WRITER’S NOTE – The Rest Is Silence
While the main character in The Rest Is Silence is shaped by the past, the past has helped turn this play into a dream-come-true for me.
In 1992, I had written my first play, Blind. The script had ended up in the hands (placed there by me) of Kingston Anderson, the artistic director of Hunter Valley Theatre Company. Kingston generously offered me a reading.
For the reading, Kingston used the cast of HVTC’s production at the time, David Williamson’s Sons of Cain. Starring in that production was a superb actor named Barry Shepherd. For some reason, Barry didn’t participate in the reading of my play. His loss.
As I listened to Grant Dodwell (best known for being in the TV series A Country Practice) read the script, not only did I fall hopelessly in love with the act of writing words to be spoken, but I became utterly convinced that, within no time at all, a play of mine would be staged in my hometown. Well …
I wrote a couple of other plays that were produced in other cities, but still not a word of mine was uttered on a Newcastle stage. And I wasn’t getting any younger.
My ruminations about ageing, about life and death, about love and art, about words and secrets were swilled together as I approached my 50th birthday. I guess I could have drunk that cocktail on my 50th birthday. Instead, I turned those ruminations into a play. The Rest Is Silence.
When I had finished the play (although ‘finish’ is presumptuous. As E.M. Forster is quoted as saying, a work of art is never finished, merely abandoned), I sent it to the man whose voice had been in my head as I developed the main character. Barry Shepherd. Clearly I was determined that, sooner or later, Barry would declaim words I had written.
Not only is Barry a beautiful actor, but he is a generous soul. He was encouraging about the play, and he recommended I approach Newcastle Theatre Company to see if a reading was possible. Of course, my first thought was, ‘I wonder if Grant Dodwell is available …’.
NTC hosted two readings of The Rest Is Silence, and Barry read the lead role at both. Then the play was scheduled for NTC’s 2022 season, with Claire Williams and Phillip Ross directing.
So 30 years after that reading of my first play at HVTC, not one dream of mine, but two are being realised. A play I’ve written is being staged in my hometown, and the extraordinary Barry Shepherd is playing the lead role, inhabiting a character I created.
The past has been put right. Thank you, NTC. Thank you, wonderful cast and crew. And my love to you, Barry.
Scott Bevan. September 2022.