Louise Welsh and Zoe Strachan have never had a problem with creating an atmosphere. As novelists, the worlds they’ve created separately may read unmistakably Glaswegian, but there is also something unsettlingly strange looming beyond the ordinary but vivid familiarity of back-drops that seem to cloak their stories in a thick and foreboding fog. Where Strachan’s second novel, Spin Cycle, took its milieu of three women launderette workers into dark psychological terrain, Welsh’s debut, The Cutting Room, painted Glasgow’s west end and Kelvingrove Park with a neurotic gothic gloom.
This melding of the everyday and the extra-ordinary is evident in the venue the pair have chosen to talk about Panic Patterns, a play commissioned by the Glasgay! festival which, as their first ever jointly written composition, makes them as much a couple professionally as they are personally. Situated on a stretch of Maryhill Road untouched by the gloss of urban renewal, Jaconelli’s cafe has an old-fashioned wooden deco interior that looks similarly untampered with throughout its eighty year existence.
Jaconelli’s ambience is low-key and tailor-made for illicit trysts without ever trying to be cool. The un-self-consciously local clientele would never tell. That’s if they even noticed anything untoward going on at the back of the room where Welsh and Strachan are sitting next to each other in a booth, lit up by the sepia glow of the fish tank behind them where two lonely-looking fish swim lazily past each other, forgetting every near-encounter almost as it happens. Sounds played on the original 1950s juke-box beside the counter are all but drowned out by the little symphonies of steam from the equally original frothy coffee machine brought into service to keep thirsty lunchers lubricated.
But Jaconelli’s is getting too busy to make ourselves heard, so, with Zen-like patience and mutual twinkles, Welsh and Strachan opt to adjourn to their flat where we can talk more freely without having to shout. As Welsh drives, with Strachan in the back seat, we talk about how few places in Glasgow as unspoilt as Jaconelli’s there are left. Even the old-school social clubs such as the RAFA, it seems, are dying off, unable to adapt to the times. Welsh talks about Glasgow’s first ever gay club, which was housed in the leafy confines of Queen’s Park before being closed after unspecified activities in the garden attracted the neighbours’ attention. As with Jaconelli’s, Welsh’s description of Glasgow’s hidden history is all atmosphere.
On paper, at least, Panic Patterns sounds similarly all-pervading in a way that, even as it moves its action away from the city to a remote island in the north of Scotland, echoes close to home abound. This is something Strachan for one recognised when she sat in on rehearsals the day before.
“We’re both really interested in post-apocalyptic things just now,” Strachan says of Panic Patterns, in which two female ornithologists investigate sudden changes in bird migration patterns as they await their much delayed boat home. A dead radio contributes to the tension, as does the decommissioned lighthouse across the bay which suddenly shines back into life. Stylistically, the plays inspirations date from the 1970s.
“It’s a stupid thing to say,” Welsh beams, “but I’m kind of nostalgic for the apocalypse thing they had in the 1970s when you had programmes like Threads and Survivors. Because there is a question there that these women don’t know what’s going on in the outside world, and that something might have happened. Very probably nothing has happened, but there’s an edge that something might have, the way there is in gothic horror.”
Strachan admits an ambiguity to that edge.
“I didn’t realise just how much scrutiny the play was putting the characters’ relationship under until I was watching it in rehearsal,’ she says. “The actors were playing this very tense and intense scene between, and I just thought, God, did we do a really dangerous thing here in deciding to write that? We could’ve just written an adventure story or a horror story, so why did we choose to put these peoples’ relationship under a microscope?
“Although obviously they’re not based on us, they’re two women, their ages aren’t dissimilar to ours, and they’re both really focused on the same profession; and they’re trapped in a cottage up north and we love going up north. Watching it was just like, why did we do that? Is this really foolhardy? There was a real moment of panic, but also of relief, because we’re not going to have a row about it now. We’ve written the script. It’s not going to have horrible repercussions on our own relationship.”
Strachan is laughing when she says all this. Welsh, meanwhile, offers a more beatific smile.
“You always bring some of your life to it,” she says, “even though it’s not about you. It’s not strictly speaking a domestic drama, but the relationship is really there, and there’s an arc there leading to a revelation of some sort. But I guess also the theme of the same sex thing – as part of Glasgay!, of course – the fact that they’re both in a relationship is just that. It’s a fact. It’s not a revelation or a problem of itself. It’s not something they’re worried about. There are other things they are worried about, but their sexuality isn’t one of them.”
Welsh points to the just published report on how gay, lesbian and transgender people are dealt with in the media and in television drama, where flights of campery and butchness are still par for the course.
“There’s this idea that it’s always an issue,” Welsh says, “but here it’s not. Some of the things that go on in the play are hopefully recognisable in some way to anyone who’s in a relationship. Do you think that makes sense?” she asks Strachan.
“Yeah,” comes the reply. “I think so.”
Welsh and Strachan do that a lot, looking to each other for some kind of couply reassurance in case they’re airing something that’s maybe not been talked about before. As they warm up, each other’s sentences run into each other as ideas bounce from each other, becoming something bigger as they go. Which, while perfectly understandable, remains a quietly uncontrived image of intimacy that’s lovely to observe. It also points to the fact they’re almost certainly each other’s best and harshest editor.
It could have all turned out very differently, of course. The most famous gay couple to write together, we realise later, were doyens of swinging sixties London Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell. That particular partnership ended when the more singularly successful Orton was bludgeoned to death by an enraged Halliwell, who then killed himself.
“Oh, don’t say that!,” Strachan murmurs after it’s brought up. She needn’t worry. By the sound of it, the writing process of Panic Patterns sounds as harmonious as these things can ever be.
“It was tortuous in one way,” Strachan admits. “It was intense in a surprising way, because I thought we might write a scene each or a character each, which I thought might be fun. But as it was we just sat in a room and wrote every line together….”
“It wasn’t completely tortuous…” Welsh suggests.
“No, I’m glad we did it that way,” Strachan concurs.
“I think in the beginning we just talked and talked and talked and talked, and talked and talked and talked…”
“It was fun…”
“Yeah, we really laughed in a way that you don’t laugh when you’re writing as novel….”
“Unless you’re going mad,” Strachan deadpans.
“It got back to just playing and mucking about,” Welsh remembers, “which is how any artistic thing should start. Then it gets serious and you disagree at times.”
“And it’s just as hard,” says Strachan. “Somehow I thought it might be easier with two of us working on the bits you get stuck on, but it was just two of us fighting in a way that magnified the difficulty.”
“Sometimes if you get stuck when you’re writing on your own,” says Welsh, “the only way to get over it is to choose a particular path to go down, and sometimes that’s not always the right way. I think you stopped me going down some dead ends,” she says to Strachan. “Sometimes you stopped me being quite so melodramatic.”
“Oh, good!” says Strachan, sounding genuinely surprised.
After the experience of writing Panic Patterns, then, would Welsh and Strachan ever collaborate again, perhaps risking the potential of one of them bludgeoning the other to death?
“I don’t know,” Welsh says, smiling over at Strachan. “What do you think? Spielberg?”
Strachan doesn’t miss a beat.
“Let’s make a horror movie,” she says.
Back at Jaconelli’s, one imagines the birds are circling outside. With an atmosphere like that, how could it fail?
Panic Patterns, Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, October 19th-30th
www.glasgay.com
www.citz.co.uk
The Herald, October 16th 2010
ends
This melding of the everyday and the extra-ordinary is evident in the venue the pair have chosen to talk about Panic Patterns, a play commissioned by the Glasgay! festival which, as their first ever jointly written composition, makes them as much a couple professionally as they are personally. Situated on a stretch of Maryhill Road untouched by the gloss of urban renewal, Jaconelli’s cafe has an old-fashioned wooden deco interior that looks similarly untampered with throughout its eighty year existence.
Jaconelli’s ambience is low-key and tailor-made for illicit trysts without ever trying to be cool. The un-self-consciously local clientele would never tell. That’s if they even noticed anything untoward going on at the back of the room where Welsh and Strachan are sitting next to each other in a booth, lit up by the sepia glow of the fish tank behind them where two lonely-looking fish swim lazily past each other, forgetting every near-encounter almost as it happens. Sounds played on the original 1950s juke-box beside the counter are all but drowned out by the little symphonies of steam from the equally original frothy coffee machine brought into service to keep thirsty lunchers lubricated.
But Jaconelli’s is getting too busy to make ourselves heard, so, with Zen-like patience and mutual twinkles, Welsh and Strachan opt to adjourn to their flat where we can talk more freely without having to shout. As Welsh drives, with Strachan in the back seat, we talk about how few places in Glasgow as unspoilt as Jaconelli’s there are left. Even the old-school social clubs such as the RAFA, it seems, are dying off, unable to adapt to the times. Welsh talks about Glasgow’s first ever gay club, which was housed in the leafy confines of Queen’s Park before being closed after unspecified activities in the garden attracted the neighbours’ attention. As with Jaconelli’s, Welsh’s description of Glasgow’s hidden history is all atmosphere.
On paper, at least, Panic Patterns sounds similarly all-pervading in a way that, even as it moves its action away from the city to a remote island in the north of Scotland, echoes close to home abound. This is something Strachan for one recognised when she sat in on rehearsals the day before.
“We’re both really interested in post-apocalyptic things just now,” Strachan says of Panic Patterns, in which two female ornithologists investigate sudden changes in bird migration patterns as they await their much delayed boat home. A dead radio contributes to the tension, as does the decommissioned lighthouse across the bay which suddenly shines back into life. Stylistically, the plays inspirations date from the 1970s.
“It’s a stupid thing to say,” Welsh beams, “but I’m kind of nostalgic for the apocalypse thing they had in the 1970s when you had programmes like Threads and Survivors. Because there is a question there that these women don’t know what’s going on in the outside world, and that something might have happened. Very probably nothing has happened, but there’s an edge that something might have, the way there is in gothic horror.”
Strachan admits an ambiguity to that edge.
“I didn’t realise just how much scrutiny the play was putting the characters’ relationship under until I was watching it in rehearsal,’ she says. “The actors were playing this very tense and intense scene between, and I just thought, God, did we do a really dangerous thing here in deciding to write that? We could’ve just written an adventure story or a horror story, so why did we choose to put these peoples’ relationship under a microscope?
“Although obviously they’re not based on us, they’re two women, their ages aren’t dissimilar to ours, and they’re both really focused on the same profession; and they’re trapped in a cottage up north and we love going up north. Watching it was just like, why did we do that? Is this really foolhardy? There was a real moment of panic, but also of relief, because we’re not going to have a row about it now. We’ve written the script. It’s not going to have horrible repercussions on our own relationship.”
Strachan is laughing when she says all this. Welsh, meanwhile, offers a more beatific smile.
“You always bring some of your life to it,” she says, “even though it’s not about you. It’s not strictly speaking a domestic drama, but the relationship is really there, and there’s an arc there leading to a revelation of some sort. But I guess also the theme of the same sex thing – as part of Glasgay!, of course – the fact that they’re both in a relationship is just that. It’s a fact. It’s not a revelation or a problem of itself. It’s not something they’re worried about. There are other things they are worried about, but their sexuality isn’t one of them.”
Welsh points to the just published report on how gay, lesbian and transgender people are dealt with in the media and in television drama, where flights of campery and butchness are still par for the course.
“There’s this idea that it’s always an issue,” Welsh says, “but here it’s not. Some of the things that go on in the play are hopefully recognisable in some way to anyone who’s in a relationship. Do you think that makes sense?” she asks Strachan.
“Yeah,” comes the reply. “I think so.”
Welsh and Strachan do that a lot, looking to each other for some kind of couply reassurance in case they’re airing something that’s maybe not been talked about before. As they warm up, each other’s sentences run into each other as ideas bounce from each other, becoming something bigger as they go. Which, while perfectly understandable, remains a quietly uncontrived image of intimacy that’s lovely to observe. It also points to the fact they’re almost certainly each other’s best and harshest editor.
It could have all turned out very differently, of course. The most famous gay couple to write together, we realise later, were doyens of swinging sixties London Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell. That particular partnership ended when the more singularly successful Orton was bludgeoned to death by an enraged Halliwell, who then killed himself.
“Oh, don’t say that!,” Strachan murmurs after it’s brought up. She needn’t worry. By the sound of it, the writing process of Panic Patterns sounds as harmonious as these things can ever be.
“It was tortuous in one way,” Strachan admits. “It was intense in a surprising way, because I thought we might write a scene each or a character each, which I thought might be fun. But as it was we just sat in a room and wrote every line together….”
“It wasn’t completely tortuous…” Welsh suggests.
“No, I’m glad we did it that way,” Strachan concurs.
“I think in the beginning we just talked and talked and talked and talked, and talked and talked and talked…”
“It was fun…”
“Yeah, we really laughed in a way that you don’t laugh when you’re writing as novel….”
“Unless you’re going mad,” Strachan deadpans.
“It got back to just playing and mucking about,” Welsh remembers, “which is how any artistic thing should start. Then it gets serious and you disagree at times.”
“And it’s just as hard,” says Strachan. “Somehow I thought it might be easier with two of us working on the bits you get stuck on, but it was just two of us fighting in a way that magnified the difficulty.”
“Sometimes if you get stuck when you’re writing on your own,” says Welsh, “the only way to get over it is to choose a particular path to go down, and sometimes that’s not always the right way. I think you stopped me going down some dead ends,” she says to Strachan. “Sometimes you stopped me being quite so melodramatic.”
“Oh, good!” says Strachan, sounding genuinely surprised.
After the experience of writing Panic Patterns, then, would Welsh and Strachan ever collaborate again, perhaps risking the potential of one of them bludgeoning the other to death?
“I don’t know,” Welsh says, smiling over at Strachan. “What do you think? Spielberg?”
Strachan doesn’t miss a beat.
“Let’s make a horror movie,” she says.
Back at Jaconelli’s, one imagines the birds are circling outside. With an atmosphere like that, how could it fail?
Panic Patterns, Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, October 19th-30th
www.glasgay.com
www.citz.co.uk
The Herald, October 16th 2010
ends
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