T h e m ag a z i n e f o r t h e R e i g at i a n c o m m u n i t y
3). You left RGS in 1995, the same year as Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa, shops were legally allowed to open on a Sunday and the first National Lottery Draw was made, but what are your memories of leaving RGS as an 18 year old? Such a long time ago. John Major was Prime Minister, in name at least. Tony Blair was Bambi. No-one knew what an email was.
Rosenbergs: a Jewish husband and wife executed in the 50s for giving the secret of the Atomic Bomb to the Russians. But it intrigued me, this photograph.
Crucible, Sheffield with a cast of a 150, which is an incredible resource to have. I’ve been very lucky in the variety of work I’ve been able to do.
After that, over a period of years I started to read about them. I found books about the Rosenberg Case mysteriously misfiled in other book shops, waiting for me: like I was being haunted, pursued.
It was that quiet moment before two storms I suppose, and everyone was very hopeful about the world. The Soviet Union had collapsed really still very recently (in fact I went to Moscow and St Petersburg on a RGS school trip just after the coup against Gorbachev, one of my great experiences at RGS!) and we were a few years away from planes flying out of a blue sky into the Twin Towers.
At this point I’d never even thought of being a playwright. I’d moved from acting to directing with some success, and so I tried to persuade other young writers to write the play for me to direct. Everyone said ‘no, no, it’s a terrible idea’. But I thought there was a story here, relevant and alive and modern. So I wrote it myself and accidentally became a playwright.
6). What has been the biggest challenge of your career to date? The biggest challenge is always “what’s next?” As soon as I’ve achieved something, that thing is gone, and you’re moving forward, looking for the next inspiration, the next idea, the next thing that you’ll fall in love with. It’s an endless pursuit, doing this, hunting something always a fingertip away.
In my last few months at RGS personally I was really lucky,. This was back when Oxford made you take an exam to get in, and if you did they gave you a 2 “E” offer at A level. The Oxford entry exam was pretty monstrous and much tougher than A levels, and followed up by rounds of interviews, but if they accepted you then suddenly you had six months with no exam pressure. So those last months were pretty blissful. My great friend James Burbidge had also been offered a place at Oxford, to read Classics, so we had a similar sense of freedom. I remember we had a chance to read much more widely than we would have been able to, and to enjoy the things the school had to offer. It was an endlessly warm summer that year, I remember. But then I suspect all of us remember our summer of being eighteen existed under blue skies.
In the end ‘The Rubenstein Kiss’ was largely written in Stockholm, when I was away directing a play at the National Academy there. 5). Since your first critically acclaimed play, The Rubenstein Kiss in 2005 (this won the John Whiting Award and the TMA Award for Best New Play) right up to and including your West End hit McQueen (still wowing audiences at Theatre Royal Haymarket) which piece that you have written are you most proud of? I think, like with children, you mustn’t have favourites. Or not let them know. The Rubenstein Kiss was the first and I directed it, and I had the most incredible company which became like a family, so it will always be special to me.
4). What prompted you to write? There was a story that I wanted to tell. That’s what led me to write my first play, The Rubenstein Kiss. I was an actor and director first.
City Stories, which is an interwoven sequence of magic realist stories set in contemporary London and scored with live music is a heart love project thing and still ongoing. That’s the same as Rubenstein Kiss in that the company feels like a family, which I think is a key to the success of any show.
One day, when I was just starting out in the industry, I saw a photograph in a book that had a single picture selected for each year of the twentieth century. The shot for 1950 was Ethel and Julius Rosenberg kissing in the back of a police van. I’d never heard of The
And the work I do with the brilliant and radical company Slung Low, such as The White Whale and Camelot: The Shining City is a wonderful thing: huge shows and big technical demands, playing with form and deeply political. We just did a show at the
7). What is your favourite line from a play you have penned? “You know, I think this is the most beautiful photograph I’ve ever seen” First line of The Rubenstein Kiss. Not the best line. But the first ever line of drama I ever wrote. And the primary rule of making stuff is you’ve got to start. No other lines in anything if it wasn’t for that first one. 8). How do you feel when you see your scripts acted out on stage? It’s probably my favourite thing in the world. It’s been one of the great privileges that being alive can offer. To sit, unknown, amongst hundreds of people as they watch a play of yours, feel them move within the story: a remarkable thing. 9). In your opinion what defines “success” in the theatre industry? Being able to make what you actually want to make, and having the resources and trusted collaborators to make it well. 10). What is next for James Phillips? More, I hope. Making more things.
(LtoR) James Selby, James Knapton, Katie Rattray, Catherine Agnew, James Phillips.
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