![]() ![]() ![]() To love each other takes so much courage. His plays are full of characters learning to love and to be loved. Robert taught me this in our work together and in our friendship. His close friend, the actor Matthew Tennyson, who appeared in three of Robert’s plays, two of them in roles written for him, says this: “Robert was a radical. While “we long for Himalayan peaks of rapture and find ourselves enmeshed in grand and unruly passions and their accompanying anguish, it may not come amiss if, in the name of common humanity, we also stretch our ways of loving into those foothills where it’s good to walk and talk with friends”. Some of his sensuality went into the plays, but he shared a belief set out by the writer Lisa Appignanesi. He liked to flutter his eyelashes and flirt and occasionally he hinted at the odd great passion in his life. Listening, really listening, is hard, unselfish and brave. ![]() It’s where great friendships come from, too. He understood that all great acting comes from listening. That may sound absurd, but he was committed to the notion of empathy in art and life to an astonishing degree, and this is at the heart of why his work is so good. He said he wanted one day to write a play without thinking at all. My favourite Holman stage direction is “finds the courage”. ![]() It takes great courage to write that way and that courage finds its way into the plays and the actions of his characters. Playwrights David Eldridge, Robert Holman and Simon Stephens in 2010 the trio co-wrote A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky at Lyric Hammersmith. ![]()
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