Thespian turned poet Eve Pearce with Ursula Martinez in OAP. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
Ok, I think it's high time the truth be told: clearly every third theatre person in this country is a closet writer. That's to be expected, obviously, from the playwrights, who daily use words to ply their wares. But what astonishes me are the numbers of directors and actors who like - and are abundantly able - to put pen to paper. On this evidence, I'd guess that if their main jobs ever dry up, they'll have a whole new career tethered to the PC.
The direct catalyst for these thoughts was the launch the other night at the Owl Bookshop in Kentish Town, northwest London, of Woman In Winter, the very readable first book of verse from the veteran actress Eve Pearce, published by Hearing Eye. Twenty three of the 24 poems were written within the last five years, during which time Pearce, now 78, very much took to poetry as an ancillary endeavour - and one for which a thespian attention to detail is ideally suited.
Born in Aberdeen though long-based in London, Pearce writes with a rich Scottish patois. Woman In Winter's final poem, and the one that gives the volume its title, is a wounding report from the front line of terminal illness. In February, Pearce was diagnosed with cancer of the colon, a shock that she poetically refracts by way of Shakespeare: "I will believe the readiness is all."
The gathering that night included Zoe Wanamaker and Miriam Margolyes, not to mention two performers who are no slouches, either, when it comes to writing. Already known for his play about Anton Chekhov, Michael Pennington is at Islington's Little Angel Theatre this week with Sweet William, a subsequent one-man show about Shakespeare's life and work; Margolyes devised a comparable solo show on Dickens' women. Maureen Lipman has, of course, been a Guardian columnist, as has Michael Simkins, who is now more or less his profession's primary chronicler of the vagaries of the acting life.
As I scan my office, I'm simply astonished to see the theatre people whose books adorn my shelves: Oliver Ford Davies, for instance, on playing Lear, or Martin Jarvis on the ups and downs of performing the musical "By Jeeves" on Broadway. There are multiple diaries from Simon Gray, novels and plays by Antony Sher, and both a theatrical history and an autobiography by Richard Eyre. Dominic Dromgoole, artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe, has written two books to suggest that he'd make an ace theatre critic if and when the directing starts to pall. Ian Holm and Brenda Blethyn have given accounts of their lives, as, famously, did Kenneth Branagh before even turning 30.
The New York theatre, I'm afraid, doesn't go in for such multi-tasking. Meryl Streep and Glenn Close have yet to pen their memoirs, while there exists no first-hand account from the legendary director Hal Prince about what it was like to stage the likes of "Sweeney Todd" and "Company" in their world premieres. Tony-winner Billy Crudup never wrote a blog about what it was like being in "The Coast of Utopia" at Lincoln Center, while Harvey Fierstein's private musings on appearing for well over a year in drag in "Hairspray" remain just that: private.
Can it be that a culture that famously lets it all hang out is in fact less inclined to put pen to paper, under the assumption that their job finishes with the curtain call? Whatever the reason, I like the literary inclinations of London theatre folk. And Pearce's poems really are good. Which theatre folk's literary works can you recommend?
