I had this profound sense of finding my North Star. We had to perform the monologues ourselves, and while I’m no actress, one of the things I felt powerfully was the silence of the audience. You realised it was about a woman escaping an abusive relationship and the eating of the lettuce was an act of defiance, a liberation. So I created a story in which she’d silently cut this lettuce from her father’s vegetable garden. I’d been really fascinated because she’d taken a whole iceberg lettuce out of her bag and spent the entire journey eating it. I wrote about a woman I’d observed on a train one day. I loved the way Alan Bennett created characters and the way he owned the screen for 30 minutes, so when we were asked at uni to write a monologue I thought, “I can do this.” I still remember the first thing I wrote that got a real response. I loved Grange Hill then Brookside and Coronation Street, then Jimmy McGovern and Ken Loach. #Big screenwriter tv#But what I loved about TV was the control I had – I could turn it off, I could move around the four channels. Having a mother who probably played every Shakespeare part there was, I saw a lot of plays in the theatre – Shakespeare, Chekhov, Beckett, David Mamet. The beautiful little box in the corner of the room that transported me to other worlds. One thing I did know I loved when I was a teenager was television. I guess I just took a long time to grow into myself. So I found school very hard but I had no idea what I might do next. After I signed in I just walked out again. Most of my memories of school involve sitting on the swings in the playground eating KitKats. I hated school with a vengeance and I didn’t do well.Ībout seven years ago I was diagnosed with adult ADD, and that was revelatory for me, to suddenly understand why I found processing and systems and institutions incredibly difficult. When I was 16 I lived in Stoke-on-Trent, and the Potteries has many brilliant things about it, but I never thought I really fitted. I went to seven schools because both my parents were in the theatre, so we moved every few years. I spent my childhood going from one area to the other. In his Letter To My Younger Self, she talks about how her incredible career came about, and about her and her husband’s recent health battles. The BAFTA winner has penned hit films such as the Margaret Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady, Suffragette and Shame as well as TV hits like Sex Traffic and recent hit The Split. But theatre and storytelling was part of the family business, and that and her love of television led her on the path to where she is now. Abi Morgan lived a nomadic existence while growing up, and didn’t ever feel she fitted in wherever she was.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |