Canada Calling: Peter Colley

Peter Colley is a Canadian author who has written a number of mystery plays, including I'LL BE BACK BEFORE MIDNIGHT, which the Toronto Globe & Mail called the “most popular play in Canadian history.” His other mysteries are WHEN THE REAPER CALLS and THE MARK OF CAIN (MURDER IN THE MIRROR). He has written historical thrillers like THE DONNELLYS, and contemporary true crime like STOLEN LIVES. I'LL BE BACK BEFORE MIDNIGHT was made into a film with Ned Beatty, Susannah York, Robert Carradine and Heather Locklear, and THE MARK OF CAIN was made into a movie starring Wendy Crewson and August Schellenberg. He has also written a series of Greek mythology stories for CBS TV as well as the teen sci-fi series THE ZACK FILES.

NOIRVILLE, his latest mystery, has its world premiere in at Vertigo Mystery Theatre, Calgary, Alberta, March 8 to 30, 2008. For information about performances and tickets, check out www.vertigotheatre.com

PDD:
Why plays? What does that format add to the mystery/thriller experience?

PETER:
Plays offer the most immediate experience to the audience. As an audience you are there with the actors in the room—it's real, as opposed to film or TV which is a 2-dimensional image, mechanically projected. Plays aim for what writers call the “suspension of disbelief”, when the audience, emotionally, becomes part of the play.

There is nothing more satisfying than hearing an audience gasp, laugh, or scream at the story you have created as though they are watching something real. A book is usually read in isolation, so the group dynamic is missing. I think there is something primeval about sitting around with other people having a group story experience. It probably goes back to the first cave men and women as they sat by their fires at night and listened to the storytellers tell (probably highly embellished) tales of their most harrowing experiences which also became cautionary tales for the rest of the group.

PDD:
You've written in several mystery sub-genres: comedy, thriller, true crime, noir. Do you have a favorite part of the mystery spectrum?

PETER:
No. I like variety so I move from one style to another—much to the annoyance of publishers who want you to write the same hit over and over again. I do have a soft spot for black humour so that permeates all my work.

PDD:
Is writing for a mystery-loving audience different than writing for a an audience who come to watch a straight drama or comedy?

PETER:
I see every story as a mystery, it's just that some "mysteries" are more obtuse than others. At the beginning of every story you have to pose the "dramatic question"—ie what will happen? I remember when I was very young watching a tense thriller on TV and nervously asking my father "what's going to happen?". I was at the age when parents are supposed to know everything. He said: "I don't know, you'll have to watch it and find out." Needless to say I couldn't budge from my seat until the story was over. So whether I am writing a drama, comedy or musical the same rule applies—people stick around because they don't know what's going to happen and they want to find out. Of course, creating a story that people really want to stick around for is the hard part. In an "open" mystery (like Columbo) we know who did it, but the mystery is in the "how" the villain is trapped. In a closed mystery (a whodunnit) there are many suspects and we play the vicarious sleuth as we try to deduce correctly who is the villain. But even in a madcap comedy or drama the hero is often put in a situation which appears impossible to get out of, and the mystery is in how the hero extricates him(her)self.

PDD:
What's the most challenging thing about writing a mystery or thriller? What's the most enjoyable?

PETER:
The most challenging is making it new. A writer called Gozzi once claimed that there were only thirty-six dramatic situations. Schiller took great pains to find more, but he couldn't find even as many as Gozzi. In 1921 George Polti wrote a book defining these 36 situations. So to find a "new" story is the hard part. The most enjoyable thing is finding a new variant on the 36 and putting it in front of an audience for the first time and seeing that it moves them.

PDD:
You were associated with the first season of DUE SOUTH. Why do you think that series had such a following on both sides of the Canadian/U.S. border?

PETER:
I think its success was because of the purity of principle that the character brought to the unprincipled streets of the big city. "A knight without armour in a foreign land". We have always been drawn to heroic people whose core principles could not be corrupted by their environment. The reason the audience relates to it is because almost every day of our lives we have to make difficult choices that challenge our core beliefs, and we want role models to show us that we do not need to compromise.

PDD:
What books or other resources would you recommend for a mystery writer who wanted to try writing a play?

PETER:
The only way to write for the stage is to see LOTS of plays. Reading them is helpful, but it's better after you have seen them. That way you can dissect the ebb and flow of the story from a technical standpoint.

People often think it's easy to write a mystery play, but it's a lot harder than it looks. In a book, you can flip pages, or put it aside for a while, but a play is in real time. If you lose an audience for a moment, it can take a long time to get them back—if you ever do. It is a very disciplined form of writing which often requires relentless rewriting and honing. If you want to write for the theatre you should volunteer to work backstage and see how it works. The movement of characters, the exits and entrances, all has to be carefully plotted out. Every move must have a motivation, every exit and entrance must have a reason and the writer has to know the offstage life of the characters as well as what goes on onstage. One useful book for me was The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri. It's a clunky old work from 1946 but has many useful nuggets in it. I particularly like Egri's chapter on premise.

More about Peter and his plays can be found at http:// www.petercolley.com/index.htm.



Next month we go calling on the award-winning writer, Barbara Fradkin