INTERVIEW: Those Two Weeks writer Ian Salmon

Playwright Ian Salmon

LAST spring, a new play came to the Liverpool stage that suddenly everyone seemed to be talking about. Critics and audiences - including the kind of sought-after crowd not usually seen at the theatre - were unanimous in their acclaim.The play was Those Two Weeks, a family drama set in the days leading up to the Hillsborough tragedy, which returns to the Epstein Theatre in September.Its success marks a whole new career for playwright Ian Salmon, who began writing after three decades working for HMV, including Liverpool’s Church Street branch.After redundancy from the troubled chain, Bootle-based Ian decided it was time for something completely different. “I wanted to change my life, and it got to that point in my life where I could,” he says.He joined a writers group, Merseyside Script Initiative, and in 2014 entered the Page to Stage new writing festival with his first play, Venus Rising. From that moment on, he says he "fell into theatre"; the show was recently revived with the added draw of Hollyoaks actor James Sutton.The following year, his comedy The Comeback Special was highly commended in the Hope Playwriting Prize, and went on to be performed at Hope's Capstone venue plus a later run at the Hope Street Theatre.He began writing Those Two Weeks in early 2015, and although the script was well-received, theatres he approached with it were reluctant to produce something so sensitive in-house. Teaming up with director Mike Dickinson of Naughty Corner - whose plays have included Not the Horse - they set about doing it themselves, debuting at the Unity last March.Loosely based on his own experiences, the play was initially inspired by stories where the relative minutiae of human life is suddenly and unexpectedly overshadowed by something bigger - such as Paul Auster’s novel Brooklyn Rising and the film Remember Me, both set against the backdrop of 9/11."The one thing that towers over our generation is Hillsborough,” he says.“There’s the before, and the after - and nobody’s ever the same after. If you’re not directly affected, everybody knows somebody who was. We all know how easily it could have been any one of us; we could have lost family in a split second.”Reds fan Ian, now 55, was at work on April 15, 1989, but his two brothers were in the stadium that day, as well as other friends and acquaintances. The dilemma was how to approach such an emotive subject and do it justice.“I knew I couldn’t write about the 96. It's not my story, I wasn’t there - and Jimmy McGovern had already done it so well,” Ian said. “There was my brothers’ experiences, but I don’t know what they went through.“And of course, you ask yourself, ‘do I have the right to do this?’As he wrote, he ran the script past his brothers and friends, keen for their approval and understanding.“That they thought it worked meant everything. If they thought it wasn’t right I wouldn’t have put it on,” he says. (Incidentally his brother Keith did write a book, We Had Dreams and Songs to Sing, about his experience.)“It’s been the most humbling and most profound piece of work I’ll ever do.”So the play became about people who were at home on that fateful day, the tale of a working class family meeting the son’s girlfriend for the first time, and the clash between the generations. The audience, however, watches in anticipation knowing an event is looming that will change everything.After last year’s successful run at the Unity, Ian - who writes about football for The Anfield Wrap and also pops up as pundit on City Talk radio - always hoped to stage it again in a bigger venue."The experience was so positive from start to finish that we couldn’t not do it again,” he says. “We’re all intensely proud of the piece and want to make sure we can put it in front of as many people as possible.”He was delighted how the appeal of Those Two Weeks attracted not just regular theatregoers but plenty of people who weren't. Breaking down those barriers has always appealed."I want all my stuff to be plays for people who don’t go to plays," Ian says. "I tell people theatre is like the stuff you watch on TV put in front of you on a stage, and it’s a different experience every night - a real high-wire act."Those Two Weeks is on at the Epstein from September 18 to 21.Following on from that, Ian's biggest play to date Girls Don't Play Guitars, the true story of all-girl Merseybeat group the Liverbirds, premieres at the Royal Court in October.