Sitting on the dock of despair

'I write about politics for the very reason that I am a cynic,' playwright Gregory Burke, author of the biting 'Gagarin Way', …

'I write about politics for the very reason that I am a cynic,' playwright Gregory Burke, author of the biting 'Gagarin Way', tells Jane Coyle.

It was Brendan Behan who described the art of drama thus: "Get them laughing. Stop them laughing. And when they stop, that's the drama". It's a lesson which Scottish playwright Gregory Burke has learned effortlessly. In the two years since its explosive premiere at the 2001 Edinburgh Festival, his first - and, so far, only - play, Gagarin Way, has scorched itself upon the international theatrical consciousness; it has been produced all over the world and translated into 19 languages.

Written in the thick, salty, expletive-ridden vernacular of Burke's native Fife, there have been English-speaking audiences - in London and Montreal - who have thought it was written in Gallic.

"Audiences in Montreal were interested in it from the point of view of the struggles of a linguistic minority, with which they readily identified. I had to explain that we're not a linguistic minority. We speak English in Scotland, it's just the accent that's a bit different. At the National Theatre in London, two old dears asked for their money back because nobody had told them the play was written in Scots Gaelic. It was at a matinee performance, full of retired colonels and their wives, who had probably come out to see a play about 'that cosmonaut chappie' and instead were confronted with a couple of lunatic Scottish communists, saying c**t every other word."

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The bitter humour of Gagarin Way has been introduced to Irish audiences by Belfast's Prime Cut company, as the latest in its long, distinguished tradition of producing challenging plays. It is directed by Jackie Doyle, who charged four Scottish actors with the responsibility of delivering the verbal and physical violence and off-the-wall humour of this blistering, black comedy.

Wherever it is performed, there has been much debate about whether it is a political play or a play about politics. Burke shrugs his shoulders.

"It has often been accused of being a piece of political theatre - a comedy about politics. And therein lies the rub. I suspect that a lot of people don't think politics is something to be joked about. And because it takes on the issue of globalisation, a lot of people have assumed that I am an anti-globalist, which, disappointingly for them, I am not.

"I am of that generation, which does not have the memories of a world war to keep them going. We kind of opted out. Like the guys in the play, I worked in a factory for a minimum wage and with no rights. But whereas, at the beginning of the 20th century, people got up and fought for their rights, we walked away. In that sense, the play reflects the non-committed generation that I come from. I write about politics for the very reason that I am a cynic.

The play is about a group of highly committed individuals, who cannot accept that the thing which has, for so long, informed and defined their community - the socialist ideology - is no longer considered relevant. They feel marginalised and diminished and they turn to violence as a way of reminding the world that they haven't gone away.

There is a huge amount of the writer himself in the pivotal character of Eddie, a factory floor philosopher and intellectual, with a restless imagination that recognises no bounds of decency or human tolerance.

"Yeah, that's me", grins Burke. "I'm always the one who goes too far. Everyone is saying, shut up, you're not funny any more. And still I keep going. Drives everyone bonkers.

"I grew up in an environment that spawned loads of Eddies - hard guys, who had left school early but who were incredibly well read and could spout socialist philosophy till it came out of their ears. People in the factory would look at them and think: 'why are you here?' They probably thought that about me, too".

Burke comes from a family of dockyard workers - his father worked in the yards in Scotland and Gibraltar; his grandfather was a miner, before moving to the famous Rosyth yard. His was a home where conversation and opinions mattered and where everyone was encouraged to read. Local politics were dominated by the Communist Party, whose members were mainly Protestant, and the Labour Party, whose constituency was largely Catholic. Burke's father escaped evacuation during the second World War, because his mother kept him at home. "She was terrified he'd be sent to a Protestant school!" laughs Burke. "She preferred to keep him at home, dodging the bombs that were falling like rain on the shipyards." While his more academically-inclined sister went to Oxford, to study mathematics, Burke drifted aimlessly to university in Stirling.

"I was opted on to one of those schemes for getting lunatics from council estates into something meaningful." He studied philosophy - "a loose description" - only to drop out in his second year and bum his way through an assortment of menial jobs around Lumphinanns area of Dunfermline.

"It's a town where the streets are named after socialist heroes - Willie Gallagher, the only Communist MP to have been elected to Westminster; Kier Hardie, founder of the Labour Party. They wanted to call one after the first female cosmonaut, Valentina Tereschkova - but they couldn't spell her name! "In 1997, in the absence of any better ideas, Burke decided to write a play.

"Honestly, it was as simple as: 'I can write something - and it'll be better than the stuff that's around at the moment'. The theatre certainly wasn't in my background. I'd never even been inside a theatre until I signed the contract for Gagarin Way at the Traverse [Theatre in Edinburgh] . I had sent the script in unsolicited and they never got back to me for about a year. Then John Tiffany, the literary director, spotted it. He had grown up in Huddersfield and he understood exactly where it was coming from. It was the first time the Traverse had produced an unsolicited play. It transferred to the National in London, which had never before staged a first play, then went to the West End and all over the world. Crazy!".

Burke pinpoints the miners strike of 1984-85 as the historical landmark that struck deepest into his political consciousness. He was 16 and was witness to thousands of proud men being stripped of their livelihoods and self respect, as his once-thriving community was reduced to a wasteland. He recalls riots and police arrests at his school. This was the climate that fuelled the passion of Gagarin Way and provoked resonances of identification in every city it has played - Gdansk, Leipzig, Buenos Aires.

His next play, The Straits - the first in a planned trilogy and seen at this year's Edinburgh Fringe - is about teenagers growing up in Gibraltar during the Falklands War. Burke spent 12 years of his childhood there and is familiar with the working class military community, which defines itself in terms of service to the British crown.

In the way that the industrial communities handed down their trades and their politics, generations of young men have followed their fathers and grandfathers into the services. He talks about the difficulty he encountered in recreating a group of young people who are "unbelievably inarticulate". But he also admits that he revels in the linguistic challenge it offers. "I love language. And I love telling stories. Being successful at it is an unexpected bonus. People ask me why I write plays, but it's obvious isn't it? It's all about showing off. It's like 'look at me!' Those who know me well don't find it surprising at all! I'm in my element."

Gagarin Way is at the Old Museum Arts Centre in Belfast tonight, then on tour to Coleraine, Lisburn, Armagh and Derry, before coming to The Helix as part of the ESB Dublin Fringe (October 6th-11th)