Read to Me

Read to Me is a crime story about doing love and a love story about doing crime. It’s also a true story in the way only fiction can be.

Whether writing or directing, it all comes from the same place – I tap the bruise – the feelings run. It’s not a masochistic process; in either case, it’s a pleasure. I can protect the feeling of writing, and then I have the joy of sharing the work with actors. It’s here that we can connect our imaginations. The actors have their own discerning sense of truthful storytelling. I believe in the power of the imagination, and the ways in which we can get a story out are adroit. The work with the actors is rewarding because they trust my truth, and we can discover theirs, and then we have the character. It’s about synthesis and moving our understanding further down the road.

In this instance, I took certain truths given to me by my lover to create the story. And I took on identities to transform the narrative – that’s how we got to love again. You take the truth, you collide it with the imagination, and you have a story – that’s truth in art.

Read to Me was written as an answer to the question ‘How far would you go for love?’ – that was the challenge set by Sarah – who gets credit for the story, as it would have been impossible to write this without her. Once that challenge was set, we were really honest with each other about the ups and downs of life – the people we had loved and who had loved us – where things went wrong and how we could create a story that repairs that.

Sometimes fiction is a balm – albeit a combustible balm.

What I enjoy about the actor’s work are the layers they bring in in such a short time – the work is full of life – it points towards a world beyond the 15 minutes we have with them.

We hope you enjoy Read to Me and can see the pleasure it will bring an audience – there’s a lot to enjoy and admire in the work of the actors, and it’s wonderfully filmed and edited. We’re all very proud, and we look forward to sharing it with you.