Charles began writing plays professionally in 1978 when he joined Leeds Playhouse TIE team. He has now written over fifty plays, many of them for young people, and his work has been produced all over the world. These include Sleeping Beauty, The Search for Odysseus and A Spell of Cold Weather – which were all nominated as Best Children’s Play by the Writer’s Guild of Great Britain. Aurora Metro Press has published his ‘Classic fairytales, retold for the stage’, which includes Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, which were specially commissioned by The Library Theatre Manchester. In 2004 The Library produced, ‘The Ghosts of Scrooge’, a musical, which he wrote with Richard Taylor and last year Charles directed his own adaptation of ‘The Golden Goose’. ‘Classic fairytales 2’ was published in 2009.
His play about the percussionist Evelyn Glennie, which was first produced at the Polka Theatre for Children, was nominated as Best Children’s Show by the TMA. Other plays include, The Flood, Red Red Shoes, Unicorn Theatre One Snowy Night Chichester Festival Theatre The Tinderbox Gwent theatre and The Night Before Christmas olka Theatre.
Charles’ plays for adults include a well-known version of Bruce Chatwin’s On the Black Hill and an adaptation of Independent People by Halldor Laxness. This New Perspectives production was directed by the author and toured Iceland where the story is set.
In Wales he has had long associations with Gwent Theatre, The Sherman Teatre and Hijinx Theatre, for whom he has written The Fall of the Roman Empire, In the Bleak Midwinter, Paradise Drive, The Dove Maiden, and Ill Met by Moonlight.
He was recently commissioned by the National Theatre to write Alice in the News, which children all over Britain have performed.
Recent new plays include; Still life, about genetic science for The Plymouth Theatre Royal ;The Long Way Home, for New Perspectives Theatre in collaboration with the CIAO Festival, which has been performed in Croatia, Germany and Switzerland ,The Dutiful Daughter, a co production between the West Yorkshire Playhouse and the Sichuan Peoples’ Theatre in China, ‘Missing’ for Theatr Iolo and Consol Theatre Gelsinkirchen, The Iron ring for CTC Minneapolis- and Pirates- for Polka Theatre and Imagination Stage, Washington.
Charles has won several awards and was the recipient of the ‘Children’s Award’ given by the Arts Council of England for Red Red Shoes Unicorn Theatre and The Place as best play for young people 2004.
His play Merlin and the Cave of Dreams , for Imagination Stage, was nominated, for a Helen Hayes award in Washington USA , for the ‘outstanding new play of 2004’
2006 saw the premier of another new play for all ages, Sinbad, the untold tale’, at the Theatre by the lake in Keswick.
Charles is currently working on a new version of Hard Times, for the Library Theatre Manchester.
He has written many plays for radio, and a TV poem for BBC2, No Borders, set on the Welsh borders, where he lives and has spent most of his creative life.
Publications: The Flood , Harper Collins; Three Plays [Dead Man’s Hat. Paradise Drive; In the Bleak Midwinter] Seren Books. The Search for Odysseus, [Included in ‘Young Blood’, plays for young performers.] Aurora Metro Press + Longmans Looking out to See. [Included in’ Act One Wales ’] Seren Books. Three plays for young people, [Red Red Shoes, Eye of the Storm, Playing from the Heart] Aurora Metro Press. The Classic Fairytales, [Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty] The Classic fairytales 2 [The Tinderbox, The Golden Goose, Sinbad-the untold tale.] Aurora Metro Press. A Spell of Cold Weather. [Theatre Centre and Aurora Metro Press] Alice in the News, Barrington Stoke. Still Life, Parthian Press. The Dutiful Daughter. Aurora Metro Press. Merlin and the cave of Dreams , Aurora Metro Press.
For some writers the rehearsal room is a difficult place to be – but not for me. I love rehearsal and often do major rewrites in the process of creating a production. Plays are concrete entities and need to work physically and visually. The writer needs to pay close attention to what the space and the actor are telling him about the nature of his or her own work.
For me, rehearsal can be a dramaturgical process – and I have been fortunate to have enjoyed working with many directors who have also revelled in that process. There are always disagreements, but these are generally not personal and come from a desire to clarify the nature of the piece we are working on. Only once in thirty years have I fallen out with a director – but even then compromises were reached and the eventual production was very good indeed. For my part, if I have undermined a director or misunderstood the nature of their individual process then I apologise here!
Training to be a director is no easy matter; in the end one can really only learn by trial and error. Having been involved in so many trials and quite a few errors, I have become very interested in directing some, but by no means all, of my own work.
Key directing credits to date include:
- Dead Man’s Hat, New Perspectives Theatre (touring). ‘Gripping and entertaining’ Express and Echo.
- Independent People, New Perspectives Theatre (touring). ‘New perspectives has brought together actors from Iceland and Britain to create this awesome piece of work. Adapted and directed by Charles Way, it is the first staging in English of a powerful novel by Halldor Laxness. This is real theatre, played under demanding conditions and deserving of success.’ The Stage.
- The Tinderbox, The Gardiner Arts Centre, Brighton. ‘This is truly magical entertainment, a beautifully crafted show.’ The Stage.
- The Golden Goose, Library Theatre, Manchester. ‘Way directs his script with great aplomb’ **** The Guardian.
