We’ve all heard the cliché at the start of an event involving a massive guest star - “this man/woman needs no introduction…”
But with Willy Russell, one of the star names at the student-organised Cultural Exchanges Festival, an introduction was essential, if only to remind us of what a massive coup it was to have him appear in front of an audience at De Montfort University.
Host Barbara Matthews, PVC Dean of the Faculty of Art, Design and Humanities, told us that, as we speak, the writer of Blood Brothers, Educating Rita, Shirley Valentine and more than a dozen other major musicals, plays and films, had work being staged in Korea, Brazil, Japan, Australia and most of Europe.
His mantel piece is laden with Olivier and Tony Awards, while two of his screen adaptations have been Oscar and BAFTA-nominated.
But, for one night only, the sell-out audience at this week’s event would also be able to observe one of his other great talents, that of a master storyteller.
Russell told the audience how theatre is a poetic medium and – as the introduction to Shakespeare’s Henry V says - we should use our collective imaginations to see what the writer sees.
And so we were all there with him when Russell told us how in his working class Liverpool home “song and music was as natural as switching on a tap”, that seeing The Beatles for the first time at The Cavern was like watching aliens from another planet “all dressed in black with their long hair brushed forward”, while working with people like Julie Walters, Jonathan Pryce and Bernard Hill at the Everyman Theatre was a coming together of theatrical minds that will probably never be repeated.
But acting out a scene from Shirley Valentine, playing the 42-year-old female lead, was when the audience’s collective imagination really took hold. His performance brought the house down.
Earlier in the day, Russell had visited Curve Theatre to speak to DMU students who will be performing his play “Our Day Out” – an experience unlikely to be repeated in their lifetime.
Last night, for DMU students wanting to write and produce anything from a kitchen sink drama to a Broadway smash, Russell’s view of the world was full of anecdotes that formed priceless pieces of advice.
He was frustrated by unions asking for writers to be paid the minimum wage. “You live by the pen; on your head be it.”
And that playwrights have to make mistakes to get better. “They need to be spectacularly wrong and they need to fail.”
While the process of a writer getting their work on to the stage is more difficult than ever due to the number of committees and managers there are. “There is a massive level of subcutaneous fat between the writer of the play and the stage.”
But he saved his best until last with an anecdote about writers who try too hard to be controversial and take themselves too seriously without realising they have a “phenomenal obligation” to entertain.
One such playwright a few years back talked about how important his work was and that it needed to be taken to the destitute people in the East End of London, to which Russell replied “My God! Haven’t those poor people suffered enough!”.
Cultural Exchanges continues today and tomorrow with appearances by stars such as author and comedian David Baddiel and legendary Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett.
Posted on Thursday 3 March 2016