Dr Samuel Murray talks to playwright Stephen Leach ahead of rehearsals for the upcoming tour of his debut, Can’t Wait To Leave.
Where did you begin when writing this play?
I’d had the genesis of the character and the circumstances of the story for a long while. It started life as prose and got reworked when I felt it wasn’t quite working out. The opening scene with Ryan having not long been in London and attending his brother’s farewell drinks was always the starting point but it took a while to get it to feel natural – once I’d decided to write it as a monologue, the voice came much more easily from then on.
We only view the story from one perspective. Why was this decision made?
Ryan is quite defined by his aloneness so it felt like the right way to portray that. It’s a story about one person’s experience and it’s deliberately coloured by impartiality; he’s not an objective viewpoint by any means, so one of the most interesting parts of writing this was thinking about how he views the people around him. In a way it’s precisely because Ryan is so influenced by other people that the narrative needed to be solely his viewpoint – his views on other people are so subjective that I found it didn’t quite work when they got to speak for themselves.
How do you write a one-person play and still hold together a narrative and engage an audience?
It’s hard because keeping the audience engaged has so much to do on how well the performer sells it! I think the most important thing you can do as the writer is to keep in mind the flow of it. With a solo narrative, it’s harder to sustain one mood for too long in the way an ensemble piece can – it needs to twist and shift in the telling, to balance comedy with drama, to surprise you and keep you hooked. We’ve probably all been told a story by someone at some point and been bored because the way they told it was dull – so you have to keep in mind how the narrative breathes: almost ebbing and flowing, giving moments of calm one minute and then building up energy again the next.
Is Ryan’s story a common experience?
I certainly hope not. That said, I’ve been really surprised by how many people have said they’ve found it strongly relatable. There are broader things I think are universal (being the disappointing younger sibling, being aimless, not fitting in) but the more sensitive aspects of his story – substance abuse, sexual violence, his self-destructive behaviour – are things a lot of people have probably experienced in some form so I think people recognise the truth of them regardless of how much they personally relate. And one thing I think doesn’t get talked about enough is how easy it is to feel lonely when you’re young – there’s this idea that your teenage years are the most social of your life but in truth a lot of younger people are incredibly isolated, and I think that’s the case for more of them than we realise.
And certainly a lot of people aren’t terribly keen on London. The number of friends of mine who’ve lived here for a while and then left it – after a while you start wondering whether you’re the problem. But it can be a hard place to live and it’s no wonder a lot of people eventually feel the need to get out.
It wasn’t written to be a story that encapsulated every experience but I’m really touched by how many people have said they felt a strong connection to it. Ultimately it’s a story about someone learning they need to be their own person and I think that’s something a lot of people find to be quite compelling.
How important is bi representation on stage?
Yeah, there’s not a lot of it, is there? Narratives centring bisexual characters are pretty thin on the ground and that’s especially true in theatre. And I’m not sure exactly why that is when I know roughly a billion bi people who work in the arts.
Ryan’s bisexuality is an important part of the journey he goes on; it gives a lot of context for his state of mind and the tension he has trying to fit in to his brother’s world. This was always what felt right for the character from the beginning and it’s really cool to see it recognised. But equally, I didn’t want that to be the sole defining trait of Ryan’s character; I was always intent that should be one aspect of his story and not the primary aspect of it.
Nor did I want him painfully unsure of himself or going through some sort of identity crisis. For all that he’s directionless in a lot of ways, he’s completely secure in that part of himself and that felt like a quiet but decisive statement to make.
Zach Hawkins has played the character in all three runs of the show. What made you decide on Zach to play the lead? What does he bring to the character?
With a show like this I think a lot of actors could have played the lead incredibly well. It’s a complicated role for sure with a lot of layers and it’s demanding physically as it’s 70+ minutes without a break!
Zach just understood the character from the first moment – he really got the mentality of where Ryan was going and what might be driving him. He brought a lot to the character in terms of movement and used every inch of the performance space right from the first moment. And, crucially, he was really good at capturing the voices and mannerisms of the other characters in the play who we hear through Ryan. We start rehearsals again today and I’m really looking forward to seeing how we can reinterpret the character this time around.
Can’t Wait To Leave will be touring England and Wales between August and November 2024. Tickets: https://linktr.ee/1912productions