Di and Viv and Rose: An interview with writer, Amelia Bullmore
We asked Amelia Bullmore, writer of Di and Viv and Rose, to talk about the story behind the play. Best known as both an actor (best known for her role in Scott and Bailey) and a writer, Amelia shares what inspired her to create this funny, moving celebration of female friendship, and why the themes still feel so relevant today.
What first inspired you to write Di and Viv and Rose?
I was working away from home for a few months. I was performing in a trilogy of plays on Broadway (it hardly seems real to me when I write that but I have photos so it must have happened). My kids were about 12 and 10. I was braced to miss them and my husband acutely and I did. What I wasn’t prepared for was the intensity with which I missed my beloved friends. I saw a woman walk ahead of me on the street one day and her shapely calves reminded me very much of those of a dear friend and I felt this visceral pang of missing and love. That was how the idea started. How to write about that? The full scope of kinds of love we feel for our friends at different stages and the powerful role those friendships play in shaping us, once we’re away from the direct and daily influence of the family home. These friends constitute a new and chosen family and through these friendships we refine and define ourselves inter-connectedly. That’s what I wanted to write about, and I wanted it to be entertaining of course, and I wanted the physical feat of just three actors doing the play to be an expression of the collaborative work of friendship.
Looking back since the play’s first production, how does it feel to see it return to the stage in a new co-production, and what do you hope the audience will take away from this story?
It pleases me very much every time the play’s done. I hope the audience has a good time and feels emotionally involved in the story and with the characters. I don’t really have a say in what they might take away from it but if, on leaving the theatre, the odd person fishes their phone out of their bag to call a friend that would be good.
You’ve worked extensively on TV as well as theatre, what does theatre allow you to do as a writer that TV doesn’t?
The liveness of theatre means actors can connect with an audience directly and in the moment. You’re all sharing the same space. It’s an unmediated experience and has the potential to be the most intimate and truthful medium, especially in a small space where the audience can see an actor sweat or tremble. A writer can use more words in the theatre, I think, and can enjoy the fact that the actors can maybe more easily take off in an unforcedly emotional way because – unlike filmed script – it’s told in order and in one go so, ideally, a theatre production can have real cumulative emotional momentum. The odd thing is that theatre can also sometimes feel like the most artificial medium – we even have a word for it – “stagey” – but when it works there can be what feels like a joint contract of the imagination between the production and the audience and that feeling’s hard to beat.
As both an actor and a writer, how does your experience performing shape the way you write dialogue?
You just have to be able to say it. It has to sound like something someone would or could say. You just have to keep moving those words around on the page till the rhythm feels right and it sounds spoken.
Music is important in the play – do you have a track that encompasses each of the characters?
Anna Mackmin’s early productions had such brilliant music that those choices are now attached in my mind to the characters. Shipbuilding for Di. English Rose for Rose and Lovecats for Viv.
How would you describe the play in three words?
I. Can’t. Sorry.
Di and Viv and Rose runs at Theatre by the Lake until Sat 11 October. Book now.