Film & Television

Background

Lucy Gough

Lucy Gough was born in London in 1958 and spent her early childhood in Beddgelert, North Wales. When her family moved to Bath, she was sent to a convent school, where she stayed until she was 15. (Nuns appear in Bad Habits Die Hard, her first play, and in Crossing the Bar.) She soon returned to Wales, to Fishguard in Pembrokeshire, and followed an Open University course in drama before moving to Aberystwyth in 1982 to study for a degree in drama. Her first plays were written at this time, Joanna receiving a rehearsed reading by the Made in Wales Theatre Company. Lucy Gough’s stage plays include Catherine Wheel, As to Be Naked, By a Thread, Rushes, Stars, Wolfskin, and Crossing the Bar which in 1994 was shortlisted for the BBC Wales Writer of the Year Award and the John Whiting Award. She has also written many plays for radio including Our Lady of Shadows, Head, The Red Room, Mermaids, Canvas and The Prophetess of Exeter.

She is currently part of the scriptwriting team for the thrice-weekly Channel 4 teen soap Hollyoaks. She also lectures on radio drama in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Crossing The Bar, Head and Our Lady of Shadows are published by Seren Drama.

Ed Thomas

Ed Thomas was born in 1961 in Abercraf in the Swansea Valley. He studied English at University College, Cardiff, then worked in the theatre in London for some time before returning to Wales. He is a founder member and artistic director of Y Cwmni Cyf Theatre in Cardiff. His stage plays include House of America (1988), Adar Heb Adenydd (1989), The Myth of Michael Roderick (1990), Flowers of the Dead Red Sea (1991), East From the Gantry (1992), Strangers in Conversation (1993), Envy (1993) and A Song From a Forgotten City (1995). In 1993 he won the BBC Writer of the Year Award. His work for television includes A Silent Village: Pentre Mud, a documentary, and Fallen Sons, a film for Wales Playhouse, both of which won Celtic Film Festival Awards in 1994. He has also written and directed the popular comedy series Satellite City. He recently directed the film Rancid Aluminium based on the novel by James Hawes. In his work, Thomas has created a powerful and distinctive theatrical world which passionately challenges outmoded ideas of Welshness in language of extraordinary force. Extracts from his film House of America (1997) shown in the programme deal with characteristic themes of longing and frustration — a sense of imagination looking for somewhere to settle.

House of America, Flowers of the Dead Red Sea, and East From the Gantry are published by Seren Drama (1994).

Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac (1922—1969) is best known for his semi-autobiographical novel On the Road (1957) which describes the young writer Sal Paradise and his friend Dean Moriarty travelling across America. It became a cult novel among the young, and representative of the Fifties writers collectively called the ‘Beat Generation’, prominent among whom were Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. Their writings emphasised escape from conventional, repectable, middle-class life. The Beat influence is shown in Sid’s appearance and behaviour in the film, which also recalls the film Easy Rider.