Why Hopefulness is More Radical Than Ever: An Interview with Simon Stephens
Embracing Hope in a Polarized World
In a world often divided by political, ideological, and cultural differences, acclaimed British playwright Simon Stephens believes that the most radical act we can take is to hope. He argues that sharing experiences with people we might disagree with is more powerful now than ever before.
"It's an increasingly rare thing nowadays to go and sit in a room with people you don't know and share an experience, to look in the same direction and engage in the same story together... to turn your phone off and look in the same direction with people who you not only might not know, but if you did know them, you might not agree with them about some things," Stephens shared in an interview with Saturday Morning.
"It carries a kind of optimism that I find unbelievably inspiring."
Stephens admits that this may sound "hopelessly romantic," but he truly believes it. Despite the challenges that the theater has faced, especially since the Covid pandemic, he argues that it needs to persevere.
"Part of me thinks 2026 could have the same optimism," he says, drawing a parallel with the decade following World War II. During that time, playhouses across Europe were physically and financially devastated, yet by 1956, the works of Irish playwright Samuel Beckett and German playwright Bertolt Brecht felt like a creative revolution.
Stephens is drawn to the observations of actor and writer Peter Ustinov, who reiterated that an optimist is a person who understands how sad and miserable the world can be. But facing the world with that knowledge is brave, Stephens says.
"I always take the notion that optimism and hope will always be the radical option," he says. "It's always been difficult. It's not the most difficult time ever. It's a time which is kind of charged with a grip of a kind of neoliberal technology that's like paralysing people's imagination and leading people into a polarized position of fear, and that is monetizing fear and monetizing polarization."
"There's a rank dishonesty and a kind of like unapologetic capital drive to that that I kind of have a fair contempt for, but I think what happens when you go to a theater, what happens when you go to a gig, what happens when you look at art, proper art, what happens when you engage in real storytelling is you realize the complexities and the nuance of the world, and you realize that there is a determination in the kind of human spirit to keep going."
"You realize that polarization is a pernicious lie and that the nature of the human animal is really one of contradiction and complexity and uncertainty, and that's the thing that theater can provide. That's what theater is for. It's what it's always been for."
Now one of the world's most performed living writers for theater with over 45 plays to his name, Stephens didn't actually aspire to have a show on in London's West End when he was younger. "The writers who most inspired me when I was a teenager, when I was a kid, were songwriters. I kind of went to the type of school that if you kind of like admitted to somebody that you wanted to be a writer or that you liked English or you like reading or you like writing, you just get thumped."
"So, the one art form that allowed a kind of celebration of linguistic expression was songwriting. It was only when I was in my 20s that I realized that I had a really quite singularly terrible singing voice and that I was never going to make it as a singer-songwriter. And it was also then that I started going to the theater for the first time and realized the kind of like kinetic connection between the two art forms, the liveness and the unpredictability, the volatility."
Stephens is hosting the inaugural Playwrights Workshop as part of the Auckland Theatre Company's new three-year masterclass project. But here's where it gets controversial... What do you think? Do you agree that hopefulness is more radical than ever? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
