Neil Bartlett's London Cultural Diary
Neil Bartlett, writer, performer and award-winning director, gives us a peek inside his London Cultural Diary for the summer.
The award-winning writer, director and performer Neil Bartlett OBE gives us a peek inside his London Cultural Diary for the summer, featuring Shakespeare, creative collaborations and brave new choreography.
Neil Bartlett OBE is a writer, director and performer. His several award-winning books include a genre-bending meditation on the contemporary significance of Oscar Wilde, Who Was That Man? His new novel, The Disappearance Boy, is a dark tale of secrets from behind the curtain, under the hot lights and colourful slap of 1950s Variety in Brighton.
As a child of the 70s in a small conservative town, writing was already an escape for Bartlett into a wilder, wider world - “the urgent, powerful business of imagining change, possibility and freedom.” That sense of breaking free has never left Bartlett’s work, coursing through his radical and fiercely challenging theatre, and making him a dynamic figure in London’s burgeoning gay culture. “I often think I’m really writing for my fifteen year old self – promising him that everything will turn out alright.”
Bartlett’s OBE crowns a career that spans creating productions for the National Theatre, the Royal Court, the RSC, and others in the US and UK, as well as venues like the London Hospital and Vauxhall Tavern, not to mention a 10-year tenure as Artistic Director of the Lyric Hammersmith. Bartlett’s energy turned the Lyric into a huge success. How? “Good actors, great frocks, cheap tickets.”
As theatre man or writer, “it’s all about telling a story.” But writing is all solitude, while the theatre is a fractious, jovial mayhem, “always with the pressure of the curtain going up at half past seven whether you’re ready or not.” Bartlett hopes for these two worlds to eventually collide - “I want to make theatre that is as unsettling and heartfelt as my books, and books that are as rich in images and characters as my shows.”
The variety of his theatre career feeds into The Disappearance Boy. It wasn’t all RSC and national stages - “I’ve waited in the wings with Lulu, played a benefit turn with Joanna Lumley, compered at Madame Jojo’s in three inch heels and a backless cocktail frock, even got my kit off in front of a packed house in a community centre in Loughborough - a highlight!”
And in the spirit of that variety, we asked Mr. Bartlett how he’ll be spending the summer of 2014…
Cultural Diary:
Letter to an Unknown Soldier, project:
LETTER TO AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER, my online collaboration with novelist Kate Pullinger, has gone huge, and now involves nearly 15,000 members of the public.
Martin Freeman in Richard III, Trafalgar Studios:
Martin worked with me at the Lyric, lighting up an eighteenth-century French play called The Dispute which nobody had ever heard of with a performance that blew people away. This was way before he got Hobbited or Sherlocked. Twenty years later, I can’t wait to see how he puts his skill into re-imagining Richard. Plus the company includes Maggie Steed, a good mate and an absolutely powerhouse actor.
In October, Of Saints and Go-Go Boys.
Joseph Mercier has a new show doing the rounds this summer – sexy, astute and brave.
Imperial War Museum reopens:
This is the summer of remembering the start of the slaughter house of World War One. I can’t wait to see the re-opened Imperial War Museum – not least for the chance to see some of my favourite hidden-away London works of art - John Singer Sargeant’s watercolours and Mervyn Peake’s mysterious “Glassblowers”.
Neil Bartlett will also be touring the country performing readings of The Disappearance Boy.
The Disappearance Boy is published by Bloomsbury Circus and is available in hardback at £16.99.