Guest Blog: Jack Holden On Writing His Own One-Man Play 'Cruise'

As an actor, Jack Holden has appared onstage in such hit plays as War Horse and Ink and has now written a new solo venture for himself to perform: Cruise, which tells of a young man called Michael who is diagnosed with HIV in 1984 and told he has four years to live at most. Directed by Bronagh Lagan, the play will reopen the Duchess Theatre, preceded by a streamed film version of the material online. Holden lifts the curtain on both iterations of his piece below.

Cruise is based on an idea that had been rattling around my head for years. A story I was told while volunteering for Switchboard, the LGBT+ helpline, had snowballed - picking up fragments of similar stories from the same era - to become a big unwieldy epic I knew I needed to tell, but hadn't the foggiest how to start creating as a stage show.

Then, one morning (and I know it sounds corny, but it's genuinely true) I woke from a vivid dream which had showed me a flash of what this show could be. In the dream I saw myself on stage, surrounded by neon lights, wearing a Harrington jacket and Doc Martens. I couldn't discern much detail about the show, but I knew that it would be based on the story I'd been wanting to write about Soho in the 80s, about the AIDS crisis, and about electronic music. Also, the dream clearly gave me the name of the show - Cruise - and the name of the first person to join the team: John Elliott.

John and I had worked together on a show set in the American Midwest into which he had injected his considerable skill with folk, country and Americana music. But I also knew John had a passion for electronic music. The first thing I did when I woke up from the dream was to message John everything I'd imagined. His reply: "LOVE THIS! How do we make it?"

It's that positivity, that excitement, that momentum that has got us where are now, about to start rehearsals for the West End run of Cruise.

Ideas only make it to a stage because of the momentum people lend to them. John was first to get behind my idea, closely followed by James Pidgeon at Shoreditch Town Hall, who let us carry out the early development of the show in his beautiful building. When Katy Lipson put an open call-out for new work on Twitter, I sent her a video we'd made of our R&D. Katy watched it, she loved it, and our momentum started building in a big way.

Then came the extraordinarily talented director Bronagh Lagan and indefatigable producing partners Jamie Lambert and Eliza Jackson. To make the filmed version of the show for Stream.Theatre, we added a host of brilliant creatives to the team, all of whom brought vision, ambition and determination to make the digital offering of the show every bit as dramatic, beautiful, heartbreaking and eye-popping as the live show will be [see trailer below].

With the live performances getting ever closer, I've been trying to imagine what it's going to feel like taking to the stage for the first time in over a year. My last stage job was a UK tour of the Theatre Royal Bath production of My Cousin Rachel. That finished in February 2020, shortly before the world got turned upside down. The audience for Cruise will be socially distanced and they'll be wearing masks, but they will unequivocally be an actual real-life audience. Will I be overwhelmed by the feeling of sharing a space with so many people again? Will I forget what I'm supposed to do? Will the audience forget what they're supposed to do? Will Cruise be judged more or less harshly than it would be in normal times?

I'm probably overthinking it - and let's face it, we've all had a hell of a lot of time to overthink things this year, and it'll probably all be fine. We are resilient creatures, and we'll probably slot back into our old grooves as quick as a flash. And, after the year we've had, it's worth remembering that it's only a play.

I know how incredibly lucky I am to be one of the first actors - and one of the first new writers - to get back to working onstage. I don't take that for granted. I'm completely aware that this opportunity has partially been made possible because of the torrid year we've just had: if theatres could open at full capacity, risky shows like Cruise wouldn't usually get a look in on the West End.

The opportunity to do something exciting and original is very great. The pressure to deliver a spectacular show for the grand reopening of theatres is real. But if we can pull this off - landing a brand new musical play in London's West End after one of the worst years in living memory for the arts, for our country, for the world - what a coup that would be. Maybe the momentum we've built for Cruise will carry on building, not just for us, but for all emerging theatre makers. If we can make it work under these circumstances, the future looks very bright indeed.

Cruise will be available online 15-25 April via stream.theatre and then plays the Duchess Theatre 18 May - 13 June

Photo c. Jack Hextall