Review: Gagarinin tie
1. Could you first tell us a little about your background and what you did before you became a writer?
I was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1968. After finishing school and dropping out of college, I did a number of important jobs for minimum wage.
2. I read in one of your interviews that you wrote Gagarin’s Way for ten years. Did you really write it for that long or was it just in your mind? How did the idea come about into a play that you sent to the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh?
I’ve always wanted to write. It only became possible when my grandfather died and left me some money. I was able to take three months off work and wrote Gagarin’s Way. I had been planning it for a while, but not ten years (I don’t know who the interviewer thought so), maybe a couple of years. Then I left the script for a year (I don’t know why) before sending it to the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in 1998. Since the play had not been commissioned, it took almost a year before I received a response – by that time I had already lost hope – they liked my text. I went to see Traverse’s artistic director, John Tiffany (who directed the play in Edinburgh and London), and he promised to make a reading performance of the play in March 2000. It went very well and Traverse booked the play for the 2001 festival.
3. Is it true that you were inspired to write Gagarin’s Way by a street sign in Lumphinnas?
The play is named after Gagarin Way. The street is located in Fife, Scotland, in the mining village of Lumphinnans, which was the seat of communism. West Fife is the only constituency in the UK – today it is divided into West and East Dunfermline constituencies – from which a Communist Party representative has ever entered the British Parliament, and Gagarin Way is the only street in Britain named after Yuri Gagarin. There is a joke in Fife that they would have named the street after Tereshkova (the first woman to go into space), but no one knew how to spell it.
4. Can you name some role models or sources of inspiration for your work?
Many people have influenced me. I like Irish playwrights a lot. Gagarin’s path is based in particular on Brendan Behan’s instruction “Make them laugh and then stop laughing”. Of course, I also like a lot of movies and usually read a lot of both fiction and fact. I don’t have any other role models than maybe the writers of The Simpsons.
5. Do the characters in your play or the story itself have any role models in real life?
All characters are based on real people. Unfortunately, there are too many Eddies in Scotland and not enough Garys.
6. Gagarin’s Road is a pretty violent play. What do you think about violence in movies and plays?
I grew up in Gibraltar and Rosyth, both of which are British naval cities. You grow into fights. Violence is part of everyday life. It’s not right or wrong, it just is.
7. Gagarin’s Way talks about existentialism, Marxism, globalization and anarcho-terrorism. How political do you consider your play on a scale of zero to ten?
Gagarin’s Path is about power and violence. It is completely political.
8. Do you personally also see globalisation as a positive process that creates global markets and interconnects economies even more closely, or do you think that it only serves the interests of multinationals and rich countries, with no regard for poverty and human rights in developing countries? How do you think globalization could be controlled? How do you see the effects of globalisation on the individual level?
Globalization? If Marx taught us nothing else, it is at least the greedy nature of capital. Capitalism is always looking for new ways to benefit from labor, natural riches and knowledge. Global exploitation is no more or less a crime than local exploitation, but here in the West, thanks to the global information network, we can realize with horror that our poor are infinitely better off than the poor in developing countries. And then you wonder about people’s indifference.
9. Gagarin’s Way is also about men. How do you see the man’s situation in today’s society? Does your play reflect the crisis of masculinity in some way?
A crisis of masculinity? We don’t have that in Scotland. We just get drunk and fight with each other. This has been going on for years.
10. Despite its serious themes, there is still a lot of humor in Gagarin’s Way. If you had to classify your play, would it be more of a comedy, a political play, or something else?
The events of the play take place in the warehouse of Fife’s factory in Dunfermline. It tells the story of two men, a factory worker, who decide to kidnap and kill their leader. It is their stance against global capitalism. However, their poorly planned project begins to run out of steam when they realize that the boss they kidnapped, Frank, is not what they assumed him to be. The situation is further complicated by the unintentional involvement of the factory guard, Tom, in the matter. I wanted to write about the 20th century and how communism, which was the great hope of the working class at the beginning of the century, was only visible in a few street signs in the former industrial area at the end of the century. I wanted to write about the 20th century and it became a comedy. But when you consider the themes of the play, the theories of Marx and Hegel’s history, anarchism, psychopathology, existentialism, mental illness, political terrorism, nihilism, globalization, and the crisis of masculinity, it can be nothing but a comedy.
11. The original Traverse Theatre production of Gagarin’s Road has toured at least at the Åpne Theatre in Norway. Can you tell me where else it has been on tour? The rights to the play are in high demand around the world. In Finland, there will be two premieres of Gagarin’s Road in January, here at the Helsinki City Theatre and a couple of weeks earlier at the Tampere Workers’ Theatre. In which other theatres will it be in the repertoire?
Gagarin’s Road will be made in Germany – in Essen, Leipzig, Göttingen, Bremen and a few other productions next year.
Scottish visit and Norwegian production in Oslo next year
Scottish visit and Swedish production at Riksteatern in Stockholm next year
Premiere in Warsaw 18.1.2003
Ljubljana, March 2003
Toronto, April 2003
Barcelona, July 2003
New York, 2003
Paris, February 2004
The rights to the play have also been sold to Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, Australia, Lithuania, Switzerland, Austria, Serbia, Argentina and elsewhere, but I don’t remember where.
12. Has the success of your play changed you in any way?
The success of Gagarin’s Way has turned me into a monster. I am selfish, vain, convinced of my own genius and prone to violent artistic outbursts. Apart from these, I’m the same old Gregory.
13. Is it true that you currently write for the Paines Plough and Royal National theatres? What are you doing at the moment and what are your plans for the future? Is theatre what you want to do for the rest of your life or do you have something else in mind?
I’m currently rewriting my play Occy Eyes – which takes place in Gibraltar during the Falklands War – for the London-based group Paines Plough, which supports new drama. I am currently employed as a writer at the Royal National Theatre Studio with the support of the Pearson Television grant scheme. We are also making a film with John Tiffany, the director of the original version of Gagarin’s Way. In a few years, I see myself either in a luxury apartment in Hollywood or under a bridge in central London.
14. Final question. We looked at the map of Lumphinnans and actually found the Gagarin Way. But is it a dead end?
Yes, it’s a dead end, both literally and figuratively (it ends tragically in an empty patch of land with a couple of goals for playing football – which, apart from boxing and crime, is traditionally the only way out of the mines).
* Gregory Burke was interviewed by e-mail Kaisa Mustonen in December 2002.