When Molly Taylor performed Love Letters To The Public Transport System
just over a year ago as part of the National Theatre of Scotland's
Reveal season, it was advertised as a work in progress. While such a
safety net covered everybody's back in case things went wrong, what
audiences got instead was a lovingly crafted semi-autobiographical
monologue performed simply and beautifully by Taylor in one of the most
fully-rounded productions of the entire Reveal season.
Taylor's real life quest to track down the drivers of buses and trains
who led the Liverpool-born performer to significant moments, and indeed
significant others, returns for a short run of schools and public shows
prior to a full Edinburgh Festival Fringe run as part of this year's
Made in Scotland programme. Any fears that such a bespoke success story
has been transformed into an all-singing, all-dancing spectacular are
mercifully unfounded.
“It feels like Love Letters is about to take off on its own little
adventure,” Taylor explains, “and I'm really keen to get it out there.
A year and as half after this little show began, I've taken a kind of
running leap at it and am getting a proper run at it, which is dead
exciting, but pretty nerve-wracking as well. I've actually only
performed it six times, and it's been sort of lying dormant since then,
so I haven't reworked it in any way, and to be honest I don't know how
much it's going to change or not change. I knew from last time round
that it didn't need puppets or pyrotechnics or anything like that, but
I'm in a place now where I want to renew it, but I don't want to overdo
it either.”
With this in mind, director Graham Maley, who's worked at Liverpool's
Unity Theatre as well as on monologues by Ronan O'Donnell and with the
late Susannah York on the Shakespeare's women series, has been drafted
onto the production as an outside eye. This should provide Taylor with
a more objective aide to what is a deeply instinctive show.
“Because Love Letters is so personal,” she says, “I've never really
approached it as a text. I've just wanted to get the words in the right
place. There's always a danger that something you've done with
absolutely no expectations, that the spirit of the piece is lost
somehow. I know Love Letters has to have a bit of a polish, but I don't
want to polish it so much that it loses that spirit. It's good to know
as well that storytelling like this still has a role in theatre. It's
great that you can do things on a grand scale, but there's still a
place for little people like me.”
Love Letters To The Public Transport System was born out of a crucial
period in the life of a woman who, even after the acclaim Love Letters
received, sees herself as neither an actor or a writer.
“The piece came out of a very happy period in my life,” Taylor
explains, “which followed a fairly low period, when I was being
trampled on by a relationship in my life, I was jobless, and there was
just nothingness. Then my life changed dramatically, just from making a
couple of journeys from Liverpool to London. I got thinking in the
shower, as you do, that it would make a great speech for a wedding
day, to talk about how, if it wasn't for these train drivers getting
people to places on time, some things in my life would never have
happened. I'd sort of had this lovely year-long love affair with public
transport, and I just wanted to thank them.”
With no wedding forthcoming to make such a speech, this germ of an idea
turned into the basis of the show that exists now. Having been on the
Theatre Studies programme at Glasgow University, Taylor had joined the
National Theatre of Scotland's Associate programme in the company's
Learn department, so already had connection enough to approach NTS
Artistic Development Producer Caroline Newall, who gave Taylor the
resources for six months of research. The result of the umpteen
meetings that followed was a series of real life love stories that
criss-crossed with Taylor's own experiences as a railway track might
build up an interconnecting network.
“For me it felt like a really energising and incredibly urgent thing to
do,” Taylor says of the experience. “The totally exciting thing about
it was that I didn’t know what it was going to be until just before the
end. I wrote large sections of it on trains, because I don't have a
car, and the whole thing was born out of love, really, when I was
stupidly in love with this person, and, instead of a faith or a belief
system, I put faith into that. But you do have to be careful when
you're doing something so personal, because it treads a very fine line
that can easily slip into indulgence.”
The response to Love Letters, however, has left Taylor feeling bowled
over.
“I got loads of lovely letters ,” she says. “I even got a letter from
the traffic commissioner of Scotland, who said it was her job to make
buses safe for people. There's so many more stories you can find, and I
don't know if I've got one of those faces, but people talk to me all
the time about the most intimate details of their lives. I know I'm not
a dramatist, and I think telling stories about my life isn't as
creative as what playwrights do, so I keep things simple.”
As with so many performers, Taylor discovered drama as a way of coping
with her shyness. As a child, Taylor's sister was three years younger
than her, and became “a guaranteed audience of one. Whenever she
played, I would turn into a piece of character-based drama. I can't
remember what the turning point was, but I must've put myself up for a
play at school, and that changed everything. Drama was instructive, but
it wasn't trying, it was just doing.”
Taylor likens this epiphany to taking drugs for the first time.
“You realise why people do it,” she says, “because it's so much fun.”
Taylor's school didn't do drama A Level, but her teacher, having
spotted her potential, endeavoured on a course of individual tuition,
during which “We spent a year talking about Brecht.”
In Glasgow, Taylor's relationship with the NTS began on their
production of The Wolves in the Wolves, and has continued since Love
Letters as one of the recipients of the Bank of Scotland Emerge
programme for developing theatre-makers. Taylor also performed at Oran
Mor in a piece by Gary McNair in which she ran on a treadmill
throughout the entire show.
To describe Taylor as irrepressibly chirpy is both an understatement
and a potential Scouse cliché. Yet, in a free-wheeling if somewhat
breathlessly one-sided conversation that lasts longer than her show,
her enthusiasm is irresistibly infectious.
“I should've charged you a tenner!” Taylor says once she's stopped
laughing after this is pointed out to her. Everyone's a story-teller in
Liverpool. It's the same in the west coast of Scotland. We just like to
chat.”
Love Letters To The Public Transport System, Dornie Hall, June 26th,
Macphail Centre, Ullapool, June 28th, Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling,
July 5th, then at The Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh as part of Made in
Scotland, August 2-26.
www.nationaltheatrescotland.com
The Herald, May 15th 2012
ends
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