11:19am Thursday 18th March 2010
Jarrow playwright Tom Kelly talks to Viv Hardwick about his work being taken on the River Tyne before its regional debut tour.
IT’S Tyne for Tom Kelly.
The Jarrow-born playwright has his words taking to the water when the MV Fortuna literally launches a tour of his work with a cruise between Newcastle Quayside and the Customs House, South Shields, where the passengers will watch some of Kelly’s monologues and poetry readings by Kelly.
Monday’s sell-out event, called Talking Tom, is followed by the first Customs House regional tour which, next week, takes in Middlesbrough, Hexham, Stanley, Washington and Berwick.
“It all started with a decision to celebrate 15 years of the Customs House and the venue decided to put on Talking Tom, The Machine Gunners, Tom and Catherine and Dan Dare. They’ve chosen the funniest, the best, call it what you will, the strongest and they’re called Talking Tom because that’s who I am. I suppose it’s also a take on Talking Heads,” says Kelly who can be seen at the Customs House, as part of Talking Tom, until Saturday.
Donald McBride is giving The Club Doorman and Neighbourhood Watch monologues while Pat Dunn features in Elsie and Elsie Rides Again. “I had to tweak the scripts a little bit after a meeting with the director Jackie Fielding who keeps me right. She’s the kind of person who lives the whole thing.
It’s terrific. The smoking ban has come in since I wrote them so that any smoking in the monologues has to be taken to an area outside. The two actors are terrific as well and have been almost made for those parts. I’ve worked with Donald on Tom and Catherine and Dan Dare and he’s a great guy and so meticulous and makes you question what you’re doing.”
Kelly took a big gamble when his three children were older by down-sizing his house and taking up writing full-time.
“I do creative writing projects as well in schools and do talks for writers’ groups as well as a whole variety of things such as reading extracts from a crime novel.
There’s work there but I’m writing full time and trying to keep that balance. I was working full-time as a drama lecturer and something had to give. So we sold the house, downsized and did away with the mortgage and managed to survive with the bit of money that I got when I packed in at South Tyneside College. I was there for about 25 years. I didn’t start writing until I was in my mid-Twenties and I started writing lyrics with a musician which led to a publishing contract with Alan Price,” he says.
That led to the musical Kelly, about HMS Kelly, using Price’s music plus song-writing for David Price, Alan’s cousin.
“After ten years I got dropped by the music company and I suddenly realised I’d got no money so I went off and did a degree at the old Newcastle Poly and ended up teaching. I was married at the time and I was in 3-D at that time: degree, daughter and the dole. I had a variety of horrible jobs and you just survive. But when I got to my Fifties I thought ‘I’ve just got to get out’. Working full-time and trying to write full-time meant something had to give,” he says.
Kelly owns a lot to Ray Spencer, artistic director of The Customs House, who has taken on productions of his work over the past ten years.
“I think I’ve generated an audience there who ensure that interest in me is okay,” says the playwright who almost made his big breakthrough to national fame with Tom and Catherine, a look at the life of the region’s best-known writer Catherine Cookson.
“When you’re working full time you don’t have the energy to sell yourself and it’s something that I’ve never really done and for the last two years I’ve been able to and had four collections of poetry published. Until now I couldn’t really go to Carlisle to do a reading because it was straight after work. I can do that now. I’m 62 and for Talking Tom I’m doing a reading in between the monologues... I’m the dressing between the two pieces of chicken,” he jokes and thinks his contribution will be his poem about a Geordie everyman from his 2008 collection.
“So that means I’m Talking Tom cruise... we want sunbeds and ambre solaire in future,” he adds about the Tyne’s first floating theatre project which has gone so well that more are likely to follow.
Kelly’s next piece will be about the Workers’ Education Association, called Hungry Hearts and Heads, and its first secretary and Stanley pitman Jack Trevena who went to prison in 1914 as a conscientious objector.
“That will be touring as well and I might be out on the Tyne with it,” says Kelly.
■ Talking Tom runs at the Customs House, South Shields, until Saturday and then tours: Tuesday, Middlesbrough Town Hall Crypt, Box Office: 01642- 729-729, visitmiddlesbrough.com; Wednesday, Queens Hall Arts Centre, Hexham. 01434-652-477.
Thursday, Lamplight Arts Centre, Stanley, 01207-218-899, leisureworksonline.co.uk.
Friday, Washington Arts Centre, 0191-219-3455, artscentrewashington.co.uk
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