Alan Plater – författare

A new comic drama, starring Maureen Lipman, about the life of the famous play agent, Peggy Ramsay, who helped transform post-war British drama Alan Plater's play for the Hampstead Theatre in London is a witty and poignant portrait of Margaret 'Peggy' Ramsay, the larger-than-life play agent who nurtured several generations of British playwrights (John Arden, Alan Ayckbourn, Robert Bolt, Edward Bond, David Hare, Caryl Churchill, David Hare, Christopher Hampton, Joe Orton, and others) from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. Peggy was one of the most influential behind-the-scenes figures in post-war British theatre. Focusing on one fateful day of her life, when old clients are exiting and new ones are entering, Plater's play is a meditation on the creative spirit. The play premiered at the Hampstead Theatre, London, 23 November 1999."Alan Plater's hilarious celebration of the late literary agent Peggy Ramsay" (The Times)

Published to tie in with the legendary Live Theatre's thirtieth birthday celebrations Spanning three generations, Live Theatre is a celebration of the finest playwrights from the North East. In The Filleting Machine (Tom Hadaway), a fishing family's way of life faces extinction; in You Are My Heart's Delight (C.P. Taylor), the lights are switched out in the house of a gamekeeper and his sister who have resisted change for years; Shooting the Legend (Alan Plater) is a comedy of cultural errors in which two women prepare to make a documentary about the 'socially deprived' of Gateshead; in Wittgenstein on Tyne (Lee Hall), Wittgenstein is caught red-handed when working as a hospital porter on Tyneside; Laughter When We're Dead (Sean O'Brien) is a modern revenge tragedy set around the politics of old versus new labour while Cold Calling (Julia Darling) is a dark comedy about a door-to-door salesman.

Close the Coalhouse Door is a living pageant of the North-East's mining communities, and also a key work in the development of British political drama. Triumphantly revived by Live Theatre, this gritty musical is regularly staged by all kinds of theatre companies, from professional to school and amateur. The original version was published by Samuel French. This new edition, using the updated script, was published in response to demand from the numerous theatre groups which want to perform it. Alan Plater wrote: 'Some plays refuse to lie down. Others surrender on the first night and disappear into a mysterious other country – the land of lost plays. Nobody can explain this phenomenon. Shakespeare himself had no idea how many people would turn up on the night. Close the Coalhouse Door was written, with the wise and loving inspiration of Sid Chaplin and adorned by the songs of Alex Glasgow, in 1968. It has been revived at regular intervals ever since. Initially we updated it, to accommodate Edward Heath and the miners’ strikes; but eventually time took its revenges. In 1968 we had a cast of ten plus walk-ons, five musicians and a full brass band on special occasions. The new version is written for a cast of eight, who made their own music, again with a brass band on special occasions. Theatrical resources have shrunk, though not as drastically as the coal industry. The soul of the piece is unchanging. We originally described it as "a hymn of unqualified praise to the miners – who created a revolutionary weapon without having a revolutionary intent". If, today, the hymn is more in the nature of an elegy, it is a strain that haunts the dreams of everyone with roots in the North-East.'