Sunday, September 18, 2005

A Very Strange Occurence

John Finnemore's highly acclaimed play, Amy Evans' Strike, has started a run in Covent Garden. I saw it this week, and it's excellent: a twelve year-old girl decides to stop doing any work at school. It's funny, gripping and surprisingly powerful. But that's not why I'm mentioning it. Oh no.
Early on in the play, the character Amy takes a book from her bag, intending to read instead of working. And, of course, which book would it be most realistic for any twelve year-old to be reading? 'Jimmy Coates: Killer' by, er, me. I think I passed out for a fraction of a second.
I don't know who was responsible for this wonderful piece of realism (I do know John and a couple of the actors). I also don't know whether my book makes a cameo every night, or if it was a one-off because they knew I was coming (though I'm not sure they did).
It was one of the strangest and most wonderful moments in my life. It hadn't struck me until then that when you write a book, it's one tiny contribution to the massive world of culture.
And once it's out there, people can do crazy things to it, like cast it in a play.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

perhaps they had just picked up a cheap copy...

John Finnemore said...

I can assure you it will make an appearance every night. Amy must be a very slow reader. Either that, or she likes it so much she's reading it again and again and again...

James Casey said...

John, you do realise that no matter how hard you try, you're never getting cast as Jimmy in the motion picture? Even if you shave your beard.