The bones of a story
I’ve been in love with words for as long as I can remember… and with Shakespeare’s from age 11, when my English Lit teacher dropped a copy of Julius Caesar onto my school desk, writes subscriber Susan Sachon.
But like so many other kids in our Luton council estate school, I had no idea how to channel that feeling into my working life. I opted for a secretarial course, thinking that I could at least type up my early writing efforts.
I penned my first novel at 14 but lacked the confidence to battle with publishers, sliding easily into the grooves of a first job, and the mindset that sacrificing three quarters of my time at least earned me the right to spend the remaining portion the way I wanted. I filled it with further education, writing stories and plays, reading, and dabbling in theatre, my other love – and finally, in my 60th year, found myself at a Props exhibition at the Royal Shakespeare Company in StratfordUpon-Avon, doing some research for an academic book. There I learned about a bequest from an extraordinary man, whose story at last inspired me to submit a new novel: So Now Go Tell. I’d had the idea of a novel about a theatre director bubbling around in my head for a while; André Tchaikowsky’s legacy showed me a way to combine it with my love of Shakespeare.
Tchaikowsky was born in 1935 to a Polish Jewish family, lived with them in the Warsaw ghetto when war broke out, and then went into hiding with his grandmother until 1944, when they were taken to a transit camp. He went on to forge a successful career as a concert pianist and composer but died in 1982, leaving his skull for use in performances of Hamlet. At first, no actor or director felt comfortable working with a real skull in performance, though it was apparently sometimes used in rehearsal. But in 2008, David Tennant held the skull during a run of performances in Stratford-on-Avon, and in the West End. When the skull’s identity was revealed to the press, the information caused a considerable stir among audiences who flocked to see the play.
Tchaikowsky’s legacy set me thinking about the power of writing and theatre to regenerate lost voices: a major theme in So Now Go Tell, along with the idea that we should never give up our dreams, no matter what age we are, where we come from, or whoever tells us we are bound to fail.
So Now Go Tell weaves parallel threads from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and the story of an actor/ clown who once performed it, within a contemporary mystery thriller. It is available from Amazon, Waterstones, and Troubador Publishing (e-book £4.99, Paperback £13.99).