Colonial Ways When I lived in Algeria I wrote a play.
The only theatrical agent I had ever read about was the great Peggy Ramsay, who
was Joe Orton's agent. When I went to London on holidays I sent her a copy of
my play. She invited me to her office. It was a wet day. It was raining. I wore a
roll necked white pullover and a trench coat, with the collar turned
writerishly up - it was the seventies. Miss Ramsay gave me tea, and advice. She
told me to write what I knew about. I could never really decide whether that
was very good advice, or very bad. Years later I wrote another play called Colonial
Ways. It was set in Van Diemen's Land, the original name for Tasmania, in
the 1820s. My Van Diemen's Land is a Never-Never land and nothing like the real
place, or the real times. Colonial Ways is meant to be performed as commedia
dell'arte, or as a Tivoli pantomime. When I was writing it I imagined it
being performed by the convict actors at the Emu Plains theatre in the 1830s. The script of Colonial Ways is published
here. It was first produced by Hobart's Old Nick Company in 2004.