Peggy: The Life of Margaret Ramsay, Play Agent

Colin Chambers

Description

With a new foreword by Stewart Pringle, Playwright and Dramaturg of the National Theatre of Great Britain.

Winner of the 1997 Theatre Book Prize

Peggy Ramsay was the most admired British play agent of the twentieth century.  With a matchless ability to visualise a play just by reading it on the page, she set up in business in 1953, and over the years nurtured and developed the most dazzling client list which included Eugene Ionesco, Joe Orton, Robert Bolt, David Mercer, John McGrath, Iris Murdoch, John Mortimer, James Saunders, Peter Nichols, Charles Wood, Ann Jellicoe, Edward Bond, Christopher Hampton, David Hare, Alan Ayckbourn, Caryl Churchill, Howard Brenton and Willy Russell. Her role in the development of modern British drama was central.

One of the most remarkable things about her was her instinctive generosity.  Peggy believed that the living playwright belonged at the centre of the theatre.  A theatre without new writing talent to refresh it was worthless.

 

Foreword

1 Under African Skies

Roots – Parents – Birth – Childhood – Education – Marriage

2 If It’s Tuesday, It Must Be Macbeth

In England – Separation – Touring Opera – Acting – Bill Roderick – Bristol Old Vic – Q Theatre – Becoming an Agent

3 Opening Gambit

Starting Out – First Year – John Holmstrom – Peter Hall and Waiting for Godot – Eugène Ionesco – Robert Bolt

4 Iron In The Soul

New Landscape – John Osborne – Ann Jellicoe – John Mortimer – Peters and Ramsay – Michael Codron – Michael Meyer – The Arts Theatre – James Saunders – Charles Wood – Henry Livings – Northerners – Alan Plater – David Mercer – David Rudkin – Peter Nichols – Alan Ayckbourn

5 Tie Ruffian On The Stair

Frank Marcus – Joe Orton – Kenneth Halliwell

6 Queen Bee

Independence – Attempted Takeovers – In Brighton – In the Office – Visiting Peggy – Views on Talent, Writers, Partners, Sexuality – Jean Rhys

7 At Court

Christopher Hampton – the Royal Court – George Devine – William Gaskill – Oscar Lewenstein – Edward Bond – Caryl Churchill – Max Stafford-Clark

8 For the Love of Talent

Subsidised Theatre – Commissioning – Hampstead Theatre Club – RSC and NT – the Fringe – Steve Gooch – Censorship – Anti-Apartheid – Mustapha Matura – Martin Sherman – John McGrath – John Arden and Margaretta D’Arcy – Willy Russell – Stephen Poliakoff – Wallace Shawn – David Hare

9 Memento Mori

Illness – Last Years – Death of Bill Roderick – Fire – Peggy’s Death – New Firm – Foundation – Tribute”

Notes

List of Clients

Sujets

• Literary Figures
• Theater
• Performing Arts
• Women
• Inglaterra
• Theatre
• Biography
• Playwright
• Woman
• Entertainment
• The Women
• Autobiography
• England

Informations

• Publié par: Salamander Street Ltd.
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781913630171
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in Great Britain in 1997 by Nick Hern Books Limited
First published in paperback in 1998 by Methuen
Reprinted in 2020 by Salamander Street Ltd.
Copyright Colin Chambers, 1997, 1998
Foreword copyright 2020, Stewart Pringle
Colin Chambers is hereby identified as author of this work in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The author has asserted his moral rights.
Peggy Ramsay s letters and the business documents of Margaret Ramsay Ltd. are quoted by permission of the Peggy Ramsay Foundation, a charity for writers and new writing.
Lines from Absurd Person Singular by Alan Ayckbourn are quoted with permission of the author.
Extracts from Joe Orton s writings are quoted with permission of Leonie Barnett for the Orton Estate.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or binding or by any means (print, electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
PB ISBN: 9781913630164
E ISBN: 9781913630171
Cover image permission: ARENAPAL
Printed and bound by 4EDGE Limited, Hockley, Essex, UK.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Jane
Preface
A playwright s agent is many things: a navigator for the industry s unseen currents and eddies; a mediator between the pressures of art and the intricacies of commerce and contracts; and an ally in your corner, ready to fight your cause and champion your work against adversity. As this crackling biography attests to, Peggy Ramsay was all of those things for her clients. She fought pugnaciously, negotiated fiercely and according to her own code of ethics, and advised many of the 20th century s greatest writers with what can in retrospect look like supernatural prescience.
But Ramsay (having died when I was six years old she will sadly never be Peggy to me) had another role too, one which I increasingly believe to be amongst the most vital an agent can fulfil: she was a reader, in many cases, a first reader, for the work her clients created. She gave a first account of a new play, reading it closely and responding with praise where it was merited, criticism where she felt it was needed, but also suggesting structural changes, flagging character beats that felt inconsistent or half-baked, and underlining aspects of the work which she felt would fall flat with its audience. She was, long before the script would ever find its way onto the desk of a theatre, its first dramaturg. And she was very good at it.
From advising Alan Ayckbourn to shift the later action of his first play Standing Room Only off the top deck of a bus to pushing volumes of Strindberg and Ibsen onto her young writers in a constant push for them to widen their lens and consider the lessons of past masters, Ramsay s work was never confined to the reactive. It was a pushing forward into new territory and harder climbs. Her letters to writers are as full of meditations on the techniques of Goethe as they are acid take-downs of bad faith theatrical critics and myopic producers and managements.
Playwrights need allies, and they need productions. Everything else, stability, inspiration, collaboration, insight into their own processes - flows down from those two peaks. Ramsay provided or enabled both to a swathe of the last century s writers, and her influence and allyship continues today through the work of the Peggy Ramsay Foundation.
I received my first Peggy Ramsay grant when I was twenty-four years old and one week away from maxing out my overdraft (having already maxed out a loan and a credit card) following my first attempt at staging a play I d written one icy December in a Camden pub theatre. I was one week away from packing it all in for good and finding something else to do with my life. That 2000 cheque, an unimaginable amount of money on my budget at the time, offered with no strings attached, made it all feel possible. That a future in theatre or writing wasn t confined to those who could afford to take unpaid internships or write for years without a payday in sight. With the horror and tumult of 2020, the uncertainty it has opened up for theatre - its sustainability, the breadth of its ecology, the Foundation s work, and Peggy s legacy, feel more vital than ever.
Still fighting the writer s corner. Still an ally. We re going to need her.
STEWART PRINGLE Writer Dramaturg at the National Theatre July 2020
Contents
Foreword
1 Under African Skies
Roots - Parents - Birth - Childhood - Education - Marriage
2 If It s Tuesday, It Must Be Macbeth
In England - Separation - Touring Opera - Acting - Bill Roderick - Bristol Old Vic - Q Theatre - Becoming an Agent
3 Opening Gambit
Starting Out - First Year - John Holmstrom - Peter Hall and Waiting for Godot - Eugène Ionesco - Robert Bolt
4 Iron In The Soul
New Landscape - John Osborne - Ann Jellicoe - John Mortimer - Peters and Ramsay - Michael Codron - Michael Meyer - The Arts Theatre - James Saunders - Charles Wood - Henry Livings - Northerners - Alan Plater - David Mercer - David Rudkin - Peter Nichols - Alan Ayckbourn
5 Tie Ruffian On The Stair
Frank Marcus - Joe Orton - Kenneth Halliwell
6 Queen Bee
Independence - Attempted Takeovers - In Brighton - In the Office - Visiting Peggy - Views on Talent, Writers, Partners, Sexuality - Jean Rhys
7 At Court
Christopher Hampton - the Royal Court - George Devine - William Gaskill - Oscar Lewenstein - Edward Bond - Caryl Churchill - Max Stafford-Clark
8 For the Love of Talent
Subsidised Theatre - Commissioning - Hampstead Theatre Club - RSC and NT - the Fringe - Steve Gooch - Censorship - Anti-Apartheid - Mustapha Matura - Martin Sherman - John McGrath - John Arden and Margaretta D Arcy - Willy Russell - Stephen Poliakoff - Wallace Shawn - David Hare
9 Memento Mori
Illness - Last Years - Death of Bill Roderick - Fire - Peggy s Death - New Firm - Foundation - Tribute
Notes
List of Clients
Foreword
T he origins of this book about Peggy Ramsay go back to 1981 when I had recently published my first book, Other Spaces: New Theatre and the RSC , and, by coincidence, had just been appointed the RSC s literary manager. I was keen to write another book, and, in my new post, was conscious of the role played in the theatre by people operating in the wings . Adding in my interest in contemporary playwrights, I approached Nick Hern, then the drama editor at Methuen and the person responsible for Other Spaces . I suggested a book about the famous play agent Peggy Ramsay, who represented many of my favourite writers.
No chance, came Hern s reply. I have just tried to get her to write her autobiography, and her refusal was as adamant as it was charming. She would never agree to anyone writing a book about her.
I accepted his wisdom and let the matter rest. My own subsequent dealings with Peggy Ramsay through my work at the RSC fully confirmed Nick Hern s judgement, although she was always friendly and generous towards me. I remember in particular a small thing; I was writing a book about the Unity Theatre and out of the blue she sent me a postcard, giving me the address of someone she thought I should contact for my research. I had never mentioned my book to Peggy, and it was only a postcard, but that gesture of unsolicited help stayed with me.
In 1989, to my amazement, I discovered that several writers with whom I was working were being interviewed for a BBC-TV documentary on Peggy that was to be broadcast the following March; I knew the producer, and she confirmed that Peggy had, indeed, agreed to allow such a programme to be made. I contacted both Nick Hern, now running his own firm, and Peggy s assistant, Tom Erhardt, whose advice we readily accepted. Let her get over the TV programme and, when she returns from her holiday in Tunisia, why don t you just take her out for lunch and ask her, he said. But don t tell her beforehand why you want to meet.
A table was booked at Sheekeys, a fish restaurant not far from Peggy s office and one of her favourite haunts. It was late May. Nick and I fussed nervously over the seating arrangements, and I decided to wait alone at the table while he and Tom Erhardt would escort Peggy from the office. Sheekeys had been refurbished but it retained its atmosphere of a theatrical parlour, decorated with a clutter of showbiz portraits. I notice I m sitting under the gaze of the young Paul Scofield, pre Sir Thomas More. I am the only customer in this part of the restaurant, tucked well away from the door and the street. Every time a waiter crosses the floorboards, I look up anxiously and take another sip of my dry martini. At last, they come; she arrives like royalty and slips off her cardigan to reveal a North African tan. I don t sunbathe, of course, dear. It s my only holiday. There are few English people and lots of Germans. It s strange not to hear your mother tongue spoken. We chat about holidays, the Barbican - Terry Hands needs a knighthood to help push the RSC along - and the TV programme. I don t remember a thing about it, except I know I received a lot of unwanted scripts afterwards. Some nice woman took me out to lunch and somehow I ended up agreeing.
Cue for Nick Hern to introduce our idea. Oh, no, a book about me would be terribly boring, wouldn t it? I jumped in: But it would be about the writers, Peggy. Ah, the writers. Well, if it s about the writers, then of course there s no problem. And that was it.
Peggy allowed me access to all her papers and spent a great deal of time talking to me about her life and work. I went to her office in Goodwin s Court in early June to begin what turned out to be eleven months of wading through her files, ledgers, scrap books and script log books. During that period the offices were set on fire. This inevitably disrupted my