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| Vinay Patel: 'I think people having their power dismantled is good' | Vinay Patel: 'I think people having their power dismantled is good' |
| (about 1 month later) | |
| Displayed along Uxbridge Road in west London are posters promoting An Adventure, Vinay Patel’s new play. Head tipped to one side, on the adverts Patel looks intellectual, reserved almost. In person, however, he likes to talk. Open and friendly, the 32-year-old playwright and screenwriter speaks at a rapid pace, bouncing from topic to topic with the enthusiasm of someone genuinely happy to discuss his work, family and the way An Adventure links the two. | Displayed along Uxbridge Road in west London are posters promoting An Adventure, Vinay Patel’s new play. Head tipped to one side, on the adverts Patel looks intellectual, reserved almost. In person, however, he likes to talk. Open and friendly, the 32-year-old playwright and screenwriter speaks at a rapid pace, bouncing from topic to topic with the enthusiasm of someone genuinely happy to discuss his work, family and the way An Adventure links the two. |
| He talks about his Indian grandparents’ arranged marriage. “My grandad once showed me a picture of him and said: ‘This is the photo your grandma chose me from,’” he says. “It completely upended everything I thought I knew about both gender dynamics and my family’s relationship to itself, so the first scene is a woman with five photos – of different men. She has to get married to one of them but she gets to pick … it’s some amount of power but within a small channel.” | He talks about his Indian grandparents’ arranged marriage. “My grandad once showed me a picture of him and said: ‘This is the photo your grandma chose me from,’” he says. “It completely upended everything I thought I knew about both gender dynamics and my family’s relationship to itself, so the first scene is a woman with five photos – of different men. She has to get married to one of them but she gets to pick … it’s some amount of power but within a small channel.” |
| Following a young couple from 1950s India to Mau Mau-era Kenya to the UK, Patel calls An Adventure a “sweeping historical epic” – though its language is colloquial, modern-day English. “There are no accents in it at all,” he says. “I want it to feel very modern. What I’m interested in is to create a familiarity for people who are unfamiliar with that situation – and vice versa.” | Following a young couple from 1950s India to Mau Mau-era Kenya to the UK, Patel calls An Adventure a “sweeping historical epic” – though its language is colloquial, modern-day English. “There are no accents in it at all,” he says. “I want it to feel very modern. What I’m interested in is to create a familiarity for people who are unfamiliar with that situation – and vice versa.” |
| With a three-hour running time, two intervals and multiple locations, it is clear that Madani Younis, the artistic director of Bush theatre, where An Adventure will be staged in September, encouraged him to go big. “When Madani commissioned me, he was like: ‘There’s a 90-minute version of this play – don’t do that.’ No one ever says that, especially if you’re a writer of colour.” | With a three-hour running time, two intervals and multiple locations, it is clear that Madani Younis, the artistic director of Bush theatre, where An Adventure will be staged in September, encouraged him to go big. “When Madani commissioned me, he was like: ‘There’s a 90-minute version of this play – don’t do that.’ No one ever says that, especially if you’re a writer of colour.” |
| Patel’s other new play is the “very surreal and physical” Sticks and Stones, which is about to do a full Edinburgh run. This is also an attempt to try something new – an effort, he says, to “take a punt on something I’ve never done before”. The production explores what it is like to be told “something that you’ve known all your life is suddenly offensive, and trying to recalibrate yourself as a person, and finding out how the world jumps at you and supports you”. | Patel’s other new play is the “very surreal and physical” Sticks and Stones, which is about to do a full Edinburgh run. This is also an attempt to try something new – an effort, he says, to “take a punt on something I’ve never done before”. The production explores what it is like to be told “something that you’ve known all your life is suddenly offensive, and trying to recalibrate yourself as a person, and finding out how the world jumps at you and supports you”. |
| The idea for Sticks and Stones, Patel says, came from his thoughts around “how we talk to each other about what is offensive or not. People push a ‘this is offensive’ thing to certain groups, and I think people having their power dismantled is good. But then I talk to someone like my dad, who works 85 hours a week and who doesn’t have time to be on the internet. If you don’t reach back, you leave a gap that people like the far-right exploit really well.” | The idea for Sticks and Stones, Patel says, came from his thoughts around “how we talk to each other about what is offensive or not. People push a ‘this is offensive’ thing to certain groups, and I think people having their power dismantled is good. But then I talk to someone like my dad, who works 85 hours a week and who doesn’t have time to be on the internet. If you don’t reach back, you leave a gap that people like the far-right exploit really well.” |
| He sighs. “I get it, people get frustrated about having to explain themselves and their lives. But the work is to go: ‘Actually, I need to bring you on board because the world feels unstable’ – that uncertainty is what I wanted to bring into the play.” | He sighs. “I get it, people get frustrated about having to explain themselves and their lives. But the work is to go: ‘Actually, I need to bring you on board because the world feels unstable’ – that uncertainty is what I wanted to bring into the play.” |
| Speaking to Patel, three topics come up again and again: south London, his love for writing and his cats. “I’ve never lived north of the river Thames – this is where it’s at. You can’t get an easy tube, you’re forced to work harder for everything so you appreciate it a bit more.” Patel’s cats, Star and Bickles, watch him as he works each day and once helped him “through the worst”. | Speaking to Patel, three topics come up again and again: south London, his love for writing and his cats. “I’ve never lived north of the river Thames – this is where it’s at. You can’t get an easy tube, you’re forced to work harder for everything so you appreciate it a bit more.” Patel’s cats, Star and Bickles, watch him as he works each day and once helped him “through the worst”. |
| The story of how the playwright inherited them from a neighbour he never met, through interactions with a series of their original owner’s remarkable family members, deserves a play of its own. But it is Patel’s passion for the stage and screen that comes up most, though he did not begin writing seriously until his mid-20s. | The story of how the playwright inherited them from a neighbour he never met, through interactions with a series of their original owner’s remarkable family members, deserves a play of its own. But it is Patel’s passion for the stage and screen that comes up most, though he did not begin writing seriously until his mid-20s. |
| Flipping a coin to decide which university to go to (“it landed on Exeter”), Patel became a corporate film-maker after graduating, “making stuff like medical videos for drugs companies”. He then quit and began working as a film technician before he had a revelation. | Flipping a coin to decide which university to go to (“it landed on Exeter”), Patel became a corporate film-maker after graduating, “making stuff like medical videos for drugs companies”. He then quit and began working as a film technician before he had a revelation. |
| “I was on a Christmas shift because it paid better money, was on call, [and] was just like: ‘This can’t be my life. You’ve got to pick something.’ So I thought: ‘Pick writing, you’ve always liked that. Give it five years. If it doesn’t work out you can tell yourself you gave it a punt.’ So I applied for the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.” | “I was on a Christmas shift because it paid better money, was on call, [and] was just like: ‘This can’t be my life. You’ve got to pick something.’ So I thought: ‘Pick writing, you’ve always liked that. Give it five years. If it doesn’t work out you can tell yourself you gave it a punt.’ So I applied for the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.” |
| After borrowing money to study for an MA in writing for stage and broadcast media, Patel went on to graduate in 2011 with a dissertation script awarded the highest mark on his course. | After borrowing money to study for an MA in writing for stage and broadcast media, Patel went on to graduate in 2011 with a dissertation script awarded the highest mark on his course. |
| Since then, the work has continued to come. Following on from 2014’s True Brits, his first full-length play, Patel wrote the BBC Three drama Murdered By My Father. “I’d seen A View from the Bridge at the Young Vic and thought: ‘This could be an Asian family’. I wanted Murdered By My Father to start there: pride gets in the way of love for your family.” | Since then, the work has continued to come. Following on from 2014’s True Brits, his first full-length play, Patel wrote the BBC Three drama Murdered By My Father. “I’d seen A View from the Bridge at the Young Vic and thought: ‘This could be an Asian family’. I wanted Murdered By My Father to start there: pride gets in the way of love for your family.” |
| Nominated for a Bafta for best single drama, the programme led to Patel being selected as a 2016 Baftabreakthrough Brit and Adeel Akhtar to become the first non-white actor to win a Bafta for best actor. Patel says the moment when “Adeel won that Bafta, and Benedict Cumberbatch was sat behind me, I was like: ‘I’m doing everything I ever wanted to do.’” | Nominated for a Bafta for best single drama, the programme led to Patel being selected as a 2016 Baftabreakthrough Brit and Adeel Akhtar to become the first non-white actor to win a Bafta for best actor. Patel says the moment when “Adeel won that Bafta, and Benedict Cumberbatch was sat behind me, I was like: ‘I’m doing everything I ever wanted to do.’” |
| Patel has big plans. He hopes to set up a prize for south Asian playwrights (“It’s so useful in platforming good writers”) and establish a theatre in his neighbouring childhood borough of Bexley, “one of the two London boroughs that doesn’t have a permanent theatre building”. | Patel has big plans. He hopes to set up a prize for south Asian playwrights (“It’s so useful in platforming good writers”) and establish a theatre in his neighbouring childhood borough of Bexley, “one of the two London boroughs that doesn’t have a permanent theatre building”. |
| An Adventure review – epic journey through Mau Mau-era Kenya | An Adventure review – epic journey through Mau Mau-era Kenya |
| He’s also passionate about helping his peers. A recent Twitter thread about making a living as a playwright was widely shared, and the playwright Isley Lynn recently spoke about the generous support Patel had given to help her much-loved three-hander Skin a Cat. | He’s also passionate about helping his peers. A recent Twitter thread about making a living as a playwright was widely shared, and the playwright Isley Lynn recently spoke about the generous support Patel had given to help her much-loved three-hander Skin a Cat. |
| At the root of all this appears to be Patel’s somewhat exasperated love for the stage. “My biggest frustration with theatre is who am I speaking to, what is the audience? Sometimes you’re like: ‘I’ll write a piece for work, but … why, if the right people won’t see it?’” It’s why, he says, he also writes for TV (“I would never write something like Murdered By My Father as a play”), but still feels “really optimistic” about theatre. | At the root of all this appears to be Patel’s somewhat exasperated love for the stage. “My biggest frustration with theatre is who am I speaking to, what is the audience? Sometimes you’re like: ‘I’ll write a piece for work, but … why, if the right people won’t see it?’” It’s why, he says, he also writes for TV (“I would never write something like Murdered By My Father as a play”), but still feels “really optimistic” about theatre. |
| Speaking to Patel, it’s easy to believe that a future where a wealth of playwrights and audiences from different backgrounds is on its way. But what of his father and sister, who still work in the Plumstead pharmacy in south-east London his parents ran in his youth? Do they watch his plays? Patel grins: “They do.” | Speaking to Patel, it’s easy to believe that a future where a wealth of playwrights and audiences from different backgrounds is on its way. But what of his father and sister, who still work in the Plumstead pharmacy in south-east London his parents ran in his youth? Do they watch his plays? Patel grins: “They do.” |
| • Sticks and Stones is at Paines Plough’s Roundabout in Summerhall, Edinburgh ,1-25 August then on tour. | • Sticks and Stones is at Paines Plough’s Roundabout in Summerhall, Edinburgh ,1-25 August then on tour. |
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