Victoria Willing

How did you get into writing?
I’ve been an actress for 25 years and that’s what I’ve mostly done all my life, then I started writing in my 40s. I’d written as a teenager, but not seriously. I thought: ‘I haven’t got anything to say and nobody wants to listen to me anyway.’ In my 40s I did an MA at Central, then I started writing plays. I wrote my first play in 2010 – with Lucy Fitchett – called Could It Be Forever?, about turning 50 and a reunion of friends who revisit childhood moments. I wrote some other things, then I did Spring Offensive. I was nominated for best writer for The Stage Debut Awards at the age of 57, which was really nice. I’m a very late starter; I’m one of these emerging artists – but I’m an old emerging artist. It’s never too late to emerge, I’m finding out.

What is Spring Offensive about?
Spring Offensive is a comedy that I wrote about a British expat who runs a bed and breakfast on the Somme in northern France. I went there and was fascinated by the First World War tourism that people play on using the cemeteries. It’s a comedy about three people holed up in this tiny house in the middle of the Somme waiting for some guests to arrive. It centres on a middle-aged, post-menopausal woman, who is very egotistical and keen on imposing her ego on everyone.

What challenges are faced by older emerging writers?
There’s a prejudice that if you’re older you can’t possibly be saying anything that’s interesting to younger people or relevant to the world – especially if you’re an older woman. Where is the voice of post-menopausal woman in writing? Where are the characters, who aren’t just stock grannies and aunties? It’s being ignored, as much as it is a financial challenge, for older people. You’re not seen to be relevant or important and that’s such an ingrained prejudice. I’m trying to champion the voice of post-menopause women and the older writer starting out with work that’s just as relevant to young people because it’s about all of us. 

What was the inspiration behind Sad?
It’s about getting older. I wanted to see what it was like to explore a heterosexual relationship between a couple who are actually about 60, but have only been together for eight years. So they know each other well, but haven’t got a lifetime of knowing each other and are not completely sick of each other.

I started sketching around that idea and showing the ups and downs of a relationship and at the same time was thinking about how, as you age, you sometimes want to run away. The main character Gloria runs up to the attic on Christmas Day after her mother dies, and she won’t come out. The play then follows the next two and a half months with her up there. She has to get her partner to do everything. I wanted to explore an idea of isolation and hiding and retreating from the world because it is so rubbish.

What else are you working on?
I’m half Portuguese and I’ve started writing a play that will be about female friendship, set in Portugal before and after the revolution of 1974. I’m also trying to write a play about someone with multiple sclerosis. My father had MS and I wanted to write a play with a young female lead who has MS. 

CV Victoria Willing

Training: MA in writing for the stage and broadcast media at Central School of Speech and Drama (2007-08); diploma in acting at Drama Studio in Ealing (1985-86)
First professional role: Unnamed role in The Bill (1987)
Agent: John Setrice at MacFarlane Chard (acting)

Sad, directed by Marie McCarthy, runs at the Omnibus Theatre in Clapham from April 5 to 30