CityLife

Interview: Conor McKee

Conor McKee

Conor McKee’s Burnt, premiering next week at Contact, where it will be directed by Manchester Evening News Theatre Award-wining actor and director Wylie Longmore, has taken almost exactly a year to reach this stage, as the Manchester-based, Northern Ireland-born playwright explains.

“In January of last year, I had an idea for a script that was then called Blackout,” Conor recalls.

“We did a reading in a meeting room upstairs at Contact. I fiddled about with that script for a few months and realised that I couldn’t ask any actor to play one of the parts, it was just really bad!

“So I threw it out and, with the help of Wylie, went through a couple of weeks of script development here in Contact’s Studio 3.

“Then it was called String Man, which no one really liked. So it became Burnt around that time.”

But that wasn’t the only change undergone by the piece, an examination of the limits of love and friendship between four friends who take a break to a beautiful and remote getaway where tensions erupt that threaten to destroy the bonds between them.

“That process was fun and, as a result, the script and the idea became stronger,” he believes.

'Collaborative process'

“It was basically a matter of going through and making sure the text was clear, that the actors understood the journey.

“They’d sort of puzzled out the way the script was going after the first few days, so then I was able to say ‘well, actually, I’d like it to be doing this and this and the script doesn’t seem to be doing that’ .

“So we then went back through it, finding places where re-writes were needed, which I did before repeating the process the next week.

“So then, when it came to the finished piece, I had the actors’ voices in my head, so I could shape the dialogue for them.”

There have been a couple more development days since but “the script is locked now and I’m not allowed to touch it,” Conor laughs. “I’ve even offered to stay away from rehearsals! I suppose I embrace that collaborative process more than some writers might because I used to be an actor.

“Also, I think it’s called a ‘play’ for a reason, which is that everyone, the actors and the director and the writer, should be able to have some fun with their part of the process.

“If you as a writer try to hang onto it too much, sometimes no-one enjoys themselves!”

Burnt is at Contact from Wednesday until February 19. Conor will host a free pre-show writing workshop on February 18, 2010 from 5pm to 6.30pm.