I’m Arthur
Poets wish either to profit or to delight; or to deliver at once both the pleasures and the necessaries of life.
Horace, Ars Poetica
In my wrighting life, I go by Arthur Meek. In my family life, I go by Arthur Warring. I took my wife’s last name when we married because she wasn’t swapping Warring for Meek, and I didn’t want double-banger named kids. It gives me a couple of identities, so that can be confusing for others and me!
My heart is in the theatre. I left home at 18 and travelled from New Zealand to London to intern at Shakespeare’s Globe. I watched Mark Rylance play Hamlet at least a dozen times. I went to drama school in New Zealand and worked primarily in theatre for more than a decade, as a playwright, actor and producer. My are performed in venues ranging from 50-450 seats. They’ve toured the world, and are even studied in schools (not much!). Theatrical success brought me opportunities in radio, TV and film. It took me to New York, as the Arts Foundation Harriet Friedlander New York Resident, and I stayed on for five or six years. I met the love of my life and married her.
The US is where I discovered a whole new type of theatre: Venture Theatre. I started working with founders of early-stage companies to help them pitch their ventures to investors. I recognise the same energy and drive in these founders as I did in the people I worked with in the arts. It gave me a backstage pass to some of the more creative and significant early-stage companies of the last decade. Including Substack.
Now I’m making a life with family in Norwich, England, and I’m figuring what else I want to make. Theatre? Historical fiction? A clever way to tell your life’s story?
Let’s find out together.
Funnily enough, for something that you’re experiencing online, I’m hoping this blog will get me out into my world and experiencing it. I have spent a lot of the past 5 years on Zoom, working and interacting with people virtually. I don’t think that’s very good for me, so I’m trying to change.
Besides, it all comes back to the writing…
There’s a quote that I think comes from James Joyce, but I can’t find it, or anything like it attributed to him when I google.
A writer’s job is to experience epiphanies, and describe them.
Experience is the key. Let’s find out what doors it unlocks for us all. Welcome.
