Matt Trueman 

Simon Stephens: Birdland, Franz Ferdinand, Carmen and me

His first play was based on a Tom Waits song and his latest work was inspired by Thom Yorke. Simon Stephens tells Matt Trueman why he just can't write without music
  
  

A scene from Birdland
Examination of fame … a scene from Birdland. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

The first thing Simon Stephens ever wrote, at the age of 10, was a song called The Fool. "It was a ridiculous post-Beatles pastiche," he says. Then, at 17, after "hundreds" of other songs, came his first play. "It was a shit monologue based on the Tom Waits song Frank's Wild Years," he recalls. In the song, a disaffected husband sets fire to his home and his wife. "With a brilliant leap of imagination," he says, "I wrote it as a police interview."

It is a little-known fact that Stephens – the man who not so long ago adapted The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time into a family-friendly hit for the National Theatre – spent 12 years in a post-punk band called the Country Teasers. Today, dressed in a sharp blue suit and a crisp white shirt, he looks every bit the cleaned-up rock star – right down to the jitters in his fingertips. Caffeine withdrawal, apparently. "For 30 years, I've had a hunger to find the music that finishes the need for more music," he says. "I keep thinking I'm going to find that one record that'll allow me to stop buying records. It's the same with plays – that one day I'll write one and think, 'Yeah, that's it. I don't need to write any more.'"

All of which explains why Stephens's plays are shot through with music. Lyrics pepper his dialogue. Songs burst out of scenes. Otis Redding's My Girl featured in his debut, Bluebird. Little Anthony's Tears on My Pillow is in his most recent, Blindsided. Sometimes, it's there in the title: Punk Rock, Country Music. "And Motortown as well," he adds. Ah yes, Motortown: Motown. "I've not done Jazz Funk. Or Grime – that would work well."

This spring has brought two new Stephens plays: one in London, one in Hamburg, and both revolving around music. Carmen Disruption, at the Deutches Schauspielhaus, twists Bizet's opera into a fragmented text about urban breakdown and globalisation. Birdland, which opened this month at the Royal Court, tackles similar themes, following a rock star on a world tour as he travels home to London from Moscow. "The idea of home is in all my plays," says Stephens. "Carmen Disruption and Birdland interrogate what happens if you don't have one." You might call them his hotel plays.

Birdland clearly draws from his time in the Country Teasers, who formed in 1993. "Our first gig was in the upstairs room of a lapdancing bar," remembers Stephens, who played bass. "I had an innate sense of rhythm. I still do. My dialogue's very rhythmic, and I'm quite rhythmic in my conversation." After five albums, lots of touring and a stint supporting Franz Ferdinand, Stephens left. It was 2005 and he'd taken off as a playwright and become a father. "I didn't want to sleep on a pool table on tour any more," he says.

His penultimate gig was at his wedding, "alienating about 70% of the guests". Among them was Ian Rickson, then artistic director of the Royal Court, who laid down a challenge. "He said, 'All the plays you've written so far, they're ballads. They're quite gentle gestures. But your band's abrasive and alarming and provocative. Why don't you write a play that has the same spirit as the band?" The result was Motortown, a riff on Georg Büchner's unfinished play Woyzeck, but set against the Iraq war. "Anyone familiar with Stephens's previous work may be in for a a shock," said the Guardian. "Motortown is like being run over by a 10-tonne truck."

Birdland is an examination of fame – specifically "what happens when you get that which you most want – how do you then make sense of yourself?" The title's from the Patti Smith song. "I'm going up," run the lyrics, "where we are not human."

Stephens hasn't had to deal with fame himself. "The joy of being a playwright," he says, "is that you're never famous." He has, however, seen friends and actors – Matt Smith in particular – adjust to "the bewildering, destabilising position whereby many more people know you than you can possibly know. It makes you wonder who the fuck you are."

Paul, Birdland's protagonist, finds the world fawning on him and starts pushing at new possibilities. The play is steeped in rock memoirs and, in particular, Meeting People Is Easy, a rockumentary by Grant Gee about Radiohead's OK Computer tour. "Thom Yorke's very present in Birdland. In the space of two months, Paul's band go from venues of 2,000 to 20,000. You watch him lose all sense of self. It struck me that there were remarkable parallels between the music industry and global economics. The advances they're paid reminded me of subprime mortages. They say, 'Have all this money, have the lifestyle you want. Pay us later – when the record sales come in.'"

Carmen Disrupted's inspiration was the mezzo-soprano Rinat Shaham, who is frequently "parachuted in" to play Carmen in shows all over the world. "She's done 40 different productions," Stephens says. "She flies in and has to just step in. It's a lifestyle I'm fascinated by." In the play, the Shaham character starts to disintegrate into the role as every stage, city, hotel room, high street and face dissolves into one. Kraftwerk's Hall of Mirrors recurs throughout, as does Roy Orbison's It's Over. "It came on shuffle on my iPod when I landed in Cologne to meet Rimat. I remember thinking, 'God, this is an extraordinary song.' Love and the end of days. Then, walking to my hotel, there was some graffiti on a subway overhead saying, 'IT'S OVER.' How's that for a sign?"

Stephens' biggest fear is the fate suffered by many middle-aged playwrights: irrelevance. "Those who ran dry," he says, "did so because they stopped looking outwards and started focusing on themselves." Music, he believes, connects him to the world. But, on Caryl Churchill's advice, he's got two other tactics: collaboration and adaptation – or, if you like, supergroups and cover versions.

The chat returns to his formative musical experiences. The Smiths playing Top of the Pops on his 13th birthday were "so jarringly at odds with their context – they know the people dancing hate them and they hate the people dancing. And they know they'll last." Then there was his first Happy Mondays gig: "They looked like car thieves."

There is, however, one irony in his love of music. "I think I'm quite articulate, but when I try to describe the impact certain songs have on me, I can't finish a sentence. I've never written anything quite as good as Frank Black screaming – or Johnny Marr's guitar."

• Birdland is at the Royal Court, London SW1 (020-7565 5000), until 31 May. Carmen Disruption ends on 2 May.

 

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