When I meet Lisa Evans, it doesn’t surprise me that she is the writer of such a comic play as Up The Duff. We’re talking about her newest play, premiering this month at York Theatre Royal, but after chatting for half an hour, where I genuinely laugh out loud at some of Evans’ remarks, I can see she’s one of those people who naturally sees the comedy in life. Evans admits humour is often her natural response to something.
‘I see the comedy in situations. The inspiration for the play came when I was pregnant myself, and I found it so funny but no-one else did. That was my way to respond to it, this alien being growing inside me.’
Up The Duff is a play about pregnancy and the experience of four very different women. But before you turn the page in disgust at the idea of a play about six week scans and nappies, there’s a lot more in the play than just childbirth. Evans describes it as ‘a play about expectation and loss. Not losing a baby, but the fear of losing your identity when you become a mother. It’s a time of change, which always throws up interesting questions.’
And not just change with someone moving into your life; there’s also a poignant moment about a son leaving home for the first time. I guarantee that for any students who’ve only recently left home this will make you think very differently about your mum back home!
Like much of Evans’ work, Up The Duff is a play for female actors, with only one male character. ‘Critics ask where the male parts are, but I say they’re everywhere else in the country! There are so few roles for women in the canon, especially for older women, and I want to address the balance a little.’
After starting her career as an actress (in a modest way, she describes herself as ‘another blonde-haired, blue-eyed okay actress – I was good but not spectacularly good!’), Evans moved into writing because ‘I got paid more! And I always wanted to write anyway but it took me a long time to have the confidence to do it.’
I asked if it was difficult to be on the other side of the stage now, watching someone else perform her carefully constructed lines. ‘It’s heaven!’ she says, ‘as long as they do it well!’
Alongside playwriting, Evans has written for TV and radio, including three years as a writer for Casualty. She has adapted works by several authors, from Anne Brontë to Margaret Atwood. ‘Adapting is much easier if the author is dead – they’re normally much more compliant than the ones still living! However, Melvyn Bragg was brilliant and told me to do what I wanted with the adaptation.’
Evans is clearly most comfortable in drama. She admits that although she has written a novel it was difficult ‘because you have to put everything in! What the weather’s like, what the characters are wearing; in theatre you have the set designer to do all of that!’
Evan’s attitude to writing will be familiar to most humanities students: ‘When I started writing it was scary not having deadlines and I thought I’d never get anything done without them. I have to set myself deadlines and tell myself I can’t leave until I’ve written my scene for the day. And sometimes I finish early so I can reward myself by taking the rest of the afternoon off.’ She deals with distractions by writing in her attic as ‘it’s a defendable space in the house’ which is useful as she’s easily distracted.
Evans seems to be truly passionate about writing and encouraging others to write. Her advice for writing a play, or even an essay, is ‘make a plan and write the whole thing before you go back and re-write. You have to do this; otherwise you’ll end up with fifteen Scene one’s and nothing else!’
Up The Duff is showing at York Theatre Royal, 07 – 28 November 2009