 VITAL
STATS Where do you live? Stratford, London; although I'm currently spending six months at the Cite International des Arts in Paris. What do you do? Playwright Anything to declare? At uni,
I did once get some paid work dressing up as a giant green condom for
Safer Sex Week. Tough work, but at least I didn't need an umbrella.
Got called a dickhead a lot, and every guy who called me that thought
that they were being original. The next time I dressed up, it was as
Maisy the Mouse for about 300 mental three year-olds in a bookshop. Favourite piece of music? 'The Bells' by Jeff Mills; lately, 'White Light' by Gorillaz and 'There There' by Radiohead. Sources of strength and inspiration? "Surely You Must Be Joking, Mr Feynman" by Richard Feynman, which is a collection of memoir-style stories by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist: he says, among other things, that it's a really good idea to say, "I don't know". Nearly any painting by Gerhard Richter. His approach to painting changed the way I thought about how to write for the theatre. Goals for the next year? Try to finish three new plays and begin to earn a living from playwriting in the UK, rather than just the Australian side of things. Greatest weakness? Shoes. I love looking at good shoes. I think it's because I didn't have a lot of money during uni and starting out as a playwright, where I couldn't afford to replace the one hole-ridden pair I had at a time. And coffee. Coffee, the great, coffee, the good, coffee, the god. Coffee. If
you could have three wishes, what would they be? ME
AND THE BIG D What does a hypo feel like? Sweaty. Also a bit confusing, I can start to believe in all sorts of divinity, excepting coffee, and get excited about very small things without being able to fully articulate why. Does everyone around you know about you're D? Yep. At least I think they do. I've been out to dinners five or six times with friends, injected at the table each time, and then somebody will yelp out, "Ben, I didn't know you were diabetic!" Has Diabetes changed anything about you? I think it's given me enormous insights into things like psychology. I had to deal with the concept of my mortality at the age of five. That in itself provokes all sorts of consequent thoughts about life, politics, religion. Which is very good for writing plays. I've looked more for the reasons behind the way people act than I might have done. I also trust science much more than herbs - I might have ended up a lunatic in an orange clothes-wearing cult otherwise. Are you a 'Person with Diabetes' or a Diabetic? In my late teens and early 20s it was important for me to say "person with diabetes". I think it's important to say that while you're working out who the hell you are - which is hard enough without diabetes, so the last thing you want is a sticky label of a chronic disorder determining you. But now I can say that I'm diabetic in five languages it seems a little less important. Plus I think I've got a fair idea of who I am these days. Public injections - what's the etiquette? People generally don't notice, and I don't think toilets are particularly hygenic places. It depends on the people around you, too, whether you think they'll jump up and down and point at you. Mind you, if I do it publicly, I only ever inject in my stomach when in public. I would never pull down my dacks or do it in my arm. Buttocks, however... And Finally. Any wisdom to share? Don't beat yourself up. You might do things exactly the same two different days in a row and yet get one reading that's a little elevated. Don't blame yourself. Blame normality. Variation is normal. Life is about variations, otherwise we'd still be amoeba. Ben Ellis' new play Poet No.7 is having its world premiere at London's Latchmere Theatre in March 2006.
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Name?
Ben Ellis, 31
