Lee Hall
Lee Hall
Posted: 09 Mar 2010
How to Make a Successful Play, by Lee Hall. Live Theatre 5 March 2010
He knows a thing or two about writing successful plays – Billy Elliot and Pitmen Painters for starters.
Tyneside award-winning author Lee Hall shared a few tricks of the trade with an appreciative audience at the launch of the Live Theatre’s new writing festival Different Stages.
Entitled How to Make a Successful Play, it was something of a misnomer. You can't teach someone to be a great writer. It was more about the differences between writing for radio and writing for the stage - although nonetheless entertaining for that.
Local actors Trevor Fox, Phillippa Wilson, Sharon Percy and Shaun Prendergast joined him on stage to read extracts from his work.
Early radio successes include I Love You Jimmy Spud and Cooking with Elvis in 1995 before he shot to fame with the screenplay for Billy Elliot in 2000, which he also turned into a stage musical.
The working class lad who went to school in Walkergate and went on to read English at Cambridge revealed how much he draws on autobiography for his ideas.
‘The absurdity of life, comedy and sadness go hand in hand in the North East. That develops into a sensibility we share,’ he revealed.
‘To make it serious it has to be funny and to be funny it has to be serious. Pitmen Painters is going to Korea next. I’m still trying to get my head around that!’
His work is full of apparent contradictions that seem to make sense. But there was no paradox about his performance.
It was a masterclass from a master wordsmith.
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