Hotlight on...Satinder Chohan

A bit of a Q&A with brilliant playwright Satinder Chohan, who wrote last term's commissioned play 'Crossing The Line.'

Congratulations on Crossing The Line. It was a great play to be part of.
Word that comes to mind is ‘big.’
Big issues – morality, class, youth, Somali ‘piracy,’ East/West divide - amongst a few.
How did you get started on this play?

I started with a big idea! Of young people and their place in the world...narrowed down to a group of British gap year students on a tall ship on the Indian Ocean, who encounter a group of young Somali pirates. I was really intrigued by the idea that at an age where British youngsters are thinking about university or a job, youngsters of the same age in Somalia could be headed for a life of piracy on the seas. Gap year students or pirates - both are young adults searching for something in an uncertain world. Contrasting the two sides threw up endless creative possibilities - and the global politics that connects them, even more. So I began by reading a lot of often sensationalist and biased news material about pirates, researched as much as I could and then, tried to do a lot of imagining!

Big cast – have you worked with such a big cast before and how did/do you find it?

No, I'd never worked with such a big cast before. I learnt so much from them. So many talented, enthusiastic, committed young actors, who worked for one another and really poured their energies into rehearsals and the production. The cast made the experience for me. There was so much more we could have explored together through character and story than we had time for.

Big play – any writing plans for the year?

I'm currently working on a couple of plays. One is set in a beauty salon in deepest, darkest British Asian suburbia. The other is a play inspired by the ancient Indian sport of kabaddi, with an Olympic theme, set in 1936 and 2011. I'm also working on a film script about a group of teenage girls, who are searching for their missing friend. Ideally, I like focusing on one project at a time but I've been doing a lot of project juggling lately - the only way to work when trying to make a meagre living as a writer!

First theatre memory

Books, films and music (Western and Indian) were my creative nourishment when I was growing up. We knew very little about theatre in our house and until university, I'd only been to the theatre on school trips. So my first theatre memory is vague - the Unicorn Theatre mixed up with Clive Owen at the Young Vic mixed up with The Winter's Tale and King Lear thrown in. What I do remember though is the wide-eyed excitement of being in a real life living breathing musty old theatre, waiting to watch a story unfold.

How did you get started in show business (specifically playwriting)?

Showbusiness - I wish it were as glam as that! I've wanted to write since I was very young - plays, films, novels, poetry, everything. But it's taken me a while to find the confidence to get writing again. I was working as a documentary researcher when I realised I simply had to tell my own stories, to create other worlds, to create my own vision of the world, before I got locked into a routine working life. So I took the pay cut and wrote Zameen, a play about suicide farmers in Punjab, India. Zameen went on a national tour and initiated me into the joys and frustrations of play-writing. I'm seriously hooked now.

Favourite play

Impossible to choose! I love Arthur Miller's Death of A Salesman/All My Sons, Sam Shephard's Buried Child, the surreal symbolism of Strindberg's A Dream Play, the absurdist nuttiness of Pirandello, the politics of Brecht, The Tempest, the rural melodrama of Lorca's plays - very classic fare. More versed in literature and film, I feel like I'm still figuring out this theatre lark - finding my voice, my process, my aesthetic tastes, so I'm discovering brilliant old and new plays all the time.

Favourite working writer

Dead or alive, it's too tough to choose a favourite. I'm still getting to know the work of a lot of living writers...Off the top of my head, I hugely admire Caryl Churchill - the way she boldly experiments with form, structure, language, always pushing the bounds of drama through her writing and her politics. She's an incredibly fearless writer...Others I like include Sam Shephard, who writes about dysfunctional families against visceral emotional and physical landscapes - he's so edgy and mythic... I love contemporary work that's abstract, expressionistic, symbolist, that challenges language, so look out for writers like Tarrell Alvin McCraney, Enda Walsh and Oladipo Agboulaje too.

Favourite working actor

Easy - all the heat & lighters on the production of Crossing the Line. Not an ego in sight. Some exciting talents for the future - I expect big things from them!

Favourite working director

Directors like Indhu Rubasingham and Bijan Sheibani. Between them, they've directed some of my favourite recent plays - Rubasingham (Ruined and co-director of The Great Game) and Sheibani (The Brothers Size and Our Class). There's a real power and intelligence to their productions and an innate, sensitive understanding of the distinctive worlds of their writers. They're brilliant directors with unique vision.

Finally, in the vein of Jerry’s Final Thought, a piece of writing advice or tip you have for other writers? Or a general life quote?

I'm not at a point where I could possibly impart advice to other writers but I would say - writing is a life's mission, so be prepared for the long haul! Writing is about play, creativity, imagination - yet it's also about hard work, discipline, patience, sacrifice and striving to be a better, bold writer all the time. It's tough and confronting but even so, incredibly rewarding!