Interview: Joe Eason, Two Come Home

Two Come Home is a new play with music by writer/composer Joe Eason exploring the realities of being gay in an impoverished rural community and the ways guilt, rage, and love define our relationships.

We spoke with Joe Eason about writing, composing, and starring in his new play ahead of its run at The King’s Head Theatre for Camden Fringe.

Tell us a bit about you and your show..

I’m a bartender and illustrator living in Colchester but I was born in London so it feels really special to be bringing my play to the city that first introduced me to theatre. I was a child actor and went on to study theatre design but I’ve been writing plays since I was a teenager. 

Two Come Home is a drama with music. It follows lonely ex-con Evan, eking out a living in his isolated former mining town and wrestling with the simultaneous return of his best friend Jimmy and his violent father Caleb. I wrote the first few drafts all the way back in 2019, it was the first play I’d written in years after effectively giving up on theatre completely. I never thought it would get staged, I never thought I would be in it, I never thought I’d get to work with this incredible team. I just wanted to explore a character, the kind of role I wanted to play but couldn’t find. A gay lead role where you get to swing from despair to romance to rage and every mood in between. It’s become a crazy and very fulfilling experience.

You’ve already played Brighton Fringe back in May, how was that and how has the production changed since?

Brighton was an amazing time. I think we all knew we had something special but the reaction from audiences was still kinda overwhelming. I had people coming up to me afterwards and just spilling out with all kinds of personal stuff. I think it’s because they felt moved by the show. That was super validating and humbling. 

We very quickly started thinking of Brighton as our previews. Camden is a big deal for all of us, and we have the absurdly huge honour of getting to play The King’s Head Theatre, a venue with such an incredible history and reputation for championing queer work so we’re taking it very seriously. We’re playing “in thrust” there so we’re currently restaging the whole play, and to accommodate that we have a new director (Kirsten Obank-Sharpe) who has just brought this incredible new energy to the rehearsal room and is pulling all this really deep, detailed stuff out of us. As to how it’s changed, I don’t wanna spoil anything, I know there are people who saw us in Brighton coming to Camden. I’ll just say, everything you loved is still there, we’re just giving you even more to love. 

You and your co-star have some pretty vulnerable, intimate moments in the play. How did you navigate that in the rehearsal room?

It was mine and Ben’s (Maytham - Jimmy) first time working with an intimacy director and we were both pretty apprehensive. I think we both came up in theatre where it was just that attitude of “get on with it”, if the script says kiss, you kiss. We were both worried that it was gonna make things unnecessarily awkward to go into so much detail about it all but it turned out to be the opposite. Marina (Cusi Sanchez - Intimacy Director) was so incredible, and calm, and fun, and it felt like we were all partners in crime playing with the audience, making things as tense and passionate as possible in service of the story and the show. Performing that kind of sexy scene isn’t possible if you’re just “getting on with it”. 

And Ben is the best scene partner, we have great chemistry, he’s the sweetest guy and never fails to get me emotional with his acting. I know he won’t mind me saying that, you know, we’re both gay men, playing to largely gay male audiences, and we’re not models, we don’t have the greatest body confidence. But the fact that we spend a good ten minutes or so making out and running around in our underwear each show and we feel completely comfortable with each other and the audience is a testament to Marina’s work.

You also composed the musical score for the show, what’s that been like?

I’ve been writing music for even longer than I’ve been writing plays but this was my first time writing a “score” per se. It’s been one of my favourite parts of this whole process and it’s probably the thing I’m most proud of. I had to dig up all the music theory I learnt as a kid and promptly forgot when I decided I wanted to be a rockstar as a teenager. Getting to grips with scoring out violin and cello parts, figuring out time signatures, it’s been a big learning curve, but working with Cam (Southcott - Violinist) and Lizzie (Hopland - Cellist) has been so much fun. 

I’ve wanted to score a play for the longest time so I’m so happy to have had the chance to finally do it and hearing the band play it still makes me tear up. I just always thought it was weirdly uncommon. Films have scores, video games have scores, why not plays?

You said you never expected for the play to be staged or that you would be in it, how did that happen?

My boyfriend actually read the play last year and it was the first time I’d seen him cry so I was like, “oh damn, I guess I did something right.” We have a great new fringe here in Colchester and I had such a great time performing in a different play there last year that I knew I wanted to bring something this year. I started talking to my production manager Hannelore (Canessa-Wright) and we were like, “well, if we’re doing all this work, we should probably do at least one other fringe.” Things just sort of spiralled from there. 

How are you finding starring in your own work?

When we started casting I said to the team, I’m not set on playing this role, but I was secretly pretty thrilled to do it when we couldn’t find the right actor to play Evan in auditions. 

I thought I knew this character, and I guess fundamentally as the writer I did, but the things I’ve discovered in the rehearsal room, the things that have come from collaboration and improvisation have been so much more than I could have come up with on my own. When I wrote the play I was like, “I’m gonna make this role a freakin’ marathon for an actor.” I discovered how much I’d nailed that when I was doing two shows a day in Brighton. I think I have two scenes out of nine that I’m not in and for only one of those do I actually get to leave the stage and wipe the sweat off. But it’s my favourite role I’ve ever played. I love Evan, and I feel so lucky and grateful to the whole team for believing in me and the play and to everyone who’s come to see us and shared their love with us. 

Two Come Home is at The King’s Head Theatre, 14th - 18th August For tickets go to www.twocomehomplay.com/tickets