The Award-Winning, critically acclaimed comedy Past Tents is concluding its 2023/2024 tour at the Golden Goose Theatre in Camberwell this Autumn. The brain child of award-winning writers and producers David J Keogh and Seth Jones and joined on stage by Mark Keegan, Past Tents is a rip-roaringly funny, cathartic exploration of mental health, grief… and tents.

“Past Tents” addresses heavy themes like mental health, grief, and loneliness, but does so through comedy. How do you balance the humour with the emotional weight of these issues to ensure the audience leaves both entertained and reflective?

It’s all about balance – There’s something in the British psyche to find humour dark moments – and getting that balance and timing of jokes right takes practice, writing and rewriting – Because we don’t trivialise the importance of those issues (in fact we do the opposite), the humour helps people deal with the dark moments and gain relief from them, but also, without wanting to generalise too much, we’ve found it’s a medium that men especially (but not just men) seem more comfortable relating to. It’s an indirect way of communicating to them and not in-your-face-or preachy.  Humour is a great leveller.

A play should stir an audience emotionally and we hit people hard with laughs and tragedy.  It’s an emotional rollercoaster all right! We encourage audiences to bring hankies for the tears and a sewing kit for their sides.

The play highlights the importance of talking about mental health. How did your partnership with the men’s mental health charity MANUP? influence the development of the story and its portrayal of these sensitive subjects?

When we rewrote the play last year we changed it to reflect more of our personal experiences – and wanted be sure we did that in a responsible way.  Manup? were brilliant and helped us with feedback on the play – we listened and made sure it was sensitive and thoughtful – on the subject of suicide especially.  We have also involved Andy’sManClub and West Sussex Mind too – mental health isn’t just a male issue but there is what we call, a Mandemic in the country – suicide’s the biggest killer of men under 50 in the Uk and 75% of all the 6500+ suicides last year were men.   

The interesting thing is that the play really resonates with other genders too, because everyone has a brother, uncle, father, son and they can see parts of our characters in them.  We wanted the message about talking to each other to resonate with everyone and the feedback and reviews we’ve had suggest we’ve landed those messages well.

Alan and Justin’s relationship seems to shift throughout the play, revealing deeper aspects of their characters. How did you approach the development of these two roles, and what do you hope audiences take away from their interactions?

The thing that binds Justin and Alan is that they are both dealing with their mental health very poorly – Justin hides from his problems, Alan deals with them with anger and self-loathing.  They are both alone however and carry a huge invisible weight they find hard to share.  

Despite starting the play despising each other (and this escalates rather badly), the act of being forced to talk, offers them both an element of relief so we get to see their true selves more as the play progresses.  Justin and Alan are representative of a lot of people and how they deal with their mental health but both go on an extreme journey in this and have to face a few home truths.  Seth and I have been through a lot on our lives so we have a lot to draw from!

The audience will definitely have sympathy for Alan, who struggles to deal with Justin (who he perceives to be an imbecile) and Virgil (who probably is an imbecile).  The sympathies of the audience shift quite, however, because people are complicated and so are our characters.  

Past Tents is the brainchild of both of you, David and Seth. Can you walk us through the creative process behind writing this play? What was the initial inspiration, and how did the themes of mental health and grief become central to the story?

Initially we wrote a number of sketches about two people who hate each other doing stupid things on a campsite – it was a simple comedy concept – Seth really Like Only Fools and Horses, my personal favourite is Planes Trains and Automobiles – so we wrote the sketches then awkwardly glued them together in a times line.  We then created really detailed character profiles so we could accurately write for the characters.  Originally I was going to be Alan and Seth was going to be Justin, but we randomly changed it and it had the affect that we learned to sympathise a lot more for each other’s characters but also question how each of them might respond to every situation.  It took about 6 months to write originally , 6 more months to rewrite.

We once met in a pub and went through every single line and deleted everything which wasn’t a joke, a clue or an important piece of information and we brutally slashed 30 pages of the script.  What was left, we felt, was tight, funny and poignant.

Sadly the pandemic killed the play the first time around and it took a  number of years to get around to it again.  Sadly, in that time, Seth’s good friend and fellow creative, Sean Smith took his own life.  Both Seth and I in our past, have struggled with our mental health and we decided to rewrite the play again to talk more about the darker side of things.  The play is dedicated to Sean and because of that, is dedicated to spreading the word that we all need to talk more.

Despite the serious message, we wanted to retain the comedy and make it funnier.  Something Sean would have appreciated and something we think people will really connect with.

With its successful 2023/2024 tour concluding, what have been some of the most memorable reactions from audiences? How do you think the play resonates differently with people based on their own experiences with mental health or grief?

We have a few fans who have seen the play in nearly every location so it resonates and over 30 5 star reviews on Facebook from people who saw it.  Each show is very different, but every laugh, every tear is something we love.  

The play resonates with people differently; for some it’s the comedy of course, but sadly, most of us know somebody who has or has tried to take their own life – so people often wait to meet us after the show to tell us their stories of why the play means so much to them – it’s rather overwhelming to be honest but also very beautiful and these are the moments that we love most. The play makes people think.

Equally, we also love when with some people, it’s the comedy they resonate with most.  It’s a play for people who love comedy or drama and we’re proud of that.  Of course, comedy isn’t for everyone and we did have one people walk out after 12 minutes and email us telling us it was vulgar!  We love that – comedy should shock and we don’t hide from that – it’s not like people have never walked out of a Ricky Gervais comedy show before – it’s a sign that we are getting things right – but thankfully it’s rare!

Above all though, Seth, Mark and I are great friends – spending time with each other is an utter joy and we always look forward to it – it gives us real memorable life moments – not just on stage but times we laugh and cry and times we start to come up with new ideas.  

If this play can touch one person – make the difference to just one human being, then we have done a great job and we hope to keep doing so.