The Pride (Royal Court, London) .
Alexi Kaye Campbell is an award winning playwright and actor.
Alexi Kaye Campbell was born Alexi Komondouros in Athens, Greece to a Greek father and British mother. He was brought up in Athens. After graduating from Boston University with a degree in English and American Literature, Kaye Campbell went on to study acting at The Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.
Kaye Campbell has worked for many years as an actor in theatre, film and television. His work includes seasons at the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and with Oxford Stage Company, Chichester Festival Theatre, The Royal Court, Hampstead Theatre and with Shared Experience.
Alexi Kaye Campbell was born Alexi Komondouros in Athens, Greece to a Greek father and British mother. He was brought up in Athens. After graduating from Boston University with a degree in English and American Literature, Kaye Campbell went on to study acting at The Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.
Kaye Campbell has worked for many years as an actor in theatre, film and television. His work includes seasons at the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and with Oxford Stage Company, Chichester Festival Theatre, The Royal Court, Hampstead Theatre and with Shared Experience.
In November 2008 Kaye Campbell’s first play, THE PRIDE, was produced for the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs for which he was awarded The Critics' Circle Prize for Most Promising Playwright and the John Whiting Award for Best New Play. The production, directed by Jamie Lloyd, was also awarded a Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an affiliate theatre. In January 2010 THE PRIDE transferred to America and was produced for the MCC Theater in New York and directed by Joe Mantello. The cast included Ben Whishaw, Andrea Riseborough and Hugh Dancy. This production was nominated for a Drama League Award for 'Distinguished Production of a Play' and an Outer Critics Circle Award for 'Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play'.
Kaye Campbell’s second play, APOLOGIA, was produced at The Bush Theatre in the summer of 2009, directed by Josie Rourke. APOLOGIA was short-listed for The John Whiting Award and nominated for Best Theatre Play at the Writers Guild Awards 2009.
(en.wikipedia.org)
(en.wikipedia.org)
- What was your inspiration for The Pride?
- One of the things I was interested in when writing both Apologia and The Pride was exploring the whole notion of inheritance and what one generation inherits from a previous one. In The Pride it was more about the sexual revolution and the aftermath of that. I couldn’t stop thinking about how personal lives are connected to a bigger social narrative and how there is no such thing as a life that is apolitical because every choice we make is in some way connected to bigger social movements that we either make happen or simply respond to. With The Pride I was very interested in the notion of gay identity. In what it means to be gay in 2009 and how that definition was formed. I was very interested in finding a way of comparing what it meant to be gay now and what it meant in the 1950’s but I also wanted to connect these experiences, to show how one period responds to or reacts against a previous one.
- How did your own feeling about gay identity affect how you’ve written The Pride?
- I never really felt represented by what we’ve come to call the ‘gay scene’ or ‘gay identity’. In a way I felt kind of displaced. Obviously when you write something you are going to put a lot of yourself into it and I suppose I felt very much that there were things about what it meant to be gay in 2008, when I wrote the play, which I didn’t relate to. I started exploring the idea that there were ways of behaving perhaps that had been learned or acquired and that weren’t always representative of who you really were. (blackbookmag.com)
- One of the things I was interested in when writing both Apologia and The Pride was exploring the whole notion of inheritance and what one generation inherits from a previous one. In The Pride it was more about the sexual revolution and the aftermath of that. I couldn’t stop thinking about how personal lives are connected to a bigger social narrative and how there is no such thing as a life that is apolitical because every choice we make is in some way connected to bigger social movements that we either make happen or simply respond to. With The Pride I was very interested in the notion of gay identity. In what it means to be gay in 2009 and how that definition was formed. I was very interested in finding a way of comparing what it meant to be gay now and what it meant in the 1950’s but I also wanted to connect these experiences, to show how one period responds to or reacts against a previous one.
- How did your own feeling about gay identity affect how you’ve written The Pride?
- I never really felt represented by what we’ve come to call the ‘gay scene’ or ‘gay identity’. In a way I felt kind of displaced. Obviously when you write something you are going to put a lot of yourself into it and I suppose I felt very much that there were things about what it meant to be gay in 2008, when I wrote the play, which I didn’t relate to. I started exploring the idea that there were ways of behaving perhaps that had been learned or acquired and that weren’t always representative of who you really were. (blackbookmag.com)
The Pride (Θέατρο Αθηναΐς)
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The Pride
Royal Court, London
Michael Billington The Guardian,2008
There is a fascinating contradiction at the heart of this promising debut play by Alexi Kaye Campbell. It counterpoints the self-deception and denial experienced by many gay men in 1958 with the relative sexual freedom of 2008. Yet, while the play acknowledges the advances made in the era of Gay Pride, it is far more gripping and persuasive when it deals with the repression of the hypocritical 1950s.
Campbell has come up with an ingenious structure in which three actors play different characters, blessed with identical names, across the temporal divide. It starts in 1958 with Philip, a strait-laced estate agent, and his wife, Sylvia, entertaining a young novelist, Oliver. Under the clickety-click, sub-Coward dialogue there is a palpable tension which results in a guilt-ridden affair between the men. Scenes from the fear-ridden 1950s alternate, however, with those from 2008. The Oliver of today is a smart, sex-addicted journalist temporarily deserted by his lover Philip, and nursed through his periodic crises by the ever-loyal Sylvia.
Campbell is not naive enough to suggest the present is a bed of roses: with freedom comes greater sexual opportunity, and forming a permanent relationship proves as fraught as ever.
The paradox remains, however, that the play is far better at charting past anguish than the problems created by present tolerance. What is unspoken proves more powerful than what is stated - demonstrated by a scene in which the 1950s Sylvia delicately probes Philip's strange abruptness towards gay men. A later scene in which Sylvia reluctantly confronts her husband's lover has a subterranean tension that puts one in mind of Rattigan. We may have progressed socially, but the reticence we associate with 1950s drama is still a powerful weapon.
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