Playwright Jess Edwards’ new show, Private View, opens at Soho Theatre Upstairs at the end of the month.
“Two women collide and soon become so entangled it’s hard to tell where one starts and the other begins. It’s messy, magnetic, and disturbingly familiar. Private View offers an intimate look into a cataclysmic love that burns hot and fast – and leaves a mark.
Private View is a sexy, cerebral, and unsettling exploration of queer love, coercive control, and the physics of connection.”
Where: Soho Upstairs
When: 27 Nov-20 Dec
Ticket link: https://sohotheatre.com/events/private-view/
Private View is not your typical queer love story, and covers a lot of complex topics. Where did the idea come from?
It sounds strange but the idea for Private View came to me fully formed.
For a long time, I’ve been interested in particle physics and consciousness, especially entanglement theory – when two particles interact in such a way that they cannot be described independently any more.
I’m fascinated by the metaphors we create to understand profound scientific concepts – and there was something about entanglement that seemed to me so romantic.
Two particles! Connected forever! Even when they are separated by millions of light-years!
It reminded me of some relationships I’ve been in – or observed my friends being in – where the couple becomes so connected, they seem in a state of entanglement themselves.
We tell ourselves this kind of connection is deeply romantic – but it can also be obsessive and dark, spiralling into an intensity that is too much.
In this case, it becomes closer to co-dependence – a relationship state that sometimes goes hand in hand with addiction.
With Private View, I’m trying to explore a relationship that starts as a Richard Curtis rom-com (but queer) and follows that dark obsessive spiral to its natural conclusion, because I’d seen it happen so many times in my own life.
Too often, we romanticise this kind of compulsive connection. It felt like time to tell a love story with a different sort of happy ending to the ones we’re used to.
How has the play developed in its journey from page to stage?
Initially, the play was much more experimental. I was curious to see how the form could mirror the content, and it was closer to performance art, or even dance, when I first wrote it.
Over time, and with incredible notes from my brilliant team, producers at Speakerphone Productions – Sophie Visscher-Lubinizki and Zoe Novello, and director Annie Kershaw, I’ve taken it more into naturalism.
I wanted to make sure the audience weren’t let off the hook, that the play held them in a kind of intense claustrophobia alongside the characters, and when the piece was more experimental, audiences might have been less likely to see themselves in the story.
There was also a time where I imagined the characters as non-binary or more neutral in their gender expression. This helps me at the beginning of the process of writing a play to allow the characters to teach me who they are.
The more I delved deeper into the world of Private View, the more I felt these characters had to be two women. To see queer female love represented in all it’s chaotic messiness is, to me, an act of representation and resistance.
The characters’ problems come not from their queerness – which is inherent to who they are – but from their co-dependence. This felt very important to me in terms of the queer identity of the play.
Private View is billed as “sexy, cerebral and unsettling”. What would you like audiences to take away from the show?
I’d love for people to leave questioning their own relationships, their own notion of romance.
Practically from birth, especially as people who’ve been socialised as female, we’re told that love is intensity, is grand gestures.
It’s following you home with a boom box and standing outside your window making declarations. It’s being showered with attention and being swept off your feet.
This version of love can be extremely seductive – intoxicating, even. The play touches on some pretty dark behaviours – some of the characters’ actions might even be categorised as abuse. I think the kind of stories we hear about abuse can be extremely black and white: ‘abuser’ versus ‘victim’.
With Private View, I was keen to explore a relationship that exists in a kind of trapeze of abuse – where power shifts from one person to another, where cycles of abuse develop and problematic dynamics are developed together.
I really do believe that everyone is doing the best they can with what they have. This is not in any way to excuse abusive behaviour – but I think the most compelling stories sit in the grey areas, away from black and white, good and evil, completely right or completely wrong. Private View aims to occupy this space and disconcert an audience.
If you wanted to sell it to potential audiences what would you say?
I feel so proud to be bringing a queer female story to the Soho Theatre with such a brilliant, largely queer, largely female team.
I feel humbled by the talent involved in the show. It’s so special that my debut is being brought to life by these brilliant humans.
I always say, Private View is a dark, sexy, unsettling two-hander that starts as a Richard Curtis style romcom and ends as a terrible codependent nightmare… just like life! (Lol).
I’d also say, come with your friends, come with your lovers, come with your exes, but maybe don’t come with your parents. It’s a studio theatre and it gets pretty steamy, so that could get awkward.
What’s next for the show after its run at Soho?
Soho Theatre is my dream venue for this show to have its premiere. My work as a director has appeared with Soho several times – I’ve directed in all three of its auditorium – and it’s an incredibly special theatre to me, very close to my heart.
For my debut to appear here is very meaningful. In the heart of London, surrounded by queer history – it feels amazing. Next, I hope we take it to bigger spaces so even more people can experience the show.