interview .......................................... mybrighton: Tim Crouch Photo by Adam Bronkhorst Playwright, director and actor .... 30.... Are you local? I was brought up in Bognor, which Bar in Kemptown tugs on my emotions. I’ve had a is sort of local. I went to university in Bristol, met few Brighton friends die recently and each time the my wife, had two kids, and started to make theatre. Bristol has become the place of refuge for the griev- I missed the deeply shelving pebble beaches of my ers. They do good food, too, and there’s a great view childhood, so we moved to Brighton in 1998. It was of the sea. Bom-Bane’s, nearby on George Street, is a the best move we ever made. uniquely Brighton institution with great food made Where do you live? In Hanover. In 1997 I was in a by real people and an eclectic programme of live touring production of Caryl Churchill’s Light Shin- performance. ing in Buckinghamshire which played at St Martin’s When did you last swim in the sea? In October. I Church on the Lewes Road. We used to drink in the swam all year round once, but I spend long periods Hanover pubs after performances, and I really liked touring abroad every winter. To swim year round the feeling of the place. The People’s Republic of you have to do it regularly. The sea’s actually fine up Hanover. We bought a house in Cobden Road. Did it till around December, but in January and February up, had a third child there. No plans to leave. it gets fucking cold. I like to jog to the nudist beach, What do you like about Brighton? It feels like it’s swim, dry off, and run back home. I like the swim- still in an experimental stage. It’s still curious about ming area buoys. They’re like my friends. It’s a sad itself – bi-curious. Also there are a lot of different day when they’re taken out of the sea [for winter] and political colours here. There are a lot of colours in put in a triangle of wire fencing near the Crazy Golf general, in fact. Blue rinses sit alongside pink mohi- – like clipped birds unable to fly. cans, and they rub along quite well. How do you spend your Sunday afternoons? At And you started writing here… I was in my late the moment, watching rugby. My third child, Joe, is a thirties and realised I’d been slogging away as an fine sportsman. He used to play football for the Hol- actor for too long. You can’t plan that kind of life. So lingbury Hawks and Dean Valley, and now he plays I started a PhD and wrote my first play, My Arm, at rugby for the Brighton Blues. It’s much more civilised the kitchen table. It’s a conceptual piece that gently on the touchline at the rugby. fucks with the audience’s heads. I wanted to challenge Where would you live if not in Brighton? It can’t realism as the dominant form in theatre. I started happen soon because it would be unfair to Joe, whose performing it in friends’ houses in 2002. I took it life here as a teenager – going to Dorothy Stringer, to Edinburgh the next summer, and it’s been in my playing in a band – I envy. But I’d like to spend some repertoire ever since. time living in the Sussex countryside one day, to the Where do you hang out? When we were look- west of Brighton, in the gentle curve of the Downs. ing for somewhere to live I went into the Constant I’d like to open my front door onto that one day. It’s Service on Islingword Road and asked the barman probably to do with my age… Interview by Alex Leith if Hanover was a good place. He said yes, so he’s Tim is performing in his own play, I, Malvolio, at the to blame. (And they do great roasts.) The Bristol Dome Studio, 13th and 14th of March. .... 31....