When I was nine, I found a copy of 'Doctor Who: the Making of a Television Series' in the school library. It had a picture of Peter Davison on the front, and it was a formative book for me. It explained all the different departments like the script, cameras, and sets and explained how a television show is put together.
— Mike Bartlett
That's the moment you look for as a writer, when the characters start telling you what they are doing rather than you telling them.
When I can find a story that explores something that I don't know what I think, I've got a play. If I knew the answer, I would write a speech or an essay.
When I got to university, I would read plays and go, 'But these are about the past. Where are the plays that I love about now?' I couldn't find them, so I started writing.
In the process of writing '13,' friends were asking if I was OK because I was saying things about religion or about intervening in other countries militarily that I wouldn't normally spout over dinner. In the moment of writing the play, I genuinely changed what I thought.
The worst thing is where the world people experience before they go into the theatre is far more interesting than what they encounter on stage.
Where do we invest our trust now? In politicians? Most people would say not. In banks, in religion, in a sense of nationhood? In each other? Even that has been complicated. It feels like there's a total collapse of trust, but without trust, it's impossible to have any sense of who one is.
Most theatre is still really bad. It has to appeal to people who do jobs and have lives. Theatre about theatre is the most awful, terminal nonsense.
I don't think anyone is boring, actually, if you ask the right questions and look at them the right way.
What I've found is if you get the right characters in the right story and put them in the right setting - and let them go - they tend to do all the exploring of the issues for you. Because people are interesting and political and funny and sad.
I wrote a very bad play about Prince William when I was 23 in which he went off to the island of Iona to discover himself. It was very long, and audiences should probably be very pleased that the computer it was on blew up.
I don't tend to write articles and blogs because, I think, if you went into the theatre knowing that this is the writer's view on x, y, and z, it's just game over for the play.
Quite a few plays I have written have an implicit critique of capitalism in that, if you follow it through to its end, what happens to the people who are left behind?
The days of print media are numbered. Some papers will be around for a few years, but everyone knows news is going online. Then you have to ask, who pays for it? How do you deliver it? Is there any money for proper investigative reporting?
Theatre tends to be more metaphorical and intense, as you're locked in one room and focused on one thing. Television can hop around, and you need to invest in its naturalistic reality more. But I love writing both, precisely because they're so different.
In Britain, many people love the royal family, and other people don't - but either way, we own them, and we have an opinion, and we know a lot about them. It's as though they're our own family.
What's great about theater and drama is it thrives on dialogue, and dialogue thrives on people with different points of view fighting for what they want.
You go to a protest, and you've got all these different groups saying things you don't necessarily agree with. If I went to a protest, my placard would have to be very long, explaining the ins and outs of my position.
I don't care more about '13' because it's in the Olivier than I did about 'Cock' in a 100-seat studio. They both matter because it's still a person sat there watching your play. And the play has to be good enough - because there are a hundred other writers out there who deserve to have their play on instead.
One question you ask as a writer or any kind of artist when you start making something is, 'Does this have reason to exist in the world?' And you're reassured when you get little confirmations that people are pleased it did exist - whether they buy a ticket, whether it gets good reviews, whether it transfers.
I am not entirely off grid. I send a lot of email. But the way Facebook constantly alters its privacy settings to bamboozle you into giving more away is just underhand.
If people are going to spend a night out at the theatre, they don't just want 'good' - we can watch box sets for that - they want it to be totally remarkable.
