{"id":192,"date":"2014-09-03T08:51:01","date_gmt":"2014-09-03T08:51:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/?p=192"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:22:05","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:22:05","slug":"playwright-kevin-laffan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/2014\/09\/03\/playwright-kevin-laffan\/","title":{"rendered":"Playwright Kevin Laffan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kevin<\/a>

Kevin Laffan in about 2001. Kevin Laffan Archive, University of Leicester.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018God alone knows why I keep trying to get a play on.\u00a0 I must be out of my <\/strong>mind, for I\u2019m even toying with the idea of a new one!\u00a0 I know I\u2019ll be wasting time and effort but I can\u2019t get it out of my mind,\u2019 Kevin Laffan wrote in about 2001, when he was approaching the age of 80.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

While working on the Kevin Laffan Archive<\/a>, I came across some partly autobiographical reflections from which this quote is taken, called \u2018Memoirs of an Opsimath\u2019 (someone who begins to learn or study only late in life), on his plans for a new play \u2018about the end of the world\u2019 to be titled Fred Noah<\/em> \u2013 the play was never finished.<\/p>\n

Kevin Barry Laffan was probably best known as the creator, in 1972, of Emmerdale Farm<\/em>, the Yorkshire TV soap opera, for which he wrote 262 episodes, but his first love was the theatre and he saw himself as \u2018a playwright at heart\u2019.\u00a0 The narrative of Laffan\u2019s early life was arresting.\u00a0 From a devout Irish Roman Catholic family, he was the third of 14 children.\u00a0 His father, a disabled itinerant photographer, was unable to support the family and they were eventually evicted.\u00a0 At the age of 12, Laffan jumped from the bailiff\u2019s lorry carrying them through the gates of a workhouse in Walsall and ran off.\u00a0 Here, in his own words, is the story of how his infatuation with the theatre began:<\/p>\n

In those days the hangabouts of society used to hang about local library reading rooms, trying to get over their own misery by reading about other people\u2019s in the newspapers \u2026 After a day or two sleeping rough, mainly in an old disused lavatory, I needed a bit of warmth so I joined them and got myself introduced to The Stage<\/em> \u2026 the rag of the acting profession \u2026 the only paper being unread when I entered the reading room.\u00a0 You could say, no I will say, it was the turning point of my life \u2026 I read it and became an actor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Poster<\/a>

Poster advertising a production of ‘There Are Humans at the Bottom of My Garden’ by the Brighton Actors Workshop, probably in the early 1970s. Kevin Laffan Archive, University of Leicester.<\/p><\/div>\n


\n<\/strong>He was befriended by a \u2018good old biddy, who let me sleep on the sofa in her kitchen\u2019 and managed to find a job as a gardener\u2019s boy in a rose nursery.\u00a0 One day, he saw an ad in The Stage<\/em> for an Assistant Stage Manager at a local repertory company, \u2018experience not needed\u2019.\u00a0 He \u2018hadn\u2019t the faintest idea what an ASM was but \u2026 had an enquiring mind and went off enquiring\u2019.\u00a0 From these modest beginnings, Laffan went on to become artistic director of the Everyman Theatre in Reading, leaving in 1958 to concentrate on his writing.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Page<\/a>

Page from an early typescript draft for ‘Zoo, Zoo Widdershins Zoo’. \u00a9Estate of Kevin Laffan.<\/p><\/div>\n

Initially, it was a struggle; his play Cut in Ebony<\/em> won an ATV award in 1959, but was never produced, because it dealt with issues surrounding race and colour and was thought to be too controversial.\u00a0 His first major success was Zoo, Zoo Widdershins Zoo<\/em>, which won an NUS award for best new drama.\u00a0 In 1970, It\u2019s a Two-Foot-Six-Inches-Above-the-Ground World<\/em> had a successful run in the West End and was later made into a film, The Love Ban<\/em>.\u00a0 As a result of his childhood experiences, Laffan was strongly critical of the Catholic Church\u2019s stance on birth control and this was a recurring theme in his work.<\/p>\n

Laffan was always hunting for good pseudonyms.\u00a0 Going through the archive, I\u2019ve come across 9 so far.\u00a0 This habit generated a lot of publicity for The Superannuated Man<\/em>, which won the Irish Life Drama Award in 1968 and was staged under the pen-name of Michael McNamara.\u00a0 \u2018The theatre world is trying to solve a classic whodunit,\u2019 wrote Matt Johnson in The Irish Sun<\/em> (3 April 1997).\u00a0 \u2018For the identity of the Irish playwright taking London by storm remains a mystery.\u00a0 Publicity-shy Michael McNamara \u2026 from Limerick has refused to meet the director and cast.\u2019\u00a0 Laffan also revised his work repeatedly and meticulously and often changed the titles of his plays several times.<\/p>\n

\"Early<\/a>

Early notes and ideas for the play ‘Children of Cain’, also known as ‘The Naked Gael’. \u00a9Estate of Kevin Laffan.<\/p><\/div>\n


\nThe archive is still in the process of being catalogued, but its contents can be viewed by arrangement in the Library\u2019s Special Collections.<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018God alone knows why I keep trying to get a play on.\u00a0 I must be out of my mind, for I\u2019m even toying with the idea of a new one!\u00a0 I know I\u2019ll be wasting time and effort but I can\u2019t get it out of my mind,\u2019 Kevin Laffan wrote in about 2001, when he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6,13,12,10,11],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archives","tag-emmerdale-farm","tag-kevin-laffan","tag-playwrights","tag-screenwriters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":213,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions\/213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}