Editorial: David Eldridge

Dream List: what plays should we be reading, putting on and going to see?

Holman's Across Oka is my desert island play and everyone should read it. As for writers to watch out for I'd say the Bush's own Steve Waters and Nick Payne whose I recent work I adored and David Watson, Molly Davies and Ali Taylor are all brilliant talents whose new work I am dying to read and see.

Describe your first theatrical epiphany

Just after I turned 17 I saw John Wood's King Lear directed by Nick Hytner. I'd never been to a play before let alone have any idea about the plot. I started out a mardy late adolescent complaining about the school trip to see boring Shakespeare. Four hours later when the lights went up I had to hide the tears from my mates and my life I had been changed.
 

Who would you invite to your fantasy theatrical dinner party?

They'd all be ghosts: Ibsen, Chekhov, Shakespeare, sadly now Harold Pinter, the peerless actress Susan Fleetwood who I always dreamed would be in a play of mine one day, and the redoubtable Arthur Lowe, who still makes me laugh when I see repeats of Dad's Army. I'd love to ask Shakespeare if it's really true that hearing an enthusiastic female audience member wanted his actor Burbage to come to her one night, he beat his mate to it and sent word that William the Conqueror came before Richard III!.
 

What are your career highlights so far?

I've been lucky there have been a few. My first play which the Bush produced Serving it Up started me off with a bang and instilled a love of fine actors, the success of Under the Blue Sky at the Court felt like a massive personal vindication after so many theatres had rejected it and it also marked a change of attitude towards me. I was no longer promising - just a playwright. The first preview of Festen at the Almeida was pretty special as the director and I realised seeing the magic and tension in the room we'd created something with more power than I'd anticipated.

What's the strangest experience you've had in the theatre?

I've had a few of those now too. Straight after Patrick Marber's play on the difficulty of love Closer I broke up with a girlfriend outside the NT! I love making audiences cry but on two occasions after my work I've been sitting near to an audience member who has been overcome and broken down. I think I ought to feel gratified but another part of me fears I've caused distress. I once thought an angry audience member was going to attack me in the interval of Market Boy and that was pretty strange (should I really be having a brawl in the Olivier foyer?)
 

Who is your favourite actor of all time?

Thats impossible. I'd say the most gratfiying performance I've ever been part of was Jonny Lee Miller's in my version of Festen. I imagined Jonny as I wrote and was over the moon when we managed to land him for the production. But as fine an actor as he is I never dreamed he'd give a performance of such sublime understatement, truth and real passion. Pure genius.

Who is the greatest influence on your career?

Without question the playwright Robert Holman. I read Making Noise Quietly in summer 1994 and I've been trying to Quietly Make Noise ever since.

Where do you want to be in 5 years time?

To be able to afford to write a play and a screenplay every other year and to have written a novel.
 

What' s the best thing you've ever seen at the theatre?

That's hard too: Sam Mendes production's of The Alchemist and Richard III were fantastic. David Harrower's Knives in Hens at the Bush and Roy Williams No-Boy's Cricket Club at Stratford East were both incredibly memorable nights out. I think in ten years I'll still recall the incredible emotional force of War Horse and the Chekhovian ending of Harper Regan both at the NT last year. But the first production of Conor McPherson's The Weir when we were kind of in the ghostly bar with the characters embodied for me the transcendental power of theatre and art.
 

What are you up to at the moment?

I'm writing a new play for the actress Lisa Dillon and a new adaptation of The Threepenny Opera.
 

Biography: David Eldridge

Theatre credits include: Babylone (Belgrade Coventry); John Gabriel Borkman, The Wild Duck, Summer Begins (Donmar Warehouse); Market Boy (Olivier Theatre, National); Festen (Almeida); Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness, Under the Blue Sky (Royal Court); MAD, Serving it Up (Bush); Falling (Hampstead); A Week With Tony, Fighting for Breath (Finborough); Thanks Mum (Red Room); Dirty (Theatre Royal Stratford East); Cabbage for, Tea, Tea, Tea! (Platform 4 Exeter).

Television credits include: Killers, Our Hidden Lives (BBC).

Short Film credits include: The Nugget Run (Zig Zag Productions).

Radio credits include: Michael and Me: Stratford, Ilford, Romford and all Stations to Shenfield; Festen; The Picture Man (BBC).

Publications include: Serving It Up & A Week with Tony, Under the Blue Sky, Festen, Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness, David Eldridge Plays One, The Wild Duck, John Gabriel Borkman (Methuen Drama)

Under the Blue Sky  won the Time Out Live Award 2001 for Best New Play in the West End and Festen the 2005 Theatregoers Choice Award for Best New Play. The Picture Man won the Prix Europa Best European Radio Drama 2008. Under the Blue Sky won the 2009 Theatregoers Choice Award for Best New Play.

In addition to his work as a writer, David has worked extensively as an encourager of playwriting, especially to new and first-time playwrights. In July 2007 the University of Exeter honoured his work as a playwright by making him a Doctor of Letters. He is Honorary Fellow in Drama at the University of Exeter.