Interviewer: Hello and welcome. We’re spending the first part of today’s programme talking about Tanya Perry, and with me today is Ray Potter, her friend and colleague for many years ...
Ray: Yes, well, I’ve known Tanya for nearly 20 years. Not many people know that she was born in London, in (1) 1948. In 1952, her parents moved with Tanya and her brother to the (2) Northwest. They lived in various places, before finally coming to Manchester in 1956.
Tanya spent a very happy period at school. In fact she was in the same class as Jack Peters, the famous (3) poet. David Thompson, the artist, was also at the school - a couple of years below her, I think. So it was an interesting time for Tanya, who actually began to write short stories while she was at school. One of her stories appeared in the school magazine - I have a copy here. It’s extraordinary, you can see a lot of her (4) ideas starting to grow. When Tanya left school, she didn’t go to university, as Jack Peters did, but got a job immediately. She was never interested in university life. What she wanted was to be part of the real world, to meet different people and get more experience of life. So in the early 1970s she became a (5) waitress, working in what was then one of the most popular cafes in Manchester. She was writing at night and in 1975 she had her first (6) play performed, at the Edinburgh Festival.
She gave up her day job the following year, to be able to write (7) full-time. Several of her plays were performed, including one at the Court Theatre in London. This was where she met film (8) director Robin Newgate, who she later married. Robin introduced her to the film world and, in 1979, she wrote the story which later became the film ‘City Life’, which Robin directed. It won the (9) prize for best foreign film at an important French Film Festival in 1984.
Tanya could have moved to Hollywood then, but she was still married to the theatre - and to Robin - so she decided to stay here. Now she has (10) 24 plays in print, 18 in translation, which makes her work very widely known all over the world.