David Edgar is used to writing plays but not so used to performing in them - but that’s all about to change. The Birmingham-born playwright is marking his 70th birthday by taking to the stage in Trying It On, a new show in which he contemplates the ways in which both the world and his own views have changed during the last 50 years. Here, David writes for What’s On about his brand new production...    

The last time I appeared on a stage was as Captain Bligh in a university production of Mutiny On The Bounty, 44 years ago. Since then my career as a playwright has kept me - mercifully - offstage. Why on earth am I treading the boards again?

The story starts around three years ago, after a show at Warwick Arts Centre, when I bumped into its artistic director, who asked me what I was doing and what I was planning. On impulse, I said that I’d been considering doing a solo show (not just written but also performed by me) to mark my 70th birthday in 2018. He said that was a wonderful idea and he’d like to commission it at once. I was locked in.

Even more so when my producers persuaded a number of other theatres - including Midlands Arts Centre, the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, and the Royal Court in London, to take the show. Plus - most importantly of all - the Birmingham Rep, to which I’ve a very particular attachment. As young actor/stage managers, my parents met on the stage door steps of the theatre in 1938. I first went to the theatre when I was three-and-three-quarters. I began writing for the theatre in 1972. 

The idea of the show is to look back over the last 50 years not just of my life but of our times. I was 20 in 1968, at the height of the worldwide student revolt against adult authority in general and the Vietnam war in particular. I was among millions of young people who wanted to change the world. Fifty years on, what does the 70-year-old me think of that young idealist? More importantly, perhaps, what does he think of me? You could say that our lives are a constant conversation between our present and our past, but the debate between the 2018 of Jeremy Corbyn, Donald Trump and #MeToo and the 1968 of Robert Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Women’s Liberation is particularly timely.

Researching the show, I’ve asked myself questions about the influence of 1968. Was its principal legacy an increase in personal freedom, and some great music (so, just sex, drugs and rock’n’roll)? Or did it transform the world politically (as we thought at the time)? 1968 saw a kind of global uprising against the older generation, from America via Europe to Pakistan and Japan. Did that spirit of internationalism find expression in the world-wide web? Was the revolt just a matter of fashion, a flash in the pan which petered out as the students graduated and got jobs, families and mortgages? Or have the political movements which 1968 gave birth to - most particularly, feminism and the environmental movement - remained remarkably resilient, and permanently changed the way we live our lives?

Certainly, the initial hopes of 1968 were dashed - at the end of a year of rebellion in America, France and Eastern Europe, the ruling parties remained firmly in place. If the late ’60s were just about personal freedom, then there’s an argument that they found their full expression in the individualism of Margaret Thatcher’s market economics (though she herself hated the ’60s, blaming them for everything that had gone wrong with Britain). The Eastern European revolts which led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 drew heavily on the style, slogans and music of the 1960s, but they resulted in a renewal of capitalism and nationalism. And, talking of nationalism, why did most people who were 20 in 1968 vote Brexit?

I’ve explored these questions by talking to people who were involved in the events of 50 years ago, as well as my own biography, as an (intermittent) activist but also a playwright. I was incredibly lucky to start writing plays professionally in the early ’70s: following the abolition of theatre censorship (another 1968 anniversary) there was a huge expansion of what came to be called fringe theatre across Britain, which was thirsty for new plays by new playwrights. Since then there have been great changes: the expansion of large theatre institutions like the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Companies (both of which see new plays as an important part of their repertoire), as well as the growth of small-scale companies, making plays in new, collaborative ways. 

The biggest change in theatre repertoire over the last 50 years has been the decline of revivals and the growth of new work. Naturally, as a playwright, I defend the individually-written play as the bedrock of theatre (as it remains). But I am interested in alternative ways of playmaking, and have explored some of them to create Trying It On.

It’s also been fascinating to perform again. The play is around an hour and a quarter long - the length of the part of Hamlet. My respect for the skill (and energy) of actors was already high, but has got even higher. Having watched some of the show on film, I am painfully aware of the difference between how it feels as it comes out of me and how it looks when it arrives at the audience. I am working on my voice (in collaboration with experts) and trying to get early nights.  

If you’ve been writing for as long as I have, you’re aware of the need to ring the changes. Apart from plays for the REP, my personal favourites from my work include many for the RSC, including adaptations of Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, and the RSC is reviving Maydays (at the Other Place in September) and A Christmas Carol is coming back in December. But, inevitably, the premiere of my first solo show - and my professional stage debut - will be the highlight of my year.

David Edgar presents Trying It On at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, from Thurs 7 to Sat 9 June; Birmingham Repertory Theatre, from Tues 12 to Wed 13 June; MAC Birmingham, Fri 12 October & The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, from Thurs 18 to Sat 20 October.