Congratulations to former Music Scholar and graduate from the School of History, Livy Potter, whose wonderfully intimate, confessional and moving play, Beautiful Man, aired on BBC Radio York last night.
You can listen to the play on BBC Sounds here (scroll to the 18mins 33 seconds mark).
Here, she reflects on the ideas explored in the play, and the influence of Frankie Valli…
I created Beautiful Man for myself, if I’m being totally honest – the actor in me is always demanding parts to play… I wrote it during the summer last year when the weather was glorious and restrictions were half-lifted but life was still very strange. I was in a weird, whimsical, creatively curious state of mind at the time (which you’ll probably be able to glean from listening to the piece).
At its core, Beautiful Man is about carrying on even when the world is falling apart, which I think is something all of us can relate to at the moment. It’s about the small moments that shape relationships, and the hole that opens up when we lose the people we love.
I had been playing around with the character of Hatty in my head for a while, but the structure of the monologue really came together after I listened to Frankie Valli’s ‘Can’t Take my Eyes Off You’ on the radio. I suddenly thought, ‘This song is how I can frame the narrative, how I can make it all come together’. It’s really exciting when this happens – it’s like finding the missing piece a jigsaw you’ve been searching for, to use an obvious metaphor. Music has always been a great creative catalyst for me. I can’t write without having music playing along in the background, and love weaving it into my writing whenever I can.
I hope you enjoy listening to Beautiful Man. I’d like to thank the team at Ilkley Playhouse for encouraging me to write it in the first place, and suggesting that it could work as a radio play.
Livy Potter