Prose. Interviews Writer, Director, Performer, and Occultist John Harrigan

John Harrigan is a founder of FoolishPeople and is one of the earliest pioneers of immersive theatre.

We met him in Hitchin to talk about writing, acting and his unusual method of getting feedback from audiences.

Prose asks what the catalyst was for him writing, acting in and producing such great art.

“When I left school I went into computers, but really didn’t enjoy it. I was always into all things artistic, so decided to go back to college to study music. The problem was that I wasn’t very musical. However, part of the course was drama, which was something that I loved. The kind of drama we were doing wasn’t my kind of thing though, it was musical theatre. They had a writing and devising lecturer called Les Tucker, and it was through him that I got to write some of my own stuff; my own plays. People responded to them. I think a gift I have always had, has been that I’m very imaginative, I tend to come up with a lot of ideas. So I started doing my own work and decided to go to drama school.”

“I found drama school restrictive insofar as it was all about the acting; you could only be one thing. You could be an actor OR a writer, and at this stage I wanted to be all things. As is often the case with creative people, I had no money and came from a working class background. I started FoolishPeople when I was still at art school on a scholarship. I couldn’t realistically run with it financially, and so became a social worker in residential settings working for a number of different charities that were engaged with helping people.”

“After 10 or 11 years of that, I no longer felt I was effectively assisting those people as I should, yet I did when I was doing my art. So I went back to it full time. I started with a locally with a project called ‘Singularity’ and on the back of that I relaunched FoolishPeople. I’ve never looked back since. I had been so eager to go back to it after the break, and I could never return to ‘normality’ now. That’s what fuels me.”

Prose asks what his creative process is when he’s writing a piece.

“With each new project I learnt my working practise. Not many people realise this, but a big part of our work is based on text. I’ll spend ages thinking about and writing a script, and then I’ll hand it over to the members of FP. It all starts with the written word. Then there’s a long rehearsal process and then the public get to see it, whether as a film or immersive theatre.”

“Through doing it again and again over twenty five years, we've learnt what works best. I think most creatives get knocked back a few times and sometimes feel like they can’t continue anymore, but I believe that’s part of the process. I’ve made some stupid mistakes. The mistakes probably equal the successes. All of my mistakes are the things that have made me the artist I am today and the end result so much better. Unless people have been doing it long enough, they don’t realise that.”

What was it like to deliver Strange Factories, the horror film that has polarised audiences so hugely?

...

Find out later today, and take advantage of a special EXCLUSIVE offer from Harrigan just for Prosers, by visiting blog.theprose.com. Look for a link in the comments (below) this afternoon.