Inspired by an American in Cullercoats

Feb 9 2010 By David Whetstone, The Journal

HAVING successfully launched a play about the amateur artists of Ashington into the theatrical firmament, another art-related play is being readied at Newcastle's Live Theatre.

Artistic director Max Roberts smilingly acknowledges the danger of being typecast but says it’s purely coincidental – even when you factor in Charlie’s Trousers, Alan Plater’s affectionate Baltic lampoon which premiered here in 2004.

"You don’t say no to a new play by Shelagh Stephenson," he says simply.

Shelagh lives in London but was brought up in Tynemouth. Her best known play is the widely admired An Experiment With An Air Pump, set in Newcastle and inspired by a famous painting done by the 18th Century artist Joseph Wright of Derby.

The new play, A Northern Odyssey, is about the 22 months spent by the American painter Winslow Homer in Cullercoats – just along the coast from Tynemouth – in the early 1880s.

"I knew about Winslow Homer but I don’t know why I didn’t know he’d ever lived in Cullercoats," says the playwright.

What, I wonder, has she managed to find out about the artist, who was in his 40s and already well established when he wound up on the North East coast?

"I don’t know anything about Winslow Homer," she replies rather shortly.

"There is nothing you can find out about him. There are three girls he painted a lot but it is impossible to know what they were like.

"People have done lots of research into Winslow Homer but he didn’t talk about himself. Or rather, he said different things to different people. There’s a sort of blank."

It seems Shelagh’s own research has thrown up a lot more questions than answers. It also seems that it is the questions – that blank – that intrigue her more than the known facts.

She is not, she tells me, writing a biography of the man. And if she tells me this rather firmly, it might have something to do with the fact that Lee Hall’s play, The Pitmen Painters, has so often been described as being about the amateur painters of Ashington who had a fleeting taste of fame between the wars.

In writing The Pitmen Painters, of course, Lee fiddled with the facts to a degree, creating composite characters and imagining the conversations they might have had in their Ashington hut.

That’s the nature of any dramatic enterprise.

Shelagh says she believes Winslow Homer might have been gay. Well, he never married.

"There’s a constituency of gay people who think Winslow Homer was gay but this sort of thing is not fact, it’s speculation."

We get into a bit of a philosophical spin over the nature of the play.

To my suggestion that it could have been written about an imaginary artist called Arthur Smith, she replies that it couldn’t because it is about Winslow Homer.

"Even if I knew everything there was to know about Winslow Homer, it would still be an imagined Winslow Homer because Winslow Homer is dead.

"We don’t know what he thought or said. You have to make your own version.

"This is not about the facts of Winslow Homer’s life because they’re really difficult to glean and not at all interesting to me.

"What you’ve got is Winslow Homer in Cullercoats. That, to me, is extraordinary. What is this really successful American painter doing in this North East fishing village for 22 months?"

She doesn’t think he came to Cullercoats because he thought it was beautiful.

"I think it’s beautiful because I come from here but he painted the fisher girls.

"He was interested in the sea and fishing.

"I think it’s more to do with where he was going with his art.

"Why did he stay? I think he stayed because when he came to Cullercoats he was in a bit of a hiatus with his work." It seems to be widely accepted that his productive spell in the North East, from 1881, had a positive effect on his painting.

The pictures he produced, two of which you can see here, are brilliantly evocative and highly prized by those galleries lucky enough to possess them.

But what is to be learnt about Shelagh Stephenson?

She grew up in Tynemouth, one of five sisters. Her parents are both dead but weren’t involved in the theatre.

"I don’t really know what my dad did. He went to work in a suit and sometimes went abroad. I think it was civil engineering.

"I always wanted to be a writer but I didn’t know I wanted to be a playwright until I was older."

She went to Manchester University in 1974 to study drama and loved it. Then she became an actor and wasn’t quite so sure, even though she spent two years with the RSC.

"I really only liked it when the sets fell down. In fact, the greatest excitement was when I could see it all going wrong."

She has homes in London and France and two Bedlington terriers.

Shelagh found her niche as a playwright with The Memory of Water, first staged in 1996, winning an Olivier Award.

An Experiment With An Air Pump opened in Manchester in 1998 and also won an award. Max Roberts hopes to rectify the fact that, although set in Newcastle, it has never been staged in the region.

:: Shelagh will talk about her work and answer questions on March 11 at Live Theatre and tickets can be bought from the box office on 0191 232 1232.

:: A Northern Odyssey, directed by Max Roberts, will run at the venue from April 22 to May 22.