With the release of 'Heartache' fast approaching, I got together with George Murphy (voice actor and writer of 'Heartache') to find out why he writes, how he writes and just generally what makes him tick. Here's what he said.
From your perspective, as the writer, what is 'Heartache' about?
I've always described ‘Heartache’ as a twisted love story. Love is something we think of as a very positive, beautiful thing. But it is also a motivating factor for some pretty horrific deeds. People say love can cause you to do crazy things and I think that goes to both positive and negative extremes. And this story happens to explore the negative side of that. Plot wise, ‘Heartache’ is about a woman who wakes up in a location she does not recognise with a man who she doesn’t know. For reasons that you’ll uncover throughout the play, this person is keeping her there against her will, but is not harming her, touching her, and wanting to make her as comfortable as possible. The rest you’ll have to wait and see. As I mentioned previously, it’s about love and people’s perception of love,how that can lead to obsession and people putting their own personal feelings above everything else because they simply believe it is ‘right’.
2. Why did you originally write 'Heartache'?
Originally, it was written for university when we had to put on a play for our final year performance. I had primarily done comedy performances at university, I enjoyed making people laugh, it made me feel good, it helped by getting that instant reaction of laughter as you’re performing because you know it’s going well as people are reacting the way you want them to. I always enjoyed that. For my final year performance, I knew my class was expecting something like that, so I wanted to subvert expectations. I wasn’t going to tell anyone anything other than ‘this is a love story’. When the plays starts, it’s just a woman alone in a room for the first scene and I wanted their imaginations to run wild as they slowly realised that it wasn’t a comedy. I also want to challenge myself by doing something more serious with darker themes and an overall drastically different tone from what I was used to performing.
3. Are there any plays or films that particularly inspired you?
Inspiration came from a bunch of different places really. The first thing is I knew I wanted it to be set in one room. I love plays set in one room, things like ‘An Inspector Calls’ or 'Dangerous Corner’ by J.B. Priestly. I think there’s something deeply personal about being trapped with the characters in this one confined space, it forces you to have the dialogue be so gripping and important rather than the physical action on stage as it’s a lot more limited.It also helped that the set design would have to be very limited cos uni. I’d say ‘10 Cloverfield Lane’ for the bunker setting definitely came into it.
The Marvel show ‘Jessica Jones’, with the motivation of the character John definitely helped and then just different stories which leave a lot to the imagination.I think fear is such an interesting subject to broach as everyone has different things which scare them, but fear of the unknown is a common factor that we all share to some degree, so the story has some open ended plot threads and character choices which can be open to interpretation and people can fill in the blanks themselves with what they believe is going on in some areas. Aside from that, inspiration I’d just kind of pluck from different things without thinking about it really.
4. What's your writing process?
I don’t really know. I’d probably say it’s ‘unorthodox’ if that makes sense.I'll have so many ideas that I just kind of throw then on the page and then from there figure out how to connect the dots. I’ll then think about the characters and motivations and arcs and all those things once I’ve got the main bulk figured out. But character almost always comes first. The characters are what I put the most into as I always want them to feel real, I suppose. If I don’t have characters, I care about or find interesting then I struggle to go from there.
5. What was it like turning 'Heartache' from a stage play into a radio play? What changes had to be made?
Changing the play due to COVID was a decision I made pretty quickly. We were told we had to write instead a written version of what we wanted to do and why and submit that or figure out how to adapt it. At the time I had been listening to this radio play called ‘Wolverine: The Long Night’ with Richard Armitage and I found it so engaging and engrossing. So, when I was told I could adapt it, that was instantly the plan.I was lucky that the people I lived with at the time in lockdown had the equipment and my lovely girlfriend, who works in sound design, was able to edit it and sort the technical stuff. I just had to learn how to write and make a radio play.
The biggest change was adding the present day story line, with Jane and the police officer. I needed a way to have the characters narrate what I couldn't relay through sound. So,I thought if I had some scenes where Jane was being interviewed, that could help set the scene as well as break up the scenes with her and John in the bunker nicely. These scenes helped with the story too as Jane is an unreliable narrator. We don't know exactly how long she's been down there, so we don't know how accurate her telling of these events is which opens up a lot of interesting avenues in terms of storytelling and your mind filling in the blanks that I mentioned earlier. Idefinitely prefer this story as a radio play, while I do think it could easily work on stage as originally intended, the fact that this is now a complete auditory experience adds so much in regard to your own imagination. It's like when you read a book and a room is described to you. The author can go into as much detail as they want about that room, but the image in your head of that room will always be different to the one in mine. With a radio play, it's the same thing. The place Jane is in will look vastly different to you when listening than it could to someone else. You can play with sounds and cause the audience to wonder why some ambient sounds are playing, how each character is feeling based on the sound of their breathing or tone of voice rather than relying on their facial expressions or body language. It's a lot more limiting in what you can do, which in turn I believe opens it up to a mountain of exploration and interpretation which I find very interesting.
6. So, after all that, what was it like going to a proper studio to record it?
I always love recording in a studio. Last time we were in our uni house, sat on the floor with a mic in the lounge just trying to make it work. We couldn't even do our lines together as we had to do one at a time and fill in the blanks. A proper studio is always more fun as you'vegot all the tools there to play with, you can actually interact with your fellow actors. I've had so much more experience between when we first did it and now,I felt I could play with the lines so much more. As an actor,it's just fun to know every little detail with your voice is getting picked up, it gives you a lot of room to play and that was a lot of fun.
7. What are you up to at the moment?
Currently I'm writing my next project. currently the working title is shattered. it's about a group of friends and one of them goes missing, and it devolves into this murder mystery where everyone's secrets are slowly laid out in front of them, we see the dark sides of each person that they want to keep hidden. and we see how this group manages to deal with everything when each member of this friend group see's the ugly sides of one another and whether or not they can recover and also if something more sinister has gone on. it's in the very early stages now, just working on the script. It will possibly be released by the end of the year or early 2024. So,we'll see.
8. Any parting thoughts?
I suppose I just hope people enjoy it. It's both terrifying and exciting that it's out of my hands now and it falls down to you, the director, and the editor to make it into something we're all proud of. I'm excited to hear people's interpretations of certain things, their thoughts on the ending, how they've filled in the blanks etc.
‘Heartache’ is available to pre-order now at www.everythingsrosieshows.com/heartache so head over there to get it as soon as it’s released. Until then, I hope you have a lovely week.
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