that it ‘really informed my process of everything I did after in terms of having some sort of hands-on approach during my research’.
And it is Synergy that Evan is collaborating with for his latest play, Lifers, that tells the tale of Lenny who, over many years in prison, develops dementia and wakes up in a cell every day not knowing where he is, so every day is his first day of being banged up and that’s always the worst day.
Lifers was researched by visiting several prisons to talk to older prisoners as well as lifers, health professionals and prison officers. ‘We went back in after I’d written the first draft and did a reading with the inmates,’ Evan tells me. ‘They were really moved, I was really moved and they gave me some positive feedback and notes about language and prison procedure, which was really helpful in refining the script… It was very satisfying to see their reaction to the emotional truth for the characters in the play.’
But as serious as the topic is, prison humour comes through: ‘The play is full of energy and laughter, as well as the drama,’ Evan emphasises. ‘It’s a great evening at the theatre, not just “come along and sit down and let me tell you what’s wrong the prison system” because that’s not what the play is’.
The cast are in rehearsals now and Evan has done a little more fine-tuning with the script, but has now stepped back and left them in the capable of hands of Esther Baker, the founder of Synergy Theatre Project, while they explore their roles and motivation ‘without the person who wrote it sitting there,’ he says.
Evan and Esther have worked together before: ‘We know each other very well so I trust her and feel easy to leave the project with her; she’s done so many of these kind of plays and she understands that world completely, plus Esther’s been part of this project from the beginning when it started as a conversation between us.’
While the cast rehearse, Evan will be working on two more plays and other TV projects, so we can expect to see more of his work coming out. But until then the tickets are already selling fast for Lifers, so get in quick before that door slams shut.
The cast is: James Backway, Mona Goodwin, Sam Cox, Ricky Fearon and Peter Wight as Lenny.
Southwark Playhouse Borough, The Large, 77-85 Newington Causeway, London, SE1 6BD from 1st – 25th October.
Booking and full details: https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/lifers/
