Nick Darke
Nick Darke (1948–2005) was a playwright. He was also known within Cornwall as a lobster fisherman, environmental campaigner, and chairman of St Eval Parish Council. Early life. Nick's great-grandfather, William Leonard Darke, was a sea captain and master mariner. Nick's grandfather, Temperley Darke, was also a master-mariner and sea-captain who spent his life at sea, and was wrecked twice off the Cape of Good Hope. His father Temperley Oswald ('Pop') Darke, was a North Cornwall chicken farmer, and a distinguished ornithologist. His mother, Betty Cowan, was an actress, who performed throughout the UK . Betty's father was the organist at Hampstead Church, and played organ for Elgar. After acting, Betty ran a cafe called 'Betty's tearooms' from the home that Nick was born in. As a small boy Nick remembered uninvited holidaymakers snooping around parts of his house, even his bedroom, and his contempt for the ravaging effects of unchecked, unregulated tourism, began. Nicholas Temperley Watson Darke, was born in Wadebridge, Kernow, and was raised, and later moved back to Porthcothan, where his family have lived for four generations, after moving there from Padstow. He was educated at St Merryn Primary School  and Truro Cathedral School, from where he was expelled for blowing up the cricket pitch, with a sugar and weed killer bomb. He then attended Newquay Grammar School. Nick's aversion to empire, and the English ruling class, began at boarding school during the sixties, where he experienced sadistic institutionalized bullying, and extremely poor sanitary conditions. He was accepted into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but couldn't afford the fees, so instead trained as an actor at Rose Bruford College, Kent. Early career. After making his professional début at the Lyric, Belfast, he went on to learn his  craft in repertory theatre, at the Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent, England. Over a ten-year period he acted in over eighty plays at Stoke, and between 1977–79 also directed "Man Is Man", "The Miser", "Absurd Person Singular", "The Scarlet Pimpernel", and "A Cuckoo in the Nest". His love of theatre in the round began at Stoke, 'fluidity of action, jump-cuts from location to location, short scenes, diversity of characters, music as narrative were the bread and butter of the Vic and I've fed on them ever since'. He believed the best advice to learn how to be  a playwright was to 'go and be an actor'. At Stoke he wrote his first full-length play, "Never Say Rabbit in a Boat", which won the George Devine award in 1979. He then gave up acting to write full-time. Playwriting. Over the next twenty-seven years, he wrote twenty-seven plays which have been performed throughout the world, and London's leading writer-led theatres The Royal Court Theatre, The Donmar Warehouse, The Almeida Theatre, The Bush Theatre, The Lyric, two for The Royal National Theatre, and eight for The Royal Shakespeare Company. Three of his plays, "The  Catch", "Kissing The Pope", and "The Dead Monkey", were originally directed by Roger Michell. Prominent actors performed his work, including Tim Roth, Ralph Fiennes, Pete Postlethwaite, Frances Barber, Lesley Sharp, Geoffrey Hutchings, Phillip Jackson, and Antony O'Donnel. 'By turns dreamily inconsequential, passionately satirical, and sharply observant, he is one of the most interesting of our playwrights,' "Sunday Telegraph." 'Fiercely original and scaldingly funny,' "The Washington Post" on "The Dead Monkey". Having grown up in a secluded agricultural community similar to Laurie Lee, Nick was a natural fit to adapt "Cider With Rosie" for the stage, in 1981. During his career , Nick also wrote twelve radio plays and presented five radio documentaries for Radio Four. When he returned to Cornwall during the latter part of his career, Kneehigh Theatre performed his work. Kneehigh's London debut, The King Of Prussia, was written by Nick, commissioned by The Donmar Warehouse in 1996. Kneehigh's second London outing was also written by Nick, "The Riot" was commissioned by, and performed at, The National Theatre, Cottesloe, in 1999. Screenwriting. Nick wrote a Play for Today entitled "Farmer's Arms" (1983), a comedy western set in the parish of St. Merryn, near where he grew  up, starring Phillip Jackson, Colin Welland, and Brenda Bruce. In 1999 Nick wrote a TV Movie called The Bench, starring "Geoffrey Hutchings" and Leslie Grantham. Nick also worked with Geoff twice in the theatre, with one-man, one-act monologue "Bud" at the Almeida in 1985, and later Geoff had the central role in "The Riot" at The National Theatre, 1999. A film version of his first play "Never Say Rabbit in a Boat" was in pre-production with APT Films, when Nick died in 2005. His son Henry Darke made short film versions of his plays "Danger My Ally  in 2003, and Highwater" in 2006. Documentary. "The Wrecking Season" (2004) was his final work, and his first documentary. He wrote, presented, and narrated the film, which his widow Jane Darke filmed and directed. "The Wrecking Season" charts the lives of Cornish 'wreckers', traditionally Cornish farm-hands who collected bulk wood that washed in after a storm, to sell for additional money and supplement their income when farming was slack, or to use to build with. More broadly the film explores the journey of long haul drift and general sea debris, notably sea beans from the Amazon basin, and tuna  and lobster fisherman's tags from the Maine and Massachusetts fisheries, and how 'wreck' follows a consistent route around the Gulf Stream, arriving specifically on the west coast of Ireland and the North Cornwall coast. Nick talks to oceanographers, wood specialists, and fisherman on both sides of the Atlantic. Nick himself was a 'wrecker' after moving permanently back home to Porthcothan in 1990. He self-built part of his home with wreck wood salvaged after storms from beaches across Cornwall, and traded fishing gear that he found, with Padstow lobster fishermen, for bait and lobster pots that he then used  to fish with. During their wrecking, Nick and Jane Darke personally amassed one of the largest collections of Tropical sea-beans in Europe. The documentary was innovative at the time for its investigation into the variety of plastics on Cornish beaches, including microplastics such as 'nurdles'. "The Wrecking Season" was broadcast on BBC4 shortly after Nick's death. Environmental activism. Nick made a vital contribution to the culture of Cornwall, though he claimed his greatest achievement (and that of his wife Jane) was campaigning North Cornwall District Council to end the mechanical raking of beaches on the North Cornwall coast . A system of cleaning that did great harm to the natural eco-system of beaches in Cornwall. This followed in the footsteps of his father, conservationist 'Pop' Darke, who as St. Eval Parish Council Chairman before Nick, prevented a carpark from being built on the site of Porthcothan sand-dunes. Personal life. Nick Darke met painter and documentary filmmaker Jane Darke (née Spurway) in Sevenoaks Kent, in 1979. They began a relationship in 1980 and married in 1993. Nick is the father of film-maker Henry Darke and stepfather of Jim Roberts, a marine scientist who works for the prestigious  NIWA environmental research institute of New Zealand. Nick was made Bard of the Cornish Gorsedd in 1996 taking the Bardic name "Scryfer Gwaryow" ('Writer of Plays'). Death. Nick suffered a stroke in January 2001, which left him unable to write and speak. The process of recovery was documented in the Radio documentary Dumbstruck. Having relearnt the ability to both write and speak with the help of his wife, and nearly fully recovered from the stroke, Nick was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died one month after his diagnosis, aged 56, in June 2005. A unique beach funeral ceremony was followed  by burial in St Eval churchyard. "The Art of Catching Lobsters", directed and filmed by Jane Darke, with additional camera-work by Molly Dineen, is a moving account of her husband's death, and the grieving process. Influences. Peter Cheeseman, the Artistic Director of Victoria Theatre Stoke, was a huge influence on the early part of Nick's career, and the direction it would take. Peter oversaw Nick's move from actor to director, and eventually to writer of the annual winter pantomime, two years in a row. Peter saw enough promise in Nick's adaptation of Mother Goose, to  commission his first play. As well as Chekhov and Ibsen, a big influence on Nick's work was Bertolt Brecht, and specifically "Mann ist Mann". Nick was personally and creatively fascinated by the individual's ability to entirely remake themselves anew, exploring the subject in three of his plays: The Body, The Bogus, and Kissing The Pope. Later on, Edward Abbey's "The Monkey Wrench Gang", and "Dessert Solitaire", were big influences on Nick's attitude to the natural world, and our collective responsibility towards it. He was also friends with, and hugely influenced by, Cornwall's leading historian John  Angarrack, whom Nick made a short documentary film about, named after Angarrack's first book "Breaking The Chains" (2000). The biggest influences on Nick's life and work were the farmer's he grew up with as a boy, the fishermen he made friends with as a man, and the distinctly Cornish men and women in the parish of St. Eval, who once defined the area, but who he watched gradually and completely disappear from the community. Style and legacy. Subjects ranged from eco-sabotage, Greek mythology, child soldiers, U.S. geopolitics, Saint Paul, the right-wing lobbying arm of the  evangelical Christian movement, domestic abuse, British colonialism, and slavery in Africa, but the bulk of Nick's work, reflected Cornish society and culture, such as tin mining, farming, and fishing. He had a preoccupation with depicting authentic Cornish characters, based on the people he lived and grew up with. Nick Darke's literary voice is highly distinctive and many of his characters, plots and settings are rooted in real Cornish life, past and present. As one of his earliest reviews, in "The Financial Times" stated: "Darke gives shape to a Cornish identity that feels vital and real and has nothing  to do with clay pipes and clotted cream". Having trained 'in the round' as an actor, Nick was a strong advocate for simplicity over artifice, his plays 'demand little more than a magic box and a half a dozen versatile actors to transport you from the high seas to revolutionary France in the bat of an eye. Load the plays with ornament and they tend to collapse. Pace and fluidity are the watchwords, even entrances and exits can be dispensed with if the performers are onstage throughout'. In 2009 director Simon Harvey, and the Cornwall Youth Theatre Company, began "Darke  Visions", an eighteen-month festival running from Spring 2009 to Summer 2010 celebrating the life and work of Cornwall's foremost playwright, with the performance of "Hells' Mouth" (directed by Harry and Theresa Forbes-Pearce); "The Body" (directed by Tom Faulkner); and "Ting Tang Mine" (directed by Rory Wilton and Emma Spurgin Hussey). These plays went on tour in Cornwall during March/April 2009. In 2011 the theatre group o-region toured small-scale venues with a new show "One Darke Night" which also celebrated Nick Darke's rich legacy. Combining specially commissioned film (featuring Nick's son, Henry) and  a small cast of players, the play fused extracts from lesser-known works with firm audience favourites such as "The King of Prussia" and extracts from Nick's other writings. Compiled by Simon Harvey who had worked with Nick on the production of his final play "Laughing Gas" in 2006, the production provided fresh insight into the remarkable range and diversity of Nick's catalogue of work. Among others, Nick mentored playwright Carl Grose, and film director Mark Jenkin, both of whom won Falmouth University's Nick Darke Award, and both of whom cite Nick as a source of inspiration  for their own work. The Nick Darke Award. The Nick Darke Award was developed by Nick Darke’s widow, with the support of Nick Darke’s family and Falmouth University. Funded by the university, the annual award began as a financial prize aimed at giving writers time to write an entirely new work, in stage, screen or radio. The award then developed from a Cornwall-focused prize, based on short treatment submissions, into one purely for fully-written, and polished new plays, similar in structure to other prominent national playwriting prizes. Submissions for the award immediately jumped from one hundred , to one-thousand five hundred, and in broadening its scope, became another welcome new home for newly written, unperformed plays, and exciting new voices in the theatre world. Published works. Radio. Nick Darke also appeared on the Radio 4 programme ""Nature"" (broadcast 16 February 2004). BBC Radio commemorated the 10th anniversary of his death by rebroadcasting several of Darke's radio plays in June 2015.