Laura Wade
Laura Wade
Laura Wadeis an English playwright...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPlaywright
aspect bash drawn endlessly imagining involved privilege
'Posh' is not really political. I didn't want to aim a brickbat at the system. Or to bash Old Etonians. It was always the class and privilege aspect of that world that I was most drawn to. There is something endlessly fascinating about imagining something you could never be involved in.
contact death direct maybe
Maybe if I'd had more direct contact with death, I wouldn't find it so fascinating and I wouldn't write about it so much.
ability analytic charming draws easy education great passage people though
Old Etonians are the most charming people in the world. It's not just the analytic ability and the great education; there is a really easy confidence to them that draws people to them and makes their passage though the world a little easier.
both edge family natural putting quite rather shy
I was the family alien. Both my parents are quite creative, but I was... appalling... always putting on little shows. I was rather a shy child, not a natural performer, but there was a performative edge to everything I did.
people quite title
I think the interesting thing about the word 'posh' is that it is so relative; it's quite a provocative title because people have strong feelings about that word.
advances grieving interested left mean opportunity people
I am interested in the way advances in medicine and palliative care mean more people now have the opportunity to plan their own deaths, and also plan for those who are left behind. What does that do to the grieving process?
killer less plays serial
Your plays are always personal. You can't help seeing yourself in the serial killer you've just written. But they get less specifically personal.
society
We're not going to create a more equal society by not prodding at it, are we?
bristol early final pages produced studio union war wrote year
In my final year at Bristol University, I wrote a play called 'White Feathers.' It was produced in the studio theatre at the students' union in early 1999, when I was 21. It's 100 pages long: a very traditional play, with an interval, about deserters in the First World War.
It's not a meritocracy until everyone starts with the same opportunities, is it?
believe means privileged time
I think it's disingenuous to believe that being born into a privileged world means you feel like you are having an easy time.
gave good sports sticking successful time
I'm not very good at sticking at things if I can't be successful at them. I gave up on sport a long time ago.
band becoming expanding extending fiction germs observed quite rubber stretching
Quite often, little germs of ideas have come from something that I've observed or someone's told me. The process of it becoming fiction is expanding and extending it: stretching the rubber band of reality.
becomes repeat texture tribe
Writing a tribe is fun. They have their own language, their own slang; they repeat it, and it becomes part of the texture of the play. For a writer, that's thrilling. That's when my pen flies.