Robert Holman
Robert Holman grew up on a farm in Guisborough, North Yorkshire. His father managed the farm while his mother the head teacher of an infant school. Holman was educated at local schools. By the time he reached sixth form Holman still had no plans for the future, so when an English teacher encouraged him to take his writing seriously, pursuing a career in writing was a welcome excuse for him to move to London in 1971. However for the first year he worked on a bookstall on Paddington Station. In 1974 he received an Arts Council bursary, which enabled him to write full time. Since then Holman has established his name as one of the most prominent contemporary playwrights and has worked with the BBC on several occasions as well as had more than 15 plays produced at prestigious theaters, including the Royal Court, the Bush and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Interview
Having been published regularly since the age of 20, I guess an obvious question is, where do you find your inspiration?
As a young man I was told I was good at writing plays and as there wasn’t much else I was good at, I thought “I’ll do that”. I have never had an intellectual or a political agenda. I gather my inspiration from people around me.
Do you always write about things you know then?
What I see and hear inspires me to start writing, but my plays will always be a mix of memory and imagination. There is my own truth and then there is story.
Your themes mostly revolve around family, class, generational conflicts and the tension between good and bad. How much do you think your childhood in Yorkshire has affected your choice of such grounded themes?
I definitely think that being brought up in Yorkshire in a Quaker tradition going back hundreds of years has affected my writing. My parents were pacifists and I guess one of the things you think of as a child in such an environment is: does evil exist?
Do you conform to any religion yourself?
I don’t. The pacifism is much more a lifestyle than a religion.
How do you find that age and maturity has affected your writing? Have your characters developed with you?
I tend to write a play in the moment without thinking too much about it. But I guess when I was young I wrote “old men” in a certain way. Now I am that old man myself and see things differently, so I guess characters do change over the years. However, basically I am still trying to do the same as I did 40 years ago, which is to do my best.
Which media do you feel most expressive in? Did you find it easier to get your message across writing a novel than scripts?
Writing a novel is an entirely different process to writing plays. First of all it takes a lot longer. It took me three years to write my novel and I found that I had to change my writing pattern completely during this period. Also the story in novels is different to plays. Plays exist in the moment, real and tangible, whereas novels have a much longer burn.
Lastly, have you got any advice for our playwright students who are about to graduate?
First of all, action is as important as dialogue. Sit down in a theatre and write down everything you see. Write what happens to the characters, what they say and what they do. That’s all you need, the rest you can learn, particularly if you are lucky enough to get your play staged at a theatre. The most important thing is that you do your best and don’t try to be clever. Just keep it simple, it really isn’t that complicated.
Interview and Photograph by Karen Bundgaard 2009