The Magic of Terry Pratchett: An Interview With Marc Burrows
Author and comedian Marc Burrows is heading to the Edinburgh Festival this August with his new show, The Magic of Terry Pratchett, a multimedia comic lecture that explores the life, influences, and impact of one of the greatest storytellers of all time.
Endorsed by the late author’s estate, the show is a celebration and exploration of Sir Terry Pratchett’s interesting life, works of art and activism.
How did your interest in Terry Pratchett begin? What fascinates you most about his life and work?
The thing with Terry is that you can’t really separate his life from his work. They were the same thing. His life was stories, his stories were his life. I can think of no other author where the membrane that separates their life and work is so permeable. It’s barely there. There are people who put less of themselves into an autobiography than Terry put into books about wizards and dragons. Most footballers, for example.
Terry understood people and how they interact with each other, and how that affects the world around them like no other writer I can think of; he casually wrote about the meaning of life and made it look effortless, and he did it all with stupid puns about trifles and the word “phallusy”. No-one else does that.
If it’s not too much a spoiler, what’s your favourite Terry Pratchett anecdote?
This one’s not in the show. When he was a young journalist, Terry worked for a legendary Fleet Street editor called Eric Price. Price was a monster, he would scream at people, sack them on the spot, hurl abuse, demand results, call their work s**t, everything. Terry, a young man who hated to see this sort of thing happen, decided to speak his mind. Next time Price started screaming he was going to give him a piece of his mind.
A little while later, Price came storming into the newsroom, spittle flying, eyes bulging, screaming bloody murder. Terry stood up to say his piece, screwed himself up for a confrontation and … promptly fainted on the spot, leaving the editor to say, “will someone get this ****ing body out of here?”
The Magic of Terry Pratchett was a book before it was a show. Tell us a little about the process of writing it.
It was extremely journalistic. Terry isn’t here to tell the tale, and I had no access to his close friends and team because, well, who the hell was I? As far as they were concerned, I was going to do a hatchet job, or a shameless cash-in. So, I went back to the sources. I read what I’m pretty sure was every interview Terry ever gave. Terry’s first publisher and his agent, Colin Smythe, had donated his entire archive to the University of London, so I registered at their library and signed out the entire press file – every piece of press from 1971 to 2015.
He also wrote a lot of guest articles and book contributions where he’d discuss his childhood, and spoke a lot at conventions about his pre-fame life. Sieving through all of that, thousands and thousands of pieces, was the first step. I used that to piece together Terry’s life as he had told it.
I also did weeks of research in the British Newspaper Archive reading old articles Terry had written during his time as a journalist going back to the mid 60s, which actually told us lots about his life then – he wrote a lot of columns and lifestyle pieces.
I tracked down various people who had worked with him over the years, people who went to the same school at the same time, fans who’d had close contact with him – it was a matter of piecing together the story from all of those sources, and then using each source to fact-check the other until I had a complete picture. It was painstaking, tricky and totally fascinating. The writing was the easy bit.
How did you go about adapting the book for the stage?
In the end, I basically didn’t. The first version of the show, which only ever existed on paper, was a retread of the book, but I quickly realised that it just wasn’t going to work. You can’t condense 60 books and a whole life into 50 minutes and do it justice. And it left no room to be funny – and I wanted this to be a legitimate comedy show.
In the end, I was really inspired by Brett Morgan’s recent David Bowie film, Moonage Daydream, which doesn’t exactly tell you the story of Bowie’s life but does tell you exactly who Bowie was through his art.
I did the same thing with this. I pulled out the key themes of Terry’s writing and his worldview and then I hung the biographic details off those, which gave me a lot more space to add jokes (his and mine) and asides. I’m really pleased with how it’s worked – it’s a totally different way of telling the story.
The show is described as a multimedia comic lecture. What can audiences expect?
A funny lecture with pictures, audio and video! It’s essentially a PowerPoint presentation with added yammering from me. Lots of Terry’s best bits of writing, clips from TV and film, nuggets about his life, lots of jokes, some unpicking of long-held misconceptions … and of course the end of Terry’s life wasn’t fun but it was extremely important and powerful, so I dip into that as well. That was the hardest part of writing it, actually – you have to earn an audience’s trust before you can break their heart. I learnt that from Terry, too.
The show is endorsed by the late author’s estate. How did that come about?
Rob, Terry’s assistant for nearly 20 years who now runs his literary estate, once told me that the philosophy Terry ran his business on was, “if you do something well, then your reward is to be given something else to do well”.
In all honesty when I wrote the book, the estate was sceptical, but I think they realised that it was a book written with real love for Terry and his work, and with a lot of hard work behind it. It hadn’t been a cash in. The estate reached out to thank me for writing it, and Rob & I struck up a friendship from there. We’re hoping to work together on something next year. When I approached him to ask if I could do a Fringe show based on the book, Rob offered to help me develop it.
That business is still run on the principles Terry established when he was still with us – it’s a cottage industry, everyone involved is a trusted part of the family. I don’t think any other multi-million-dollar global media brand is operated like that. It’s absolutely unique.
Who should come and see The Magic of Terry Pratchett?
Pratchett fans, obviously. But I hope it can go beyond that. I tried very hard to reach three different audiences: the die-hard Pratchett obsessive who knows the books and the in-jokes back to front, the casual fan who’s dipped into a few books here and there, and the utter newbie who’s been dragged along by their partner. Cautiously, touch wood, I think the show does really work for all three groups. It can’t be impenetrable to the casual fan, or stating the blindingly obvious to the hardcore, and I think – more or less – we’ve pulled it off.
What do you hope audiences will take away from the show?
A new appreciation for Terry’s writing, hopefully. He was the most remarkable mind in English writing of the last hundred years. He could tell you the meaning of life and then break your heart and then make you snort with laughter in the same five pages, and I’ve tried to build the show around those principles.
I want everyone leaving to be desperate to go and find a Pratchett book and get stuck in. If I’ve done my job right, the WH Smith at Edinburgh train station is going to sell out of Discworld novels in week one.
- The Magic of Terry Pratchett will play at the Gilded Balloon Teviot from 2nd to 27th August at 5.30pm. To book, visit https://tickets.gildedballoon.co.uk/event/14:4590/
