MEET JOHN GODBER We caught up with John, in the beautiful surroundings of Theatre Royal Wakefield, on the day he confirmed the casting for The Debt Collectors. Read our exclusive interview below. -What is the process of creating a new play, for a new company? It’s a bit like cooking, you’re not quite sure what you’re making, but you know you’ll need certain ingredients. I don’t want to repeat what I’ve done before, but at the same time, some things have worked extremely well. I’m known for particular kinds of plays and a particular style, and even though I can write in a multitude of different styles, I’d like to look at what works. A lot of my plays are about the way something might look from the outside, but say something very different on the inside. Bouncers is the best example; on the face of it these guys are on the door, but behind that there’s a kind of sensibility. -What is The Debt Collectors about? At this stage I’m looking at what stories are out there and I’ve got a fairly strong idea of the subject. There are two guys who are actors, who are out of work. In order to make ends meet and because of the way they look, they end up getting jobs as debt collectors. It’s a growing area of job creation, you don’t need much training for it and a lot of it is about image. I’m looking to develop their stories further, for example, they’ve got families of their own, and debt problems of their own. Maybe they’re desperate to work at the Royal Shakespeare Company, or the Globe or get a job on a Jimmy McGovern drama, but instead they find that they’re door-stepping people and asking for £20 4
for a microwave. There’s a dialectic about what they really want to do on the one hand and what they are actually charged to do as a job, and that’s something that seems to affect a lot of us. I’m one of the lucky ones, I always wanted to be a playwright and I became one. Mind you, I really wanted to play football for Leeds United, but that’s long gone! There’s a contrast between the image of them on the doorstep, being threatening, and what they’re reading. They might be reading Julian Barnes or Balzac, instead of a Kung Fu magazine, and therein lies their particular character development. During the play, like a writer investigating a topic, they become fascinated by the subject of debt. -What made you choose to explore debt? Everyone is affected by debt in some way and some of the stories that I’ve uncovered are mind-boggling. The most extreme was a man who owed £37,000 and 18 months ago he had a sex change in order not to be tracked down. Then there was a woman in Swindon, who was harassed for £16,000, when she only owed £400, and she drowned herself in the village pond.