Jack Shepherd’s plays have such an easy way of doing things, a kind of structure I really hadn’t experienced before. I had seen and admired him directing his own play, In Lambeth, in 1989 at the Donmar Warehouse. So, in a spirit of entrepreneurship after we set up Southwark Playhouse in London in 1993, I asked him to come on board. He gave us – and acted in – Chasing the Moment.

What you see in the play is a group of jazz players arriving one at a time into the basement of a pub. The pianist is there already, this old geezer from Leeds called Les. Jack, who sadly died in November, was a pianist himself – he always played Les. Then we’re waiting for the old, slightly drugged up double bass player. His instrument is bigger than he is, coming down the stairs is slow. Then the drummer and his kit arrive, one piece at a time.

Then it’s the drummer’s sister, who’s going to do the door, with the petty cash box. And finally the owner of the pub. They all talk and settle themselves.

And then they start playing: the interval basically is the gig. And four or five numbers in, it’s: “We’ll see you here again next Friday.” In the second act, they start to pack up again, but many things have changed.

What Jack does so cleverly is give each actor a moment to show what they and their lives are really about. It’s incredible. You think, where’s the writing? You don’t see it, you see the characters.
He was a great actor’s writer. If it wasn’t real, he wouldn’t stage it. Yet it is a play, obviously it’s kind of contrived: you need to get your band in, do your concert, get the band out, and show lives changed. (Broken hearts have been mended. Someone has died.) And on the way out, they chat to the audience directly.

I’ve worked with a lot of writers – a lot of new writing at the Southwark, and over the past 25 years as artistic director of the Arcola in London as well. But I haven’t seen anyone else who manages to give that sense of real life flowing in front of you. The actual concept is quite theatrical, but within that, you don’t need to be theatrical. You just do the character, be the character. You don’t need to show off.

Directing Jack was never difficult; things could happen naturally. He would say “it doesn’t feel natural if I do that” if I had some bad idea. He was kind of my mentor in that sense, very actor-driven.

He directed King Lear at the Southwark in 1996, and actors would say to him, what does this or that mean? And he’d say, “I don’t know. It’s your character. Figure it out and just do it. I’ll tell you when it’s wrong.”

We’ve done Chasing the Moment a number of times since and we’re planning to do it again in 2027 – it will be the first time without Jack.