“Where are the aspiring dramatists of either sex who instantly identify themselves by the timbre of their dialogue or the idiosyncrasy of their stance, as Pinter and Bond once did? Doug Lucie perhaps, that sour observer of the go-getting Eighties; no one much else.”
Benedict Nightingale, The Times
My favourite English Playwright. his very finest [play is] ‘Progress’, in which he – with eerie prescience – dissected and ridiculed the human impulses behind identity politics and shone a light on the hypocrisy of many who spouted progressive ideals while behaving in a ’conventionally reactionary way’ to put it in his own recent words.
Julie Burchill, The Spectator
The Doug Lucie Project
We are very excited to announce a new R and D project working with the wonderful Doug Lucie (Progress, Fashion, Gaucho, The Shallow End) on his first play in 20 years.
We have already raised £4000 towards the project and are awaiting to hear on our first ACE grant application.
As part of this endeavor, we are incredibly fortunate to have been offered a space at the Arcola for 6 days in February to work with Doug on developing the play.
Doug Lucie was one of the UKs most influential writers with his plays spanning 4 decades and peaking in the 80s and 90s.
The son of a milkman but educated at Oxford through a scholarship, Doug’s unique point of view and hard hitting writing challenged the status quo garnering him the moniker of ‘Britain’s Most Acerbic Playwright’.
His work was lauded for it’s unflinching, honest portrayal of character and the socio-political landscape- for wielding truth like a sledgehammer, and for the idiosyncratic and often hilarious voice of his writing that led critics to hail him as the only true torch bearer of such luminaries as Pinter and Bond (Benedict Nightingale, The Times, 1990)
By the 2000's the work had begun to dry up as he slipped out of the public eye. This was in no small part due to the obstacles of ageism and the prejudice against writers of his background.
In a 2024 article for the Spectator entitled: ‘What happened to the working class?’ legendary writer Julie Burchill mourns: “The 1980s plays of my favourite English playwright, Doug Lucie are never performed now.
It’s a weird anomaly of our allegedly egalitarian society...and I find it especially sad that working class writers appear to be less visible than they were...They have literally been silenced.”
In 2017, Doug became homeless but rediscovered his passion for theatre whilst working with others from the charity Crisis and the Old Firehouse to produce a beautiful piece of devised theatre called ‘Life is a Circus’ (see below for the video!). He lives now in Thame.
In Association with The Actor's Craft: Studio of Meisner and Method
Why Doug; why now?
Doug is an acclaimed playwright, one of the best this country has produced with his work being staged at The National, The Oxford Playhouse, The Bush, RSC, The Lyric and The Royal Court amongst others . To see him reduced to homelessness and his potential ignored is simply unacceptable.
Writers of Doug’s age and experience are incredibly rare in this day and age, with preference being given to the new and young.
We feel that Doug has an essential voice in these troubling times and it’s a voice we feel deserves to be heard.
We need to give greater space to artists of Doug’s generation- they carry a weight of wisdom and experience that the young cannot match; their unique and layered point of view is capable of reaching truths and ideas that are simply beyond those who have, quite simply, barely begun to live.
The subject of his new play will be centered around aging, love, loss, grief and memory. We are always challenged by the future and aging- the grief, loneliness, loss and obscurity it may hold for us. “Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls/It tolls for thee.” But this is the point of art “to shew us ourselves as we truly are” (George Bernard Shaw), to shake us and make us think and consider the truths we must all confront. Doug’s writing achieves this with an uncommon combination of honesty and comedy, truly capturing the tragedy and hilarity of the human condition.
We need writers like Doug Lucie.
“We talk about moving forward — but sometimes all we’re doing is rearranging the furniture of discontent.”
Doug Lucie, Progress, 1984