Billie Collins was given a curious combination of suggestions when she set out to write Peak Stuff which plays Chichester’s Minerva Theatre from Thursday to Saturday, February 15-17, directed by Neil Bettles.
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00:00 Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely this
00:06 morning to speak to Billie Collins, who is the writer of Peak Stuff, which is heading
00:11 to Chichester's Minerva Theatre from February the 17th, sorry, February the 15th to the
00:16 17th. It's very, very new, it's just opening. And you were commissioned to do this, Billie,
00:23 but a sort of slightly odd commission, with the elements that were presented to you. What
00:27 were you asked to do? So yeah, so a couple of years ago, Neil and Laura, so it's the
00:33 Artistic Director and Executive Producer of Thick Skin Theatre, came to me and said, we
00:37 want you to write a play, and we think it's about consumerism. We think it's a one person
00:41 play and we think it's got live drumming in it, which as a writer is like...
00:45 A strange collection of things. Yeah. And so from there, I kind of went away.
00:51 Me and Neil did lots of research, reading, chatting back and forth. I made a big list
00:55 of stuff that I remember buying, stuff that I wanted, stuff that I thought I needed. And
00:59 we took all of that into a workshop with an actor and a drummer. We played around with
01:03 it, we pulled it apart, we asked lots of big questions. And then I was able to go on from
01:07 there to write a first draft. And then we went through another kind of year and a half
01:11 long development process to get us to where we are now.
01:13 And that word 'stuff', what's the significance of stuff in your mind?
01:18 I think, sort of as I was saying to you before, like I think the world can feel really overwhelming
01:24 and really uncertain. And there's a lot of stuff to worry about. I think there's a sort
01:29 of a general worry about that. There's a sense of stuff being this sort of all encompassing
01:33 thing that feels very, just like present and very hard to kind of be able to navigate your
01:40 way through. But at the same time, I think, for me anyway, personally, there's a lot of
01:44 comfort in stuff and in material things and in the sentimental value of things and things
01:49 that get passed down to you and things you're able to kind of share and give to other people
01:53 or you find down the back of the sofa or whatever else. So I think it's a very vague word for
01:58 something that I hope is quite...
01:59 Which encompasses a lot, doesn't it? And intriguingly, you explore this through one actor playing
02:05 three different characters who are 10 years apart in each case, aren't they? But intercut.
02:10 Yes, yeah. So Meg Lewis is our actor who is a phenomenal talent and the kind of feat of
02:18 performance that Meg does in this show is just well worth seeing. So yeah, our three
02:22 characters, Alice, Ben and Charlie, are all in some way, I think, struggling to break
02:28 out of some cycles to do with their relationship to buying things or selling things or wanting
02:33 things. And it's about how they kind of do or don't manage to sort of break out of those
02:37 and come back to themselves and find out what really matters to them.
02:41 That sounds brilliant. And the interest for us in Chichester as it comes to us, very,
02:45 very fresh, having only just opened in Wigan.
02:48 I'm very excited.
02:50 Definitely, you should be. Yeah. And what's the feeling as you're just about to open in
02:54 Wigan?
02:55 Yes. So we had our first preview last night and it went down really well. It feels it's
03:00 always kind of a bit of a nerve wracking thing where something that you've had so close to
03:05 yourself for a really long time is suddenly put in front of an audience of people you've
03:08 never met. But it's also the moment where it really comes to life. So I feel very proud
03:13 to be part of this team and very excited to share it with people.
03:16 And as playwright, do you allow yourself to sit back or are you sitting there thinking,
03:20 I want to change that, I want to change that?
03:23 It's a little bit of both, I think. But there's also a kind of nice level of relief where
03:26 it's like it's out of my hands now. Like Meg could say anything at this point.
03:30 You have handed it over. Brilliant. I very much look forward to seeing it in Chichester.
03:35 Lovely to speak to you. Thanks for your time and good luck with the whole thing.
03:38 Thank you very much. You too.
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