Robin Hooper on Love Your Soldiers

"I've got a director friend who always says that actors are like soldiers", remarks Robin Hooper, discussing his new play, Love Your Soldiers, now playing at the Crucible Studio in Sheffield.

"They're on the front line and they have to go out there and make this thing happen with the audience", he explains. "I mean, the audience are not the enemy, not at all, but the contact – that's a military term – with the audience, during a performance, is essential". This correlation is key to Hooper's conception of his play. "I think there is this extraordinary link between military life, theatrical life and medical life", he contends – the three worlds of his play.

"A few years ago, I had an operation. I'd never had an operation before and I was a little bit nervous. I'd been sedated and goodness knows what, and one of the memories I have was of being on this trolley, being pushed towards the operating theatre and a sign that said ‘To the theatre'. I thought, 'well, I'm alright. I know this world'." The links between theatre and the military are equally strong. "There's that wonderful expression, ‘theatre of war', and the whole thing about dressing up; how you present yourself; uniform. I think there are wonderfully potent, rich images between the three different worlds".

Images have been vital to Hooper from the start of the writing process. "I didn't read anything. I think I read one book. But I watched a lot of internet stuff and television documentaries. The images that really came to me were of this thing called 'bacha bazi': young boys, who dress as girls and dance for Afghan warlords and chieftains".

Alongside this intriguing practice, Hooper discovered "images of soldiers dancing, as a kind of energy release when they're not fighting. When they're not doing this terribly violent, stressful job, they dance to Lady Gaga and things like that and it's very, very strange and also very touching".

Not everyone was so delighted by the obvious link between these images. Hooper found soldiers very keen to talk to him about their experiences, but when he "showed a draft to a particular organisation that deal with wounded soldiers, they were very upset by certain aspects".

One of the things that troubled them was the bacha bazi and this connection between that and UK soldiers serving in Afghanistan. "It wasn't the detail that they questioned. They thought the detail was quite accurate, but they did not go for the way I put it all together". Hooper is unperturbed: "that is the kind of leap you have to make. You have to make it a play; you have to create a drama, which people can identify with." The human aspects of these stories have always been more important to him than any polemics:

"My main concerns, as a playwright, and indeed the sort of plays that I like to do as an actor, are those which involve a lot of humanity. I enjoy political plays and I've studied political theatre, but it's not my territory; I'm not very good at it. I'm all the time, I think, seeing several points of view. And I get very confused. So, I try and write plays that are rooted in situation and also rooted strongly in character, because I think actors like to play character and they like to play and discover and work through a run of a play, and the way I think you can achieve that is by writing people that are very complicated and not particularly black and white".

And what about the audience? "I want people to have a really good evening. I want them to be entertained and I want something to change within them. I don't want them to feel pressurised in any way; I just want them to be involved with the play. That is very important to me. And to do that, sometimes the writer has to shut up, or the characters have to shut up, and there has to be something else going on as well". Here Hooper returns to his images. "I saw The Winter's Tale here yesterday and I was reminded how Shakespeare used to do that a lot. I mean, yes, there's a lot of language and a lot of words, but a play like The Winter's Tale, where you get that experience of watching Hermione, built as a statue, come to life is absolutely wonderful to watch. That is pure theatre. It is everything happening at the same time".

Love Your Soldiers continues at the Studio, Sheffield until 23 November. For further information visit www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk

– Sophie Bush