Which is nuts, says Smith, but “when you have that kind of ludicrous intellectual hypocrisy at the highest level, I don’t know how anyone can be trusted to take a rational line about anything”. The play’s protagonist asks people to save the world by allowing him to absorb all the risk. Rare Earth Mettle is about power and apathy, he says. The cuts in radio drama have been massive.” I love the medium but it’s getting hammered. “It’s something which doesn’t receive a lot of press. He speaks with passion about the creative possibilities of radio drama. Smith spent some time at the South Western Ambulance Service Trust in Exeter, listening in on calls. He has also written for Holby City and EastEnders, as well as five series of Radio 4’s Life Lines about an ambulance dispatch worker played by Sarah Ridgeway, who also starred in Harrogate. His first major play, Harrogate – a two-hander about a complicated father-daughter relationship and sexual role play – premiered at the High Tide festival in Aldeburgh and transferred to the Royal Court. Smith studied English at the University of Edinburgh. As well as being a doctor, his wife is also a cancer patient and they were shielding throughout lockdown. While theatres are now playing to full capacity audiences, he’s aware of the increasing case rate and remains cautious, perhaps more so than most. The world has undergone a collective trauma and the pandemic is far from over. While Smith is grateful to be back in the rehearsal room, he’s acutely aware that you can’t just pick up where you left off. “That is a wonderful gift to be given as a writer.” It’s being directed by Hamish Pirie who has a rich visual approach – he put a ball-pit on stage for Tim Price’s Teh Internet is Serious Business and a flock of live goats in Goats by Syrian playwright Liwaa Yazji. “He sees it as somehow getting in the way of his grand messianic view.” I don’t know if I have enough faith in people to change our behaviour in a way that is rationally best for the planet Al SmithĪs he was writing, Smith asked himself: “Does it need to be this big? Should I cut a strand? And I resisted it.” The Royal Court never told him to restrict the play for reasons of scale or cost. Smith’s protagonist has tried to detach himself from his past. The play is also interested in ideas of language – it is full of instances of meaning being lost in translation – and in history, both cultural and personal. “I don’t know if I have enough faith in people to change our behaviour in a way that is rationally best for the planet.” The play, says Smith, forces you to take a position where benevolent technocracy is the solution to the climate crisis he doesn’t agree with that himself, but it’s intended as a provocation. Gradually, he says, these different ideas and images coalesced, connections formed: lithium, as well as being a component of batteries, is also a mood stabiliser. Smith is married to an NHS doctor and some of their conversations about the mental and physical health of the nation made it into the play. Marcello Cruz, Jaye Griffiths and Ian Porter at rehearsals for Rare Earth Mettle.
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