Nick Darke

Life and writings

The Nick Darke Award

Plays

• Mother Goose – pantomime
• Never Say Rabbit in a Boat – his first full-length play, set in Cornwall about an ageing rabbit catcher and a beach seine net company. Hellyar Jan is also a fisherman, smuggler and born liar. The action takes place on the beach of a small bay in North Conrwall and in Hellyar's old house on the cliff above.
• Low tide – about tourism set on a beach.
• Sinbad the Sailor – pantomime
• Summer Trade – takes place in a pub somewhere on the North Cornish coast the day after the ex-landlord's last night. The new landlord has plans to modernise.
• Beauty and the Beast – pantomime
• Landmarks – set in the thirties in rural England when horse met the tractor for the first and last time.
• A Tickle on the River's Back – set on the Thames about a family of lightermen and the decline of the industry on the river over the last 20 years.
• High Water – set on a beach early one morning. Two men meet to go wrecking and discover they are father and son.
• Say Your Prayers – set in the time of the Roman Empire, and based on an interpretation of the teachings of St Paul. The play takes a wry look at Christianity as the 'Born Again' movement develops into a powerful right-wing lobby in the USA, while the established church in Britain is at its lowest ebb yet.
• The Catch – two fishermen bedevilled by the European Economic Community cast their nets for a different kind of catch – cocaine.
• Cider with Rosie – growing up in the idyllic English countryside between the two world wars
• The Lowestoff Man – sequel to "The Catch", a mysterious American arrives to claim his cocaine
• The Body – an eccentric West Country community contend with the presence of an American airforce base. "Under Milk Wood meets Dr Strangelove", was one critical verdict. It was written during the cold war with the USSR when many were concerned about American nuclear weapons on British soil. Nick had a friend whose farm backed onto the St Mawgan Air Base. Every morning the farmer went to check his sheep while a US Marine followed his movements with a gun. In Nick's research he learned how Marines were trained, broken down and rebuilt so they'd be effective fighting men. Nick said that The Body was a play about identity.
• The Earth Turned Inside Out – the rivalries of two Cornish mining communities set in 1815 at a time when the Cornish copper mining industry was healthy but prone to market forces.
• Bud – fifty-year-old Bud has spent twenty years without rancour or spite working his wife's farm but his peaceful existence comes to an abrupt halt when a misjudgement forces him to question his motivation and examine the 'acid drop scorchin holes in the startched napkin of our marriage'.
• The Oven Glove Murders – described by one critic as "an acerbic response to the British cinema revival led by Chariots of Fire", the play is a writer's experience of the film industry. A playwright has a screenplay set in The Greenham Common peace camp given the Hollywood treatment by a young producer; a similar premise is the basis of the film The Strike by The Comic Strip team two years later.
• The Dead Monkey – a childless Californian couple sit down to a candlelit supper to commemorate the death of their fifteen-year-old pet. The party sours after a series of discomforting revelations. Nick Darke's best known play, The Dead Monkey has been staged many times around the world, including a major USA revival featuring David Soul and in Germany in translation as Der tote Affe.
• Ting Tang Mine – reworking starring Robyn McCaffrey of the community play "The Earth Turned Inside Out": the fate of two competing mining communities used as a parable for capitalism.
• A Place Called Mars . The play is set on a haunted marshland.
• Kissing The Pope – originally known as Campesinos, this is Nick Darke's play for Nicaragua. Set in revolutionary South America, its main themes are about becoming a man in a violent world and about having to decide why to kill before you know why to live. As part of his research, Nick travelled to Nicaragua during the war and wrote a moving diary of his experiences that was published with the play text by Nick Hearn Books – see Published Works.
• Fears and Miseries of the Third Term – part contributor.
• Hell's Mouth – story after Sophocles, set in post-apocalyptic dystopia with Cornish nationalists fighting for independence from England.
• Danger My Ally – is about what happens to two eco-warriors when they are caught trying to blow up an open-cast mine.
• The Bogus – billed as a pan-Atlantic tragi-comedy of murder, corruption and nuptials. When an assassin's bullet lands Arthur May, President-Elect of the USA, six feet under, John Sty dons his persona and leaves Springville, Utah, on a one-way ticket to the village of Quoit in Cornwall.
• Knock Out The Pin – about Newquay lifeboat.
• The King of Prussia – based on the life and times of 18th century Cornish smuggler, John Carter of Prussia Cove, West Cornwall. Nick saw this as a play about looking after your community – the opposite of what he felt was happening in Cornwall and the rest of Britain in the 1990s. He felt the Thatcherite Free Market economy expoused in the 1980s was breaking up industry everywhere and leaving communities vulnerable.
• The Man with Green Hair – drew its inspiration from the Camelford water pollution incident of 1988. A water company somewhere in Cornwall has had a slight mix-up with its chemicals and poisoned the water supply. The mustard-keen pollution control officers want to expose the dirty dealings, the water company and the government want to cover it up. The local community side with the water company, for fear of destroying the lucrative tourist trade.
• The Riot – set in the fishing village of Newlyn in 1896, about the so-called "Sabbath riots", when the devout Cornish fisherman whose Methodist beliefs forbade them to fish on Sundays demonstrated violently against the Sunday fishing fleet from Lowestoft.
• Laughing Gas a comedy about the life of Sir Humphry Davy unfinished at the time of Nick Darke's death; completed posthumously by Cornish actor and playwright Carl Grose and produced by the Truro-based production company o-region.
• One Darke Night – a compendium of extracts from Nick Darke's plays spanning nearly thirty years of his writing career, together with film commentary and extracts from his other writings; intended for simple staging with a small number of performers, emphasis on the words.

  Television and films

• Dancers
• Farmers Arms
• The Bench
• Breaking the Chains Writer: John Angarrack, Director/producer: Nick Darke. Cornish historian John Angarrack talks to Nick Darke about Cornish cultural suppression and the way forward.
• The Cornish Farmer Writer: Nick Darke, Directors: Nick Darke/Mark Jenkin, Producer: Jane Darke. Nick Darke talks to his old friend, Warwick Cowling, about threshing and other farm practices. The film uses 8 mm archive film shot by Nick’s father in the 1960s in St Eval.
• The Wrecking Season a film about beachcombing on the Cornish coast – available on DVD from Boatshed Films.
• The Art of Catching Lobsters, Nick and Jane's second film was initially conceived as a film about Nick's recovery from a stroke through such activities as beachcombing and lobster fishing. Nick was then diagnosed with terminal cancer and the film became a record of his attempts to pass on his knowledge and experience of lobster fishing and the ways of the sea to his son Henry, as well as a poignant documentary about love, loss and the grieving process—also available on DVD from Boatshed Films.
• Nick Darke also appeared in the Exmouth to Bristol episode of the TV series "Coast"

  Radio

• Foggy Anniversary
• Summer Trade
• Landmarks
• Lifeboat
• The Catch
• So Long as Lobsters Swim the Sea – described as "An occasional series where those well-known in one field talk about another consuming interest in their lives. Nick Darke, author of many plays for radio, the National Theatre, and the Royal Shakespeare Company, is also a keen fisherman. He talks about his lobster pots and nets off Padstow."
• Cider with Rosie , in two episodes broadcast by BBC as "The Classic Serial".
• Gone Fishing
• Bawcock's Eve – a mystery story set in Mousehole, Cornwall.
• Flotsam & Jetsam – a family tale based in Porthnant Bay, Cornwall.
• The King of Prussia – set off the Cornish coast in 1789. A mad king, heavy taxes, and smugglers...and in the other direction, a country on the brink of revolution. Based on his play of the same name.
• Underground – voices of miners and their families are woven into a text by Nick Darke and music by Jim Carey.
• In quest of Joseph Emidy – the amazing story of Joseph Antonio Emidy an African slave who eventually became a violinist in the Lisbon Orchestra, fought in the Napoleonic Wars, then settled in Falmouth and became a successful teacher and composer. Produced by Juliam May, with contributions from Richard McGrady, Tunde Jegede, Nancy Naro and Emidy's descendants.
• The Fisherman's Tale – a group of travellers take shelter in a motorway service station from appalling weather. There is no radio or TV, so to keep each other entertained they each tell a story. Darke's contribution to the "2000 tales" series ", written on the 600th anniversary of Chaucer's death. The text was first performed as a play as part of the Darke Night Out production – see Plays above. Aunt Feen, part-time caretaker of a house on Bobby's Bay, St Merryn, decides to supplement her income by letting the property to a young man, Jim, without the knowledge of the house's absentee owner Hugo Bryson Spelles – see the official Nick Darke website for the full text http://nickdarke.net/archives.
• Atlantic Drifting
• Dumbstruck – documentary using an audio diary Nick kept during his rehabilitation after a stroke.
• Hooked – a comedy drama-documentary telling the story of a Cornish couple who are asked for their advice by a Londoner on how to fish for Bass, who subsequently cashes in on his new knowledge. Recorded on Porthcothan Beach.

Other projects

• The Lobster for speaker and chamber group. Performed at the QEH in 1998 by Nicole Tibbels with the Mephisto Ensemble conducted by the composer, Christopher Gunning. Recorded by them on the Meridian label.

  Published works

• The Body ;
• Ting Tang Mine & Other Plays ;
• Kissing The Pope – play text and Nicaraguan travel diary ;
• Cider with Rosie ;
• The Riot ;
• Nick Darke Plays – incls "The Dead Monkey", "The King of Prussia", "The Body" and "Ting Tang Mine";