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Versatile writer is dressed for success

30 September 2011 - By http://www.iol.co.za/tonight/what-s-on/gauteng/versatile-writer-is-dressed-for-success-1.1145458

Being both writer and playwright is what drives Craig Higginson, and when he lists everything he is working on, it is overwhelming.

His latest book The Landscape Painter was launched recently, on top of the return of his much acclaimed play The Girl in the Yellow Dress at the Market’s Laager with a cast change, as Cape Town’s Kate Liquorish replaces the British actress playing opposite Nat Rambolana.

“I was amazed that the audiences embraced the story,” he says of this tale of two people who live in Paris, with language one of the issues dominating the work.

He wanted a story that was universal and was thrilled that it resonated so strongly locally. The run was a 100 percent full-house but it was a short five-week season and they’ve been looking for a return slot, due to the demand.

One of the reasons Higginson set the play in Paris is that he didn’t want audiences to regard the teacher simply as a racist white South ��һ�Թ���.

“There’s more to her than that,” he says and he wanted to show that the interaction between these two individuals wasn’t unique to us.

“It’s important that we move beyond our little patch.”

The play went to Grahamstown last year, before going to Cape Town, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Glasgow and Stockholm and on to its Joburg season. The play is in its second print and new productions are being staged in Chicago and New York.

According to director Malcolm Purkey, working with a new actress, makes it feels like a new play, with the cast changing as they find new layers and fresh perspectives.

Moving beyond playwriting, Higginson explains that when he was 17, he wanted to be a painter, at 19 that had changed to poet and at 23, he transformed the job description to novelist. Plays came much later because he needed to grow older and wiser.

Turning his mind to The Landscape Painter, he says the play and book arriving simultaneously is sheer coincidence.

“People think I rush through the writing but they are many years in the making,” he explains.

This book, for example, demanded much research because of its turn of the century setting in Joburg and because it moves between two countries – Britain and South Africa.

His first novels were autobiographical in part and this latest story deals with a young man who becomes embroiled in a troubled relationship with a brother and sister.

“I was involved with a young woman who was close to her brother…” and he trails off.

To be a writer while holding down two jobs (literary manager at The Market as well as writing lecturer at Wits) with a baby in the house takes some juggling, and Higginson manages by writing for short spells, 15 minutes at a time, first thing in the morning and whenever he finds a moment.

He is working on a commissioned work for London’s National Theatre, which Purkey will direct and Neil Coppen (a National Festival Young Artist Award Winner 2011) will design.

“It’s a huge piece,” explains Higginson. It is being planned for the Rhodes Theatre at next year’s festival and then The Market’s main stage. The British production is aimed at a younger audience during the Olympics, so the local production will be rewritten.

Set in the Cradle of Humankind, Higginson explores the Greek chorus and all kinds of fascinating ancient avenues in the play.

He is also writing a work for director Lara Foot, which will have a psycho-analytical theme and is dabbling with both an Anglo-Boer War novel (“I’ve done all that research for the present book!”), as well as one with no links to South Africa.

“I’m quietly growing each one of them like crystals,” he notes. He’s also intent on not doing the same thing over and over again.

“I like working on different issues and themes playing with both form and content.”

And if he starts questioning time, he knows writing will become problematic. “It’s a deep necessity,” he says. “It has to be the driving force, nothing else.”

With few rewards for writers in this country (or any other, for that matter), Higginson is one of the lucky ones who can both strip it down to the bare essentials of what makes a play or embellish and get his thoughts flowing for a novel.

“The one,” he says, “ feeds the other.” For those who delve deeply into this writer’s work, those links will be picked up.

His last words: “You have to believe that if you keep writing, it will be read.”

lDon’t miss The Girl With The Yellow Dress which opens on Friday at the Laager.