Playwright Mark Ravenhill brings his latest satirical work to the Galway Arts Festival this week. He tells Christine Madden what it's like to be stalked by controversies
Artists wrack their brains these days to come up with something even more outlandish than reality. Take the example of playwright Mark Ravenhill's piece, Product, which comes to this year's Galway Arts Festival. Last summer, while he was in London rehearsing his play about Western-Islamic relations and terrorist involvement, for the Edinburgh Festival, suicide bombers detonated explosives in the London Underground.
"It felt strange because it happened more or less midway through our rehearsals," Ravenhill remembers. "But actually, by the time we got to Edinburgh, the audience seemed to be pretty clear of those London bombings. What made the audience more nervous this year was the Danish cartoons and the question of what's an appropriate way to represent Islam, what's inappropriate, what's offensive, what's not? I think that's actually had more of an impact than the bombings ever had."
Interesting words from a writer who has never shied away from shocking his audience. Together with such writers as Sarah Kane, Ravenhill exploded onto the theatre scene in the mid-1990s. His play Shopping and F**king, which premiered at the Royal Court, helped change the direction of a stalled theatre sector in need of adrenalin - not only in the English-speaking world. He is equally, if not even more, revered on the Continent. "You've come up with the best play title ever in theatre history," a colleague reverently teased him at a theatre festival abroad - one of many to which he is currently touring his Product.
"I might as well have it on my passport," he moaned recently. "Name: Mark 'Shopping and F**king' Ravenhill." Product, one of about a dozen plays Ravenhill has written, has become an international hit - partially because, as one (very likely jealous) theatre professional described, it's a good product itself: cast of one (Ravenhill himself), minimal stage design, one other actor involved who needs to learn only one one-word line - and Ravenhill always employs local actors on site.
"I really liked that idea of pieces of theatre that were really dead simple," he explains. "And one of the things that makes it really dead simple is that you don't need to wait for actors to be available. You can just get up and start doing it." And it's not only our badly-informed Western notion of Islam that Ravenhill slings about the stage in Product. In time-honoured Shakespearean tradition, Product's story takes place within a story: Ravenhill plays a producer pitching for his life at an almost mute actress. The preposterous story he unravels (think a post-9/11, Lara Croft version of Pride and Prejudice as told by a butch Jennifer Saunders) leaves her speechless, and the audience gagging with laughter - and suppressed, uneasy twinges of guilt.
Has he had any response from the entertainment sector? Ravenhill chuckles. "Friends in the film industry have said it's cruel, but accurate." And not just in characterisation: one film about 9/11 has already opened, with another, he hears, on the way. "You can only get in there a little footstep before, but Hollywood's always going to be coming up with the cliche just a step behind you." And now he laughs outright. "Rather worryingly, lots of people have said 'Oh, I'd love to see the film.' You kind of think, 'Nooo, don't go there. You just don't want to see it!' "
Despite the often brutal situations and imagery in his work, Ravenhill comes across as quite gentle and introspective in person. A sense of intellectual inquiry always glares through the humour and hardness of his plays. With Product, he explains, "I wanted to write about what our world was post-9/11, was there any reality to the idea of a war on terror, and what had changed and what was the same between us and Islam. The piece kind of ducks and dives through all the different stereotypes that both sides have of each other and layers them on. You're trying to get to the truth by having cliches contradict each other. It's one possible route through to something that, underneath, isn't a cliche."
Beyond that, Ravenhill broods over the deficits in today's Western society. "I think the piece kind of prods away at the fact that we've got no concept of faith nor any real way of processing death, or certainly any belief in any kind of life beyond death, like Islam does. It may be that we're looking at the possibility that the civilisation with the religious faith is the stronger civilisation."
Ravenhill, who is HIV-positive, concedes that his condition may influence his writing - more often unconsciously than consciously. In the contemplation of death and mortality, faith can appear very appealing. "I don't feel as though I've got any faith," he says. "But I'm always quite regretful about that, and envious of people who can have that kind of faith."
Good theatre perhaps compensates. Ravenhill, whose articles frequently appear in the Guardian, recently wrote that work/life balance in theatre was anathema to the creation of "any decent art", and clearly lives for his vocation. Then there are the benefits of international success. "My passport's getting well and truly used this year. And it's a nice way to see different countries, you just roll up and do the show, then hang out with the people at the festivals. It's always really interesting." Theatres in other countries have also expressed an interest in translation and production of Product. "So, hopefully, it will be done around Europe with different actors," Ravenhill says. So he'd get the chance not only to see the play in translation but also to witness another actor playing himself? "Yeah," he laughs. How many more layers can he add?
•Product is at Druid Theatre, Flood Street, Galway from Tuesday to Saturday, July 22nd. Tickets cost €18/€20