Tom Stoppard, one of world's most celebrated playwrights, has a way of grappling with our serious moral and philosophical concerns with a sharp and idiosyncratic wit. Catapulting to fame following the first production of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” in 1967, Stoppard went on to write a series of magisterial plays including “Arcadia”, “The Invention of Love” and “The Real Thing.”. Stoppard was knighted in 1997 and his screenplay of “Shakespeare in Love” won him an Academy Award in 1998. Excerpts from a conversation at the Jaipur Literature Festival, where he was one of most eagerly sought after speakers.
You started with radio plays. And then moved to start writing for the stage. Can you talk us through why you began with radio plays, why you made the shift, and whether you think radio plays are almost dead now given the reducing importance of the medium.
Your question presupposes that I made the decision for reasons. No. Radio was an opportunity and I was delighted to have anything on in any medium. The first play I wrote was a stage play but then I wrote a couple of short radio plays not very long afterwards.
I was planning to become a writer. And radio is a huge opportunity for young writers because, then more than now, it required a lot of drama material. It is not a big commitment for an actor, it's a short commitment, so you can get better actors for radio plays than for others. They only have to learn the lines, be there only for a couple of days.
I think the last play Peggy Ashcroft did was my “In the Native State”, which was a radio play.
Which you then turned into “Indian Ink” for the stage.
Exactly.
What exactly did this process involve? Was it largely writing the parts that come in italics?
No. I restructured it. In fact, I was initially just content for it to be a radio play; it worked well as a radio play. The actress I wrote it for was keen to do the character again. And then, there was a producer, Michael Codron, a key producer for London's West End theatre who commissioned if I remember rightly. I felt it would be a pity if nothing more was heard of these characters once the radio play was over. Generally speaking, I would like to give it more life.
Anybody who compares the two will see what I have done. I can't even begin to tell you because I can't remember exactly what I had to do. The play has a present tense and a past tense — it goes from what is happening to India now to what was happening back then.
Politics is not at the centre of the play, but the play ends on a very political and passionate note, with Flora Crewe saying “I sometimes wonder they [the Indians] do not cut all our heads off and say nothing more for it.”
She is quoting Emily Eden from the 19th century. Emily Eden was the sister of whoever led the expedition to Afghanistan [George Eden]. And this was a paragraph in her journal about the British surrounded by people and she wonders why they don't chop our heads off.
You say that your plays are events, not literature. But your plays are also studied as literature. What are your thoughts on this?
It was a pleasant surprise, frankly, that people publish and read my plays like books and literature. I've never done it myself. And I loved the idea of being in print. I'm very grateful that this situation has come about where publishers felt it worthwhile to actually publish plays. Apparently, it doesn't happen here [in India] much. Somebody was telling me this.
I think I was at the right time, at the right moment in my life when I started writing plays. I was 20 in 1957, and I remember Penguin trying to poach me from Faber. I mean, I was a nobody, but publishing plays was quite a hot part of publishing.
You started writing when the climate was open to young writers?
Yes. In some senses, it has actually got better because there are many more fringe theatres, theatres in pubs or very small venues. Interestingly, what they mainly want is new work. And there seems to be no shortage of young writers, albeit in this age of movies and television, who want to write for the theatre.
How often have you written for an actor?
I wrote “Indian Ink” for…
Felicity Kendal.
Yes, I also wrote “Travesties” for an actor who died a couple of months ago called John Wood. But on the whole, not often at all. Of course, at any given point, there are actors you'd love to have in your play but that's not the same thing as writing a part for them.
When you say you wrote “Indian Ink” for Felicity Kendal, was it because of her India connection? Or because you thought she fitted Flora's part in some way?
It was the other way around. I invented Flora for her. But it was because of “Shakespearewallah” and because I knew of her parents. I also wanted to write a play about India because India was a part of my life I had never used in my work.
When you write, is it the performance uppermost in your mind? Or is the act of writing, independent of how it may be performed?
I don't consider the thing to be fulfilled unless it is rehearsed and performed. That's what we [playwrights] do. It would be a very odd form to write in if it is not for performance.
You didn't want to answer the question which was the hardest play to write. Is there a play that was the nicest to write?
It wasn't that I didn't want to answer that. It's just there was just no one answer that I could think of. “The Invention of Love” was perhaps the nicest play to write. It was saturated in what you call research, though I only really read for pleasure. Research seems like rather a dogged activity. But I loved informing myself about things I knew very little about.
Would this also be true of a play like “Arcadia”, which grapples with such complex issues such as relativity and quantum mechanics? That it was not researched but simply came out of reading for pleasure?
I mentioned that writers were beneficiaries of a kind of sub-conscious. And in the case of “Arcadia”, most of the material that I needed was on my bookshelf for years. I had been instinctively collecting long before I knew I would be doing the play.
You were always a famous playwright but “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” consolidated your reputation. Why do you think it did that?
I wasn't famous really. I was not known at all. I'd done a few plays. But “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” relaxed me actually. I wanted to make a mark, you know. After this, I didn't any longer have to be anxious about making that mark.
What made you pick up the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the two least likely heroes in a play?
There was no why about it. I thought it was a great idea that could work. I just liked the idea of having these two characters caught up in a situation they didn't understand.
This ability to grapple with serious issues with wit and lightness — does this come reflexively to you? Or is this something you set out to do?
This is a view that describes my work as having these attributes you mention. But it's not part of what I am aware of.
But would you agree it is this quality that lends your plays that special Stoppardian stamp?
Again, you know, it's a nice thing to hear from other people. I don't disagree or agree. I don't assume because people admire my plays at the moment, that they will be admired in 50 years. There are enough examples of this — people go in an out of fashion.
I think in Evelyn Waugh's memoir or autobiography, he wrote about this practice of publishers who advertise other books in their list at the end of novels that he or others had written. He was made aware years later that almost all of these books had gone into oblivion instead of being assured of longevity and even immortality.
