The Scottish playwright with cult following in South Korea
Douglas Maxwell has found a legion of fans in the most unlikely of places
He is the veteran Scottish playwright behind award-winning scripts So Young and The Sheriff Of Kalamaki and has his latest work set to launch as part of Alan Cumming's inaugural programme at Pitlochry Festival Theatre later this month.
But Douglas Maxwell admits he is most famous in South Korea where his debut work, Our Bad Magnet, about teenage boys growing up in Girvan, earned him a cult following - with an army of Korean fans calling themselves the Iron Filings.
The play ran initially in the early 2000s at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow.
“It had a couple of runs, then it kind of fizzled,” Mr Maxwell said. “But it got a translation into Korean and there was a production out there. Then that production took off and there has been ten different productions of it, it ran for over a decade.
“There is a fan base, they call themselves the Iron Filings. A couple of fans came over last year and I met them in Edinburgh in the Traverse bar. They were going down to Girvan the next day to see where it was set.”
But Mr Maxwell said he does not want to visit South Korea in fear of jinxing his following and "ruin it" for his fans, who create fan fiction and merchandise around the play.
He said: "It’s superstition. When I'm not over there, it's successful, I'm the missing link here. I'm not ready to roll the dice, when I rock up in Seoul and ruin it for everyone with my presence. If they're thinking I'm some kind of brooding, Pinteresque genius and then I'll turn up, all 'alright pals, howya doin', and the whole thing falls apart. I don’t want to risk that. It’s a lovely thing."
As well as the original script being translated into Korean, some Korean theatre companies have also altered the play to create versions which turn it into a gay love story, a play with an all-female cast and a rock musical. Another version is to be performed by a student drama company later this year.
Mr Maxwell said: “They’re not really meant to do that, years ago, my agent sent someone to see it and came back saying it was a bit different. He asked me, ‘Should we shut it down?’
“I said, ‘What? It’s the only successful thing I’ve ever written, why would we shut it down? Let them do what they do.’”
Mr Maxwell said he believed Scottish theatre is entering an "exciting" new era, following the stability of multi-year funding which was awarded to the arts sector by Creative Scotland 18 months ago.
He said: “It is much easier to do well known plays, or plays that are about something or someone people know about. If someone makes a play about Bob Dylan, people go along to that because they like Bob Dylan. It’s much harder to make a play about something that no-one’s ever heard of. But we now get that mix.
“I just feel this year in Scottish theatre has been so exciting and it hasn’t been that way for ages. Things were a bit sparse, a bit thin on the ground. I think there’s no doubt the multi-year funding has made a difference, it’s given companies that confidence to take risks.
“To be able to look through a programme and go ‘that’s a safe bet, that’s a risk, I’ll do both’. There’s something exciting about that.”
He described Alan Cumming’s appointment as artistic director at Pitlochry Festival Theatre as a “shot of adrenaline” for Scottish theatre.
“It’s such a privilege to be part of this opening season,” he said.
Mr Maxwell’s new play, Inexperience, premieres at Pitlochry Festival Theatre on Saturday, 13 June and runs until 4 July.
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