Review of the year

The festive season is drawing nigh, and I've received a lovely summary of the year from the perspective of one of the writers and actors involved in Atching Tan - Damian Le Bas. I'll be around to let you know what's latest with me next week, but for now, it's over to Damian.


Work on the Atching Tan radio series happens in bursts, and everyone involved really looks forward to them. Like most Travellers I'm self employed and my work moves around a lot. So it's great to go to Cambridge every month or so and see some familiar faces. It gives life a bit of regular rhythm!

Please excuse me for embarking on a bit of a long blog: it's my first one here and there's a year's worth of great experiences to get through!

This year I'd been spending a lot more time on the project than the year before. As an untrained actor I was already thrilled to have got a really interesting part for Series 1 (playing the inscrutable Romany man Neilous Arkley). Series 2 saw the introduction of four new writers to the team, all from Romany backgrounds: Andrew and Kenny Lamb, Candis Nergaard, and myself. Acting in and writing for the series has given me a very personal attachment to it and I'll certainly be sad when it's all over. From the outset we worked with RTC director Dan Allum, who wrote the breakthrough Series 1 in its entirety, and with leading names in radio drama. One of our first sessions was with Kate Rowland, the BBC's head of new writing: this was my first real introduction to the complexities and craft of writing serial drama. From a writer's perspective, it's been a real challenge, but I genuinely think I've learnt more about engaging through writing than I did at university.

We analysed what makes great characters tick. Take Tony Soprano, for instance: he's an Italian-American, a father, a husband, a Catholic, a patient, a businessman, a charity patron, a sports fan, a film buff. But he's also a thief, a murderer, a liar, an adulterer, a racist, a homophobe, an extorter and a sociopath. That level of backstory and complexity is what leads an audience to invest time and empathy in a character.

Following this we embarked on the daunting process of mapping out the entire series with Dan Allum and BBC Drama's Charlotte Riches, who taught us masses about how to manipulate a storyline to the best effect, and to streamline it where necessary! As a result we lost a few popular characters from the first Series of Atching Tan, which was sad but I do believe it helped the storylines to move on.

In June the Romany Theatre Company journeyed down to the Arvon Foundation's Totleigh Barton manor house in Dorset. The creative writing course was led by playwright Nell Leyshon and director Indhu Rubasingham, both acclaimed in their fields. As well as hearing and performing eachother's material, we had the privilege of reading Romany poet David Morley's latest collection aloud for the first time. Too many great laughs and insights were had that week for me to attempt to write down here.

In July it was finally time to record Series 2 of Atching Tan in Cambridge. Everyone was excited about the prospect of recording the whole series over five days, where for series one we'd met occasionally to record episodes before they aired. There was a lot of material to get through but it gave everyone a real chance to engage with their own and others' characters.

I loved seeing other actors taking scenes I'd written in directions I wouldn't have thought of. I've got to admit it gave me a swell of pride to see these scenes come to life and work dramatically. BBC director Fiona Kercher directed the series and managed to keep everyone's creative juices flowing while working to a very tight schedule. She and Charlotte were on hand all week to offer us fine dramatic advice with a smile and a cup of tea!

I'd spent several days writing one scene in particular, a confrontation between two Romany men, Jobie Buckton and Neilous Arkley. This scene might well have a modest audience but I felt a great responsibility in writing it. Romanies have generally only been portrayed in conflict with non-Romanies: here, I had the golden chance to show people what might actually take place when two Travellers with lots at stake are forced into a corner together. I particularly enjoyed performing the scene with Dean Loveridge, and Dean tells me he rated the writing in it which means more to me than any outside review!

I've singled out that one experience but everyone did a great job on the series and I could honestly go on for pages and pages. I still haven't fully absorbed the privilege of working on the first ever realistic drama series about Romanies.

Through my work with RTC I've been involved with a new play, Shraddha, which premiered at the Soho Theatre this November, and at the moment I'm just trying to get as much experience I can in drama. I'm still closely involved with the Company and looking forward to some exciting stuff in the near future!

- Damian