Sci-fi show’s staying one step ahead of AI
ACTOR AND WRITER DAVID HAIG TELLS DIANE PARKES ABOUT HIS NEW ADAPTATION OF THE SCIENCE FICTION
WHEN actor and writer David Haig agreed to adapt Philip K Dick’s classic sci-fi novella Minority Report for theatre, he knew it would be a challenge – but it was one which made the project so compelling.
“Simon Friend, the producer, rang me up and he was a fan of Pressure, my last play, and he said, ‘How would it interest you writing a sci-fi thriller based on Minority Report?’. “Immediately my response internally was, ‘What? How can I do this?’. Then I thought that was the very reason to do it. How incredibly exciting to go off-piste and just write exactly what came into my head on the basis of this short story written in the Fifties.”
And he was given carte-blanche to go as off-piste as he chose.
“The Philip K Dick Estate were incredibly generous and said that, as long as we used the title and the basic premise of Precrime, ie that you can anticipate murder and get criminals off the streets before they’ve even committed the crime, we had complete freedom to write exactly what we wanted – and I took them at their word.”
David is not the first person to adapt the novella, with Steven Spielberg turning it into a 2002 blockbuster movie starring Tom Cruise. But David has taken a very different approach, making a fundamental change – his lead character is female.
He said: “I thought it would be really exciting to get as far away from the original story in that sense, but also from the film, which in fact I hadn’t seen when I wrote the first draft of the adaptation. So it felt right to write an exciting part for a middle-aged woman in a sci-fi thriller. It’s unexpected and that is what’s interesting about it.
“The principle of the play is that the head of Precrime, Julia Anderton,
sees her own name on the list, it’s predicted that she will murder, and it’s the last thing in the world that she, as head of the whole organization, expects.
“Then the play is 80 minutes of real time from that moment. It’s always through her point of view and it’s her run from potential incarceration and criminalization. Will she kill? Won’t she? Will she be proved innocent? Won’t she?
“Not only is it a sci-fi thriller but the play is an interesting portrait of a woman who has to change her mind on a very important premise. Yes, it’s a sci-fi thriller but also it’s a conventional play with a story and a journey.”
David’s previous dramas include My Boy Jack, The Good Samaritan and Pressure but adapting a futuristic tale set in 2050 is a very different prospect.
“The challenges of writing sci-fi for the stage are writing stage directions like, ‘The van chases the car at 40 miles an hour, the two collide, there is an explosion of metal and the car bursts into flames...’
“That was the freedom that I adopted when I was writing it - you just write anything that comes into your head and then the director Max Webster and the incredible design team that we’ve got, say, ‘That’s possible, that’s not possible, that’s possible, that’s not possible’ and so we work towards a solution in that way.”
The unnerving part of writing about a possible future is that some of it has already come true.
“The whole premise of predicting crime is very close to us,” David explains. “What has struck me is that each time I’ve done a new draft of this play, it’s been because the whole obsession, the fear, the respect for artificial intelligence has raced forward as I’ve been writing it.
“I had already written a draft before Covid and by the time the lockdowns had finished, AI was rattling forward and I was already out of date so I’ve had to keep up with those developments.”
Alongside being a writer, David is also well-known as an actor, playing Inspector Grim in television’s The Thin Blue Line and appearing in other series as diverse as Downton Abbey, Killing Eve and the 2013 remake of Yes, Prime Minister as well as the hit movies Four Weddings and a Funeral and Two Weeks’ Notice.
David grew up in Rugby and knows Birmingham well, having worked at The Rep more than 40 years ago.
“My wife Julia was born in Coventry
and we met in Birmingham. She was working at the time for a very good community theatre company called Second City and then we went on to work together at Birmingham Rep in the late Seventies. “I have been back very regularly over the years and have a loyalty to the city. I’m very excited that the show is coming to The Rep and I’m looking forward to seeing how it fits into that environment.”
And David encourages everyone, not just sci-fi fans, to see Minority Report. “People who have an open mind to the whole concept of how much our society is watched and monitored and how much our thoughts are probed and how much science is racing ahead of any safety, as well as people who just want a straight adventure story, will be excited by it.”
Each time I’ve done a new draft of this play, it’s been because the whole obsession, the fear, the respect for AI has raced forward
David Haig, pictured