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Play Talk: Anne Washburn on adapting The Twilight Zone and why writers should collaborate

Writing life: Playwright Anne Washburn in rehearsals for The Twilight Zone: Marc Brenner
Writing life: Playwright Anne Washburn in rehearsals for The Twilight Zone: Marc Brenner

Anne Washburn caused a sensation when her play Mr Burns was staged at the Almeida Theatre in 2014. Robert Icke directed the post-Apocalyptic vision of America told with a little help from The Simpsons; some found it bewildering, others thought it ingenious. Now Washburn is back at the Islington venue to adapt spooky TV show The Twilight Zone for the stage, offering a ghostly night of storytelling just in time for Christmas.

What was your background to becoming a playwright?

I was writing poetry which never quite felt right, and acting in old plays because I couldn’t help myself, and was going to give it all up when I started university. While there I ended up acting in just one last play, a new one, and I’d never been in a new play before and I was inspired to try my hand at one and felt like I had found my logic.

What’s the hardest play you’ve ever written?

The one at hand.

Which brought you the most joy?

Probably not one in particular, but moments from pretty much all of them.

Which playwrights have influenced you the most?

David Greenspan, Maria Irene Fornes, Mac Wellman, Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill, and too many of my colleagues to name.

What’s been the biggest surprise to you since you’ve had your writing performed by actors?

How brave they are, how up for crazy challenges.

What’s been your biggest setback as a writer?

Any time something goes over well I have to puzzle my way back to a certain helpful state of ignorance.

And the hardest lesson you’ve had to learn?

That it’s worth it to stand your ground.

What do you think is the best thing about theatre? And the worst?

Best is that it requires insane amounts of care and passion. Worst is that it’s so fleeting and locational that brilliant ideas and solutions rise and die only partly seen and everyone is having to reinvent the wheel all of the time.

What’s your best piece of advice for writers who are starting out?

Team up with other writers, with actors, with directors and designers. Go somewhere where you can all live on just part time work and make as much theatre as possible for as cheap as possible -- and really just for your contemporaries - for as long as you all can bear each other and learn a ton.

Are there any themes and stories you find yourself re-visiting with your plays?

I suspect there are but I try not to think about it.

Why did you write The Twilight Zone?

I was asked to adapt an evening of Twilight Zone episodes directed by Richard Jones and I thought I have no idea how to adapt an evening of Twilight Zone episodes and I would kill to work with Richard Jones and both were inducements.

How do you spend opening night?

In New York, opening night is a celebration with everyone’s friends – the critics have already seen it earlier in the week – so it’s a warm audience and fun to be there. Here, I watch the show opening night because it’s my last chance to see it before I go back.

What’s the best play you’ve seen this year?

Probably David Greenspan performing Eugene O’Neil’s Strange Interlude singlehanded.

What other art forms do you love when you’re not in a theatre?

I like the really old versions of forms, when they’re just rearing up from craft.

If the Prime Minister said they were abolishing the theatre tomorrow, what would you do?

Exciting. I like to think that I’d immediately run around doing Resistance Theatre with passcodes and…rappelling down the sides of buildings in black leggings or something... I might just whine and nurse a sense of profound injustice.

The Twilight Zone is at the Almeida Theatre from December 5 to January 27; almeida.co.uk