David Holman tributes – Unfinished Histories

John O’Mahoney writes:

I knew only a little of Dave Holman’s story, but was lucky enough to work with him in the first cast of Peacemaker, directed by Gwenda Hughes and designed by our own dear Bill [Mitchell].
Peacemaker was a brilliantly judged piece of writing. Built on the simplest of conceits, it fundamentally challenged the notion of stereotyping. We toured to schools up and down the land and the play was always well received. It provided a particularly versatile tool for teachers who wanted to tackle negative perceptions and cliches, especially in the arenas of race and politics. I have a difficult memory of arriving at one school somewhere in the Yorkshire Dales and kids greeting our two black cast members with chants of ‘monkey! monkey!’ There was work to be done. That this would be unlikely to happen today is to some (intangible) extent thanks to the pioneering work of the T.I.E movement and the humanity and virtuosity of writers like Dave.

David Thacker writes:

I was Director of The Young Vic and invited David to join as Writer-in-Residence (from 1984 to 86). We performed four of his plays, Jack and the Beanstalk and the Wild Wild West , No Worries (UK premiere, I think), The Small Poppies (UK premiere, I think), and, most memorably the World premiere of Solomon and the Big Cat, one of his finest plays, with Paterson Joseph, just out of drama school, playing Solomon. David’s influence was not only felt in the area of children’s theatre. He influenced me enormously in our efforts to find opportunities for BAME actors. For example, I cast (with David’s encouragement) seven black actors in Macbeth and Solomon and the Big Cat was written for a cast of six black actors. David was later appointed as a board member at The Young Vic and was a constant source of wise, principled and intelligent advice.

Paul Kleiman writes:

I first encountered David’s name in the mid-1970s. I had started working at Humberside Theatre which also, relatively common in those days, had a resident Theatre-in-Education company. Sitting and chatting with the TIE team members, David’s name would often crop up in conversations. The admiration was palpable. The company performed Drink The Mercury, which had a particular resonance in and around Hull as the huge tin smelter owned by Rio Tinto had been pouring toxic, carcinogenic and radioactive pollutants into the River Humber and the surrounding countryside. Livestock and crops had been condemned on several nearby farms and a few years later a cluster of cancers was found amongst young people. Drink The Mercury, as with so many of David’s plays, remains as valid and important today as it ever did.

After stints with the overtly political companies Red Ladder and Belt & Braces Roadshow, I started working with the TIE and Community Theatre company Key Perspectives in Peterborough in 1980 and encountered David in person at the annual SCYPT conferences (Standing Conference of Young People’s Theatre). In those febrile, early-Thatcher days, SCYPT was cauldron of high-octane politics, with factions of the WRP, SWP etc. vying to control the agenda. I have a vague, possibly unreliable recollection of David attending at least one of those conferences and sitting with a cool, observant detachment as the often very heated debates swirled around him.

I encountered David’s work personally when, working with M6 Theatre in the early 1980s I played Bluey in Peacemaker, touring infant and primary schools in Rochdale where M6 was based. It is a wonderful, extraordinarily powerful play and it is no wonder that it has been performed – and is still performed – all over the world, particularly in areas of conflict and tensions

When, after M6, I stumbled into teaching on a BTec Performing Arts course in Manchester, I was determined to run a TIE strand and it was to David’s work that I turned. The students successfully toured Drink The Mercury and Peacemaker around local schools. What was striking about those productions was not only the power of the plays themselves, the sheer dramatic and emotional heft, but also the way in which the quality of the writing encouraged the students to totally engage with the play, its audience and the entire purpose of doing it.

My last direct encounter with David’s work was with Whale in 1994. I wanted to give the students on the BTec course something big, challenging and relevant to do…and it certainly was. Once again, the subject matter and the quality of the writing fully engaged the large cast (though the size and ambition of the production seriously frightened the college’s senior management!). The production played to packed houses for a week. I was in correspondence with David at the time, having received permission to stage the play, and he asked that any money that we made (!) beyond the actual production costs should be donated to The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. At the curtain call each night, one of the cast made a request for donations and I was delighted to be able to write to David to tell him that we had we sent well over £300 to the WDCS.

A final but important footnote. The student who played the Russian translator in Whale was so taken by the play and her role in it that she started to learn Russian in order that she could speak the Russian lines properly. Five years later she graduated with First Class Honours in Russian Studies and International Relations. David Holman was responsible for that.