Author Damian Barr has returned residence to a library that offered him sanctuary in his troubled youth, to discover the creation of Maggie and Me the stage model, with the National Theatre of Scotland, of his deeply private 2013 memoir.
Growing up homosexual in a Lanarkshire mining city throughout Thatcher’s Britain was no simple experience. Barr lays naked the ache that has been resurrected and, in some methods, resolved within the adaptation of his work from web page to stage.
Repeatedly used as a punchbag and consistently known as a poof, arduous work, ambition and a nostril consistently in a ebook led him to the street out, a street that has in the end led him to Brighton and a vastly profitable profession as a author and broadcaster. In the intervening years, life actually has been variety.
On his earlier go to residence, one full of abject terror, Barr anxious in regards to the reactions of his violent household and his college torturers to the revelations of the ebook. This time having exorcised a few of these demons, declaring that have among the best issues he’s ever completed, he’s again a decade later to clarify the artistic course of in turning his ebook right into a play.
Barr explains how, in his artistic collaboration with the National Theatre of Scotland, the results of this tough course of is a piece very a lot acquainted, however equally unique from its supply. Many facets of the unique work proving to be too tough to revisit, have been omitted, the timeline re-worked and far added to construct a vivid and explosive portrait of life as a homosexual youth within the Eighties.
Barr additionally talks of his go to to a neighborhood highschool to work with younger teenagers, and their lack of awareness of Section 28 and their horror that one thing may even exist. Heartened by this he additionally reminds them of present Conservative Party dialogue of re-instating the abhorrent regulation and a candidate working for management of a nationwide political celebration who believes homosexual marriage is a sin. We might imagine we have now come far – perhaps not.
When requested if he’ll write one other memoir, one following on from Maggie and Me. Barr says sure, he has one within the works in regards to the 12 months following the occasions within the ebook, and perhaps one other documenting his time to the current. All the whereas ending the novel he’s at present writing. He additionally reveals that he feels that this theatrical model of his award-winning work, has so many variations from the unique and has prompted a lot considered its occasions, that it’s virtually a brand new memoir in itself.
Maggie and Me the play, guarantees to be a very unique staging of the poignant and highly effective work and if ticket gross sales are something to go by, a must-see occasion within the Scottish theatrical calendar.
Maggie and Me is touring Scotland at:
Tron Theatre Glasgow (offered out) then at Eden Court Inverness, Perth Theatre, Lanternhouse Cumbernauld, Dundee Rep, Royal and Derngate Northampton and Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh (offered out).
Further particulars: Maggie & Me | National Theatre of Scotland (nationaltheatrescotland.com)
