Answers to Some Questions about Imaginary Friends

Where did the idea come from?
When people ask writers questions this is always the first one. The honest answer is usually that it started as six different ideas and only very slowly and painfully distilled itself into something coherent. With this one, I do remember that early on I was thinking about the voices of conscience in peoples’ heads – those nagging voices that tell you something is or is not the right thing to do. And then I thought, how do we know to trust this voice? It’s just as likely the voice of fear or avarice or pain as it is the voice of something honest and good and true. And then I thought, who’d be the very worst people we could listen to? Piers Morgan was top of the list so he's become a major supporting character in the show. Don't tell him.

Do you really rewrite bits for each show?
The show is kind of a satire on satire and for that to work, a little bit of the satire needs to feel broadly current. Two or three big sections are now totally different to when I premiered the show a year ago. And there are another three or four shorter sections that I rewrite on a roughly weekly basis. In Bristol this week there was some Papal Conclave material, hot off the press. It went surprisingly well so I'm hoping to be able to keep hold of it for a week or two.

The show is also about grief. What's the balance between the personal and the political and is it hard to maintain that balance?
I love satirical comedy but I’m ultimately unsure whether it really makes any difference at all. In some ways it's little more than a howl of grief at the monstrousness of the world. If you don't laugh, you'll cry. And it makes us all feel better, which is something, but does it actuate change? I genuinely don't know. If I did I probably wouldn't have needed to make the show!

The central character’s grief wasn’t present in early drafts of the script, but something wasn’t working. To take the plunge into making choices as bad as the ones he makes in the story, he needed a bigger push. And at the time I was writing it, my best friend was dying. Callous as it sounds, as soon as the thought occurred to me of incorporating that experience into the show, I knew it would work. Everyone has some experience of grief and the ways it affects our choices. It humanises this character who could otherwise just seem pretty extreme. And in threading this through, that's when I saw the parallel between his behaviour in grief and the behaviours I see and am drawn to in satirists and oppositional commentators. The publicity asks if it's ok to go too far when you're on the right side. I don't know. I'm drawn to these extreme responses to extreme times, but do they help? Again, I don't know.

After seven years since your last solo show, what’s it like being back on stage alone?
It’s a bit like coming home. I love the purity of the relationship between me and the audience with nothing between us. Since making that last show I’ve written a lot for other people, directed quite a bit, and toured one show in which I appeared with someone else. Every one of those experiences has given me something that’s informed how I now approach the solo work. But in another sense, it’s like getting back together with an old friend – everything’s changed, but also nothing’s changed.

What’s next for you after this tour? Any new themes or formats you’re itching to explore?
My next new work is an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz for the Dukes in Lancaster. It’s on this summer! And it’s got a weird amount in common with Imaginary Friends – someone in an emotional crisis enters a fantasy world and goes on a crazy journey in which they learn an important lesson about themselves. The Wizard of Oz obviously has a more unambiguously happy ending than Imaginary Friends - but they still illuminate one another in startling ways.

As well as that I'm working on a new play about endurance (in some ways back to the terrain of These Hills Are Ours) and a novel for children. Watch this space!

 

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