Emma Hemingford Interview
Emma Hemingford is the writer of Foreverland, running at Southwark Playhouse until 19th October 2024. We asked her about her influences and approaches to writing the play, along with news on her future projects.
Q. Emma, how has the success of your last play Flinch shaped the way in which you’ve approached writing Foreverland?
A. Writing Flinch gave me the confidence to try my hand at a larger show, with a much bigger cast – including a child! I still can’t believe the child wasn’t vetoed by producers, as it’s always logistically complex to work with young actors. But Emily (our young actress) is brilliant, so I’m glad it worked out. Foreverland is also more formally experimental than Flinch. I love finding ways to tell a story through its structure, so this was fun to develop. However, both plays contain some of the same themes – communication within a relationship, and fears of time passing. I guess I’m just really scared of time passing.
Q. You’ve talked about your influences but what or who was the inspiration for Foreverland?
A. I’ve always loved stories about immortality: they offer us a lens through which to explore the meaning and nature of human existence. These past few years, however, I noticed a boom of news articles about Silicon Valley investment into life-extending drugs and therapies. The more I read, the more it seemed to me that we may really be on the brink of radically extending the human life span through advances in biotechnology. So, I wanted to write a play that imagined what this could look like, and the ethical and emotional questions such novel therapies would raise.
Q. The topic of extending human lifespan often courts controversy. Does your new play discuss the ethics behind the concept?
A. Yes, it certainly does! The play focuses on one family’s story, so ultimately the major questions at play are how longer lives would affect our personal relationships and our own psychology. However, the story also reflects on wider themes of privilege, inequality, and intergenerational fairness.
Q. Are you a writer that likes to get involved in the rehearsal process and if so how have you been supporting the creative process?
A. I’m an anxious control freak so I do like to get involved and Fred, the director, has been very good at letting everyone who is part of the process have a voice. However, fortunately I’ve got incredible creatives working on this project who really don’t need me at all. You can take involvement too far as a writer so I’ve tried to stay away from the rehearsal room as much as I can bear to. Actors need time without the writer breathing down their neck to find their way through the script alone.
Q. What would you like the audience to take away?
A. I want to avoid telling an audience how they should feel about the story, so I will evade this by saying I hope they come away with more questions rather than answers. I hope the show encourages people to ask themselves: what does it mean to live a good life? What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to love someone?
Q. Your last play Flinch received high praise from critics and toured the U.K. after its London run. What are your hopes for Foreverland?
A. Oh my god, pressure! Well, I’m already delighted by the fact that such extraordinary actors and creatives wanted to bring Foreverland to life, so my hopes have been fulfilled simply by the project coming to fruition. But… I really like to try and write stories that generate discussion and debate; stories that don’t just tell you what to think. I’d love it if the audience wanted to talk about the themes afterwards and came away with different responses.
Q. What’s next? Can you share details of any projects you have in development?
A. Happily, I have lots of projects in development right now. I am under commission to write a new play for Empire Street Productions, who produced Prima Facie and Slave Play. The show I am writing for them is on a large scale, with a big cast and a period setting, so it’s been fun to create. I am also developing a T.V. adaptation of a novel for a brilliant writer. And, I am going to live in Budapest for three months next year, to write a play in residence at CEU University. I can’t wait to live abroad and already know that much of my best thinking will be done in thermal baths. In all seriousness, I’m hugely excited for the project I’m going to work on there, which has a dystopian setting, a bit like Foreverland.
FOREVERLAND by Emma Hemingford runs at Southwark Playhouse until 19th October 2024
Tickets are available from https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/foreverland
Stephen Cambridge interviewed Emma Hemingford
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