Renee Liang catches up with writing powerhouse Arthur Meek on his upcoming theatre pieces - a restaging of his play Sheep, a development showing at ATC’s The Next Stage and touring schools piece Power Play.

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Playwright and actor Arthur Meek has been quietly building up a huge ouvre of work, tackling everything from comedy to drama, one handers to large casts, and writing for stage, TV and radio. As this interview is published he is about to have a restaging of his play Sheep, a showing of his next piece at Auckland Theatre Company’s The Next Stage and theatre group Ensemble Impact is preparing to tour their next show, Power Play, made up entirely of extracts from Arthur’s plays, to schools around the country.  Renee Liang caught up with Arthur.

Why do you write for theatre?

I fell in with the wrong crowd.

Are you a writer who happens to act, or an actor who has become a writer?

I think I’m a writer who needs to remind himself not to feel too smug about his contribution. Writing’s only half the job when it comes to making something speak to the crowds.

How was New York? Is it worth its reputation as a city for dreamers and creatives?

If you’re creative, New York’s great for a quickie, but to be honest, it’s possibly the worst place in the world to try something new, or slowly turn ideas over in your mind. That’s because you have to come up with rent, and you’re surrounded by constant stimulation, and success of the highest order. But if you’ve done your thinking elsewhere, and you come to town with something to sell, New York is the place to be showered in gold.

How is your shared creative spaces initiative going?

The survey results are in, and enough writers would pay the equivlent of a weekly gym membership to belong to a sweet shared space where they can work in quiet company. The only thing stopping me from setting this up right now is that I’m not in the country for long enough at the moment. If anyone is, and feels like this could be something they’re into organising with me, give me a yell, and maybe we can get this thing off the ground ASAP.

There's a saying that writers, through all their pieces, are actually raking over the same piece of ground. Do you write the same story over and over, or are all your stories different?

I used to think each story was a unique snowflake, but I’ve come to realise that at the heart of it, all my stuff is about whether our successes and failures are the result of our individual talent and effort, or whether we’re beneficiaries and/or victims of a un/conscious community.

How long do you chew over ideas before they become fully fledged pieces of work?

It all depends on deadlines. I can work quite fast if someone’s cracking the whip, but I think the underlying inspiration for the material I’m coming up with usually corresponds to people and issues I was dealing with about five years ago. It takes that long to filter through, but it always feels relevant to the now.

Tell me about how Sheep came into being.

Sheep was born over cigarettes and tacos with my dear, departed friend Willem Wassenaar. He founded Long Cloud - a huge company full of talented young people, and we wanted to give them something wild to do. We did. It’s so wild that companies have been reinterpreting it ever since.

How is the new production different? What is 'the Benjamin Henson treatment'?

Ben is like a theatrical tornado who rips through plays. By the time he’s done, only the truth remains standing, and the rest of the material is scattered around it in beautiful patterns that make you laugh and sigh.

In 2015 Ensemble Impact is touring a programme exclusively made up of extracts from your plays - Power Play. How do you feel about the idea of schools up and down the country getting a taste of your work?

Me likey. I am going to try and get them to perform the most disgusting stuff. I want at least one school to throw us out on the street.

Tell me about your work currently being workshopped for The Next Stage.

I’m experimenting with how to use theatre to do all the things that it can to blow our minds. It’s the greatest art form because its primary materials are humans. The stuff I’m presenting now is moving a world away from people pretending to talk in fake rooms. If this was art, I’d be going from naturalism to modernism.

What are you working on next?

A film about a man trying to find a good home for his sperm.