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[Extra Extra INTERVIEW]
British playwright Simon Stephens speaks with Tim Hoare on Scorcese, Libidinous Creativity, and looking for humanity where you least expect it

Song From Far Away, 2016 Courtesy: TGA /Photo: Jan Versweyveld
Tim Hoare: Is it true that you got into theatre in order to attract girls?
Simon Stephens: That’s a crude simplification of it! But fundamentally it was true and fundamentally it kind of remains true. That was why I first went into the theatre, because I wasn’t raised in a family where the experience of going to see serious theatre was expected. The serious drama I grew up with was television drama in the eighties, and serious cinema: films like Blue Velvet and Taxi Driver, the dramatic force and the tension of those stories astonished me. The live art I would engage in would be music gigs in Manchester. I fucking loved that, the unpredictability, the visceral nature of that. Then, at university, all the most beautiful girls came from exotic places like Surrey and Buckinghamshire and wanted to be actresses. I’ve always had a thing about posh girls. In a pathetic, misguided and ultimately fruitless attempt to meet these girls I’d go and watch their student productions of really god-awful plays.
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