Neath-based playwright Roger Williams has written plays for Made in Wales, the Sherman Theatre Company, the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and the BBC to name just a few. His television credits to date include the Bafta nominated “Tales from Pleasure Beach,” and the popular adaptation of Jacqueline Wilson’s book, “Tracy Beaker.” His work has been performed worldwide. Rose Widlake caught up with Roger to ask about GCSE Drama, the gay scene and Alfred Hitchcock’s Three Investigators…

Tell us a little about Gulp.
Gulp was my first full length play, performed in 1997, and it’s about five twenty-something people, their trials and tribulations. It deals with them having to face up to being adults and the things that come with that, such as death, and one of them discovering that their ex is HIV positive. It was first performed in Cardiff, and was an unexpected hit! It was the first time people could watch contemporary life on stage, and I think people liked it because they could relate to it.
It was a theatrical event which surprised Cardiff, and it definitely was the first big step in my career. It spurred me to carry on writing. Something like HIV ten years ago meant you were going to die pretty soon, whereas now you can live until you’re eighty.

Where did you get the idea from?
The idea came naturally. I was writing about a world I knew. Writers in magazines always tell people patronisingly to “write what you know”, and that’s what I did. I drew on my own experiences to write it, but also my own imagination played a big part. At the moment, I’m developing a sequel to Gulp. It’s following two of the characters ten years on, showing how they grew up, how their attitudes changed, and how Cardiff changed. Cardiff has changed a hell of a lot in ten years. I’m using Gulp as a springboard into the sequel.

Where did the title come from?
I went through a stage where I was obsessed with single words. “Gulp”, just sounds strange. It’s the noise you make when you’re in a tense situation and you swallow, making that weird noise at the back of your throat. It can’t be expressed in any other way. It’s describing the moment in the play when one of the characters finds out he’s HIV positive. Plus the title attracts attention. I’ve written loads of things that have had one word titles, like “Bang” and “Pop.” The working title for the sequel to “Gulp” is “Sizzle.”
Do you think Gulp will teach people more about the gay scene in Cardiff?
Definitely. I think the play is very accessible, and that’s why it did as well as it did. Often theatre can be very inward-looking so to speak. I suppose Gulp was political- it was showing a world that a lot of people normally wouldn’t have come in contact with, and that it wasn’t wicked or evil. I wrote something called “Saturday Night Forever”, and that was very similar in that sense. Someone came up to me after they’d seen it and said that even though it was set in a “gay world”, ultimately it didn’t matter, didn’t make the characters story anymore or less moving, which was nice.

Does Gulp have a particular message that you want to put across?
I think I wanted to put a message of acceptance across. At the time that was probably what I wanted on a personal level too. I’ve never had an agenda in writing; I just wanted to write about the world. Also, first and foremost, Gulp is a love story. It’s about normal people looking for love.
What did you enjoy reading as a child?
It sounds silly now, but I loved this series of books called “Alfred Hitchcock’s Three Investigators.” It was like Famous Five meets Scooby Doo. Set in 1960s America, it followed Jupiter Jones and his friends who solve mysteries from their hidden den in their parent’s junkyard. There must have been about 45 of them altogether and I loved collecting them and having them in order on my shelf. They had fabulous covers. I didn’t read that many novels at school really, only the ones I had to read. At Uni I got side-tracked from my career reading too many 19th century novels by people like Dickens!

A lot of your work has been very international, Mother Tongue, for example. Does where you live affect the way you write?
I think it was more my upbringing, education and day-to-day life experiences than where I live. The people you spend time with have a huge effect though. Writers often hear a story told by someone, and it’ll stick and they’ll use it. People affect how you think about things, your opinions. Living in Neath affects the way I write in the sense that I see more of those people. And some of the people I see make me laugh! You get fat elderly people outside Tesco on motorised wheelchairs smoking, and you think right, there’s two problems here…

What came first, your writing or your involvement in theatre?
My involvement in theatre came first; at school I wanted to be an actor. I was in all the school plays! At comprehensive I did GCSE drama, and we had a really encouraging teacher. We got to look at every aspect of theatre production, to see which bit we were good at. We had to write scenes out for others to perform, and she encouraged me to stick with that. When everyone else had to act out the scenes I had written, it just fed my ambition! Slowly writing became my priority.

What do you prefer writing for, television or theatre?
I don’t really have a preference, I enjoy writing for both. There’s a lot more opportunity in television, whereas theatre writing has diminished in Wales. TV companies are always looking for scripts, and you don’t have to be involved so much. It’s more of a slog writing for theatre, you have to be involved more. It’s all about you, and everything is more personal; thinking of a one-word title can take forever. With television, nine times out of ten you’re working with someone else’s series, or working with a group of writers. A lot more responsibility comes with theatre, and a lot more pressure. People are paying to watch your play; they’ve made a commitment to see it and can’t change over halfway if they’re bored.

What’s next for you?
At the moment I’m working on a series for Channel 4. It’s back to where I started almost, writing about people in Cardiff again. And there’s the sequel to Gulp, of course…