Source of All Evil

Towards the end of 2005, Hugh came across a discarded copy of The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica (Constable & Robinson Ltd: 2005) sitting on a train. Hugh had wanted to direct a play on the sex industry for some time, due to the background of some of his actor friends, and set about reading it to look for inspiration.

After reading it, Hugh contacted the editor Maxim Jakubowski via the Murder One bookshop in London (which Jakubowski had opened) to get contact details for N T Morley, the writer of Memorandum, the piece Hugh saw as having most potential for stage work. Memorandum is written in the style of an email, disciplining a member of staff. To start with, it appears that the recipient is wearing clothes that are too slutty for the office place. However, you gradually realise that she is working "as a paid submissive in a private brothel for poontang-obsessed billionaires" and is thus not dressed sluttily enough.

Whilst waiting for a response from Jakubowski, Hugh looked through many other sex-related books for alternative inspirations for plays. He came across Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent (ReganBooks/HarperCollins: 2002) which held Hugh's interest from start til end. It was the autobiography of David Henry Sterry, who used to work as a rent boy, but then became an actor/comedian and now teaches at Stanford University and runs writing workshops with people who have been arrested for drugs and/or prostitution. See www.davidhenrysterry.com

Towards the end of the book, Sterry had printed his email address, so Hugh decided to email him regarding adapting the piece into a play.

Sterry responded quickly and said he had already transformed his writing into a play Chicken, which had begun its life at San Francisco's Marsh Theatre, and was named "Year's Best Show" by the Chronicle. It had since been performed at the Edinburgh Festival, Washington, Amsterdam and Australia. It was a one man piece, written and directed by Sterry.

Hugh decided, with Sterry's consent, to put an abbreviated version of Chicken on at the Cockpit Theatre, in one of it's monthly "Theatre In The Pound" slots. This is a scheme where people can have twenty minutes to perform theatre, and then get audience feedback, before deciding how to (and whether to) develop the piece further. Each performing group pays ten pounds for the privilege (and a returnable fifty pound deposit) and the audience pay one pound to watch the whole evening.

Hugh booked Chicken into the January 2006 slot, and cast Manolis Emmanoel as Sterry. The piece was written out, based on the book rather than the play, and looked only at three key events in the story: The first time Sterry meets Susanna (a fellow industry worker); The time his agent Sonny talks him into performing for a male client (an elderly judge that liked to be dominated); The occasion after a particularly bad session with a walrus-esque client when Sterry freaks out and quits the business.

Due to Manolis getting a high-profile acting gig directed by Rikki Beadle Blair a week before Chicken was to take place, it was decided to postpone it until the April 2006 "Theatre In The Pound" performances. By this time, Hugh had heard back from Jakubowski and was now in touch with N T Morley, so Hugh decided to adapt Memorandum for the January slot, instead of letting it go to waste.

Hugh had shortened Memorandum dramatically and held auditions to find someone to be the person typing out the email. Two actresses stood out, those of Lainy Scott and Christina Hagan, and based on their performances, Hugh decided to rethink the structure of this piece. It became much more devised, with Christine playing the recipient of the email in question (everything she read from the printout was as written in Memorandum), and Lainy the harassed colleague trying to support her through this. The piece was renamed Appropriate Attire.

A few weeks later, Hugh and Manolis went back to work on Chicken. We decided that to appeal to the audience, it should be relocated to London, and we changed all references to American landmarks, history and currency etc. As "chicken" is American slang for a teenage sex worker, which is never explained in the script, and all references to Sterry's flat above a fried chicken fast food store had been cut months before, we decided to change the title.

We decided to go for The Source of All The Evil as the alternative title for the piece. It was a nice open title, as it could refer to sex or money. In fact, the one time that the phrase "the source of all evil" is mentioned in the script, it refers to Sterry's mobile phone. The phone was used as a symbol of evil - the only other character whose phone was mentioned was Sonny (gradually becoming the villain of the piece) who only rang when something was bad was about to happen. Thus, when Sterry decided to give up his phone, that represented him giving up his agent and thus the bad things in him life.

Due to wanting to begin and end the piece with a blank stage (but needing to use props, and not wanting to have Manolis enter or exit throughout the piece) our final change before opening was to have other characters bring props on and off, whilst miming out the memories in Sterry's mind. For this we cast Nigel De Sousa as Sonny, Jean Martinez as Susannah, Joe Cronin as the Judge and John Pope de Locksley as the Walrus.

The piece was a great success, despite the technical rehearsal being cut short by the theatre. When time will allow, Hugh is intending do a full two hour version of Chicken, based more on the stage.version than the written one. Watch this space for more details.

The Source Of All The Evil was dedicated to Hugh's father, Hugh James Allison, who died in February 2006 of cancer, aged 54.

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