Josh Woodgate, left, and Dan Poppitt rehearsing their roles as Henry’s Self and Henry in The Inner Selves. Picture: Matthew Peter Clare
BLACK Sheep Theatre Productions director, musical director and producer Matthew Peter Clare will premiere his play The Inner Selves, at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, from May 13 to 17.
After staging such musical theatre works as Elegies For Angels, Punks And Raging Queens, Falsettos, Z For Zelda, Nothing & Everything Else, The Last Five Years and Songs For A New World and branching out into Shakespeare for The Tempest in March, the York company breaks new ground by presenting Clare’s four-hander, wherein the decline of two people’s mental health marriage is shown through the woes of Henry and Nora and the cacophonous assault of their inner thoughts.
“The play revolves around one bad day of inadequacy, personal trauma, longing for better things, fear and just trying to survive being the final straw for the pair as emotions come to a boil. Will this marriage survive? Even only until morning?” says Matthew.
“The Inner Selves is an incredibly personal and thoughtful project focusing on the lives of two mismatched individuals in a failing marriage as they have the worst night yet in their ongoing nightmare.”
Married for several years, Henry and Nora have grown tired of each other as well as carrying trauma through being married and through the lives that they have lived.
To explore the impact of burnout, depression and trauma on the couple brought on by the death of a child seven years ago, Clare splits the two characters into four actors. Dan Poppitt and Charlie Clarke portray the physical embodiment of Henry and Nora; Josh Woodgate and Chloe Pearson, portray their mentalities, The Inner Selves of the title.
“The inner selves represent their younger selves as well as all of the various thoughts of Henry and Nora that may never be said,” says Matthew. “The inner selves are products of Henry and Nora, and the lives they have led, but represent more than that.
“They are the lives they didn’t lead, their hopes and dreams, their anxieties, their fear, their self-hatred, their depression, their anger made manifest, and what dwindled care and that last glimmer of love that they may retain for their spouses.”
The play is set in the 1990s. “Henry and Nora are barely escaping poverty, living very ‘90s working-class lives in familiar northern towns, but the inner selves dream of what might have been should they not have ended up as Henry and Nora,” says Matthew.
“The play revolves around one night where tensions boil over but it’s a night that has likely been on the precipice for years and encapsulates the feelings of resentment and misplaced blame that have built up over seven years since their newborn child died.
“We see Henry and Nora at breaking point with their own strengths and weaknesses coming through, while the inner selves back them up or ridicule or tear them apart.”
Matthew Peter Clare: Director, musical director, producer, composer, playwright, poet and putative science-fiction novelist
Here writer-director Matthew Peter Clare discusses mental health, marriage, music and more with CharlesHutchPress.
Is this the first play you have written?
“This is the first play I’ve written that has gotten to production. I have previously penned a musical loosely based on the myth of Prometheus stealing fire from the gods; however, it is yet to be published.
“I’m working on another play focusing on generational trauma and the historic treatment of a child now grown as they’re at an age where their parents want to be more involved with the life of their grandchild.
“I’m a published poet and most of my poetry focuses on my own mental health and struggles as well as my own philosophies and my views on the world. Some of my work is available via the White Rose Anthology (a collection of York-based poets).
“It’s not been possible to publish this poetry en masse; however, I’m in talks with several publishers. I’m also writing a science-fiction novel focusing on philosophy and repairing mental health via analysis of trauma and the world that the character previously occupied.”
What sparked the theme of The Inner Selves?
“I’ve suffered with poor mental health for long over a decade and will likely continue to struggle for years to come. I’ve had my fair share of hardships that I would rather not embellish upon.
“However, The Inner Selves is a deeply personal play with large swathes of dialogue originating from conversations that I’ve either been a part of or overheard via other significant people in my life.
“I wanted the play to be an outlet originally. A place for me to get down my own thoughts and previous feelings, and it started as a series of short diary entries of things that I was either going through or reliving.
“However, there came a point at which the dots could be connected and I made the choice to connect those dots. This play is not necessarily me trying to make something positive out of past traumas or to provide something for society that they can look on as some kind of warning of the impact of poor mental health and poor communication.
“More it’s a very real and very true account of the things that I’ve felt and the things that I’m working on with friends and in therapy put into a play.
“I’ve witnessed several marriages turn sour and have witnessed my own and other people’s mental health decline. The main thing that connects the two in my opinion is that the communication between the couple deteriorates incredibly quickly, leading to further stagnation as people and further problems in the marriage.
Black Sheep Theatre Productions’ poster artwork for next week’s premiere of Matthew Peter Clare’s The Inner Selves
“A large inspiration for the play was Bojack Horseman’s Stupid Piece Of Shit (S4E6) monologue that focuses on the titular character over-thinking analysis of his own character with a chaotic and cluttered ramble to show how awful Bojack’s self-image and self-thought truly is.
“It’s presented as a stream of consciousness that’s incredibly accurate to my own inner voice and to what I wake up with every morning and have to force myself to fight against just to get out of bed.
“It is a bickering self-assassination that also attacks anything and everyone around you regardless of how gentle and helpful those around you are being that often leads to suicidal thoughts, passed off as just quick one-liners that build into ideation, as well as generating suspicion of those around you to fuel your own isolation.
“A lot of inspiration was taken from this monologue for the play in conjunction with other inspirations.”
The Inner Selves focuses on a single day: a powerful theatrical structure for a play, intensifying its cliff-edge sense of climax. Discuss…
“Large inspirations for this play, in terms of framing, come from the themes of Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods, where life goes on past the ‘Happily Ever After’, as well as the ‘talking heads’ segments of Alas Smith And Jones and the 1966 film Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf. I wanted the incredibly intimate style of Smith and Jones without the comedic style but keeping the rambling nature of conversation.
“Who’s Afraid Of Virgina Woolf is an incredibly character-driven film and play focusing on an ageing couple’s reality and the illusions that they present to those around them.
“Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor portray a volatile relationship, leaving the audience to wonder what is real and what isn’t over the course of one explosive night.
“I love this as a concept, but I did always wonder ‘what happened on the next day?’. And I think the conclusion that I came up with is that most people in the same circumstance would try to continue in some kind of shell of that which they see as normality rather than actually address their problems.
“They are stagnant as people; they are trapped and cannot move for the quicksand that they have deliberately put themselves in.
Chloe Pearson’s Nora’s Self faces up to Charlie Clarke’s Nora. Picture: Matthew Peter Clare
“The Inner Selves focuses around one night but it is a series of nights that has led up to this moment and a series of nights will follow it. We see a snapshot of a nearly decade-long relationship and it’s reasonable for any audience member to assume that they’re not seeing the very first argument, and nor should they assume that they’re seeing the last.
“It’s possible that they’re seeing the most heated that Henry and Nora ever get, but it’s almost impossible to assume that everything has been perfect for a good long while before the events of the play and post the bows.
“They almost certainly aren’t. Life continues. People suffer. As bleak a prospect as it may be, tomorrow may well be just as bad as today. None of us can know that before going into it.
“So, setting this play across one day is a tool I’ve used to show a glimpse into the lives of the two characters but not necessary write their story in stone. If the audience chooses to believe that the events of the play lead to a positive outcome, they are correct; if the audience chooses to believe they lead to a much less positive outcome, they’re also correct and it’s not for me as the playwright to correct either side of the argument.
“It’s for them to fill in the blanks of the lives of Henry and Nora and for them to determine what actually happens next. I truly believe that the audience will want Henry and Nora to seek professional help and that that could be the saving of each of them as people. It might not save the marriage, but it might save their lives.
“But whether Henry and Nora ever have a happy ending is entirely up to the audience, as it is for all of us in our own lives.”
Turning inner thoughts outwards towards the audience is one of theatre’s most powerful tools. You have chosen an interesting theatrical device to do this: two sets of actors. Why?
“I’ve chosen to highlight the inner thoughts of Henry and Nora as separate actors to allow the audience to hear and feel the internal thoughts of Henry and Nora in real time.
“Each comment made comes with essays of over-analysis, sympathy, fear, anger, love, hate and joy but that cannot be staged in real time without sacrificing the reality of how an inner monologue works.
“It overlaps with all other sensory input. In other words, as Henry speaks, Nora’s inner self is analysing the previous sentence by Nora whilst processing and analysing the new sentence of Henry in order to prep Nora for a response.
“In this way, we get to feel that which goes on in the heads of Nora and Henry whilst they also fight to try to have normal conversations with their respective spouse. We also get to see why they fail.
“The choice to have Dan Poppitt play Henry, a character that has large amounts of silence to fill through body language alone, was clear,” says writer-director Matthew Peter Clare
“This isn’t to say that Henry and Nora are sympathetic characters but more that they are in some way broken, and the best way for an audience to feel that is to have the audience be overloaded by multiple conversations happening at once in order to cause the question, ‘how would you have dealt with this?’.
“Conversation in this show is fleeting. What we have instead is large amounts of overlapping dialogue when Henry and Nora are on stage at the same time. This is, in my experience, incredibly real as to the ruthless nature of my own mind where hearing my own thoughts and taking in new information simultaneously is near impossible.
“Creating this experience for the audience will hopefully create a very immersive viewing experience of the existence of Henry and Nora, even if not a pleasant one.”
Why can marriage be so difficult?
“I’ve never been married myself but have witnessed several messy divorces, witnessed many more marriages that I think should have ended long before now, and have been in several relationships that have ended in less-than-great ways.
“Marriage is hard. This feels like an obvious statement but I think many people don’t realise it when they get married. Marriage is a life-long commitment to one person that you’ve only known for a certain number of years, which I guarantee is likely going to be less than that which you’re proposing you spend together in the future.
“This means that, inherently, you will not know the person that you are marrying as well as you will in years to come, simply through the passage of time. Sometimes this works well and the couple grows together and they highlight the best qualities of each other whilst mitigating some of the less desirable ones.
“I think, more often than not, this does not happen. I think more often than not, two people that match at the time of dating will go through many changing events and are unlikely to be the same people on the other side.
“Marriage is a commitment of time more than anything else and time is a cruel mistress. Between death, grief, financial hardship, job change, illness, injury and life, marriage dictates that you’re present for all that which your partner goes through in a way that no-one else in your life is.
“It’s incredibly unlikely that those people entering marriage will be the same once life has thrown all that it does at them. I find it much more believable that people come out of life more hardened and jaded and crueller than they were before hardships were thrown at them as a general rule.
“But how can you predict that when you say ‘I do’? You can’t. You’re along for the ride in the marriage with someone that’s changing around you but may not change at anything like the same rate as you, and it’s very possible that you just end up as different people from each other that you could never have predicted when you initially agreed to marry.
“Josh Woodgate’s ability to embody different emotions with his voice so clearly is incredible,” says writer-director Matthew Peter Clare
“It could be that someone has actively hurt the other by cheating or abuse or any manner of cruelties that probably come from a place that might have been visible prior to marriage, but sometimes not obviously and sometimes definitely not.
“These marriages often end, and rightfully so, but due to a climactic event, which often eclipses a lot of the smaller problems which may be present in the psyche of both people for years to come.
“The most successful marriages, I imagine, are those where the couple grows together and sacrifice their individuality but become a functioning unit. This is something I find must be nearly impossible to achieve and must be one of the hardest things that two people can do – to sacrifice themselves for the good of the unit.”
Who’s in your cast and why did you choose each of the four?
“The cast is made up of Dan Poppitt as Henry and Josh Woodgate as Henry’s Self, Charlie Clarke as Nora and Chloe Pearson as Nora’s Self.
“I’ve worked with each of them on multiple occasions over several years. All four were in The Tempest with Dan playing Alonso, Josh, Caliban, Charlie, Trincula, and Chloe, Fernanda.
“The first I cast was Chloe. I worked with her on Tick, Tick, Boom and subsequently on Elegies For Angels, Punks And Raging Queens. It was after working with her on her Claudia monologue that really sold Chloe to me as an actress. It was a performance that hurt every night I heard her say ‘she only stopped, when I did too’.
“Chloe was someone I knew I wanted to work with on The Inner Selves all the way back in May 2023. She has a softness to her performance as well as a sadistic hatred that bubbles over and becomes white-hot rage and has been amazing to work with again.
“Charlie Clarke impressed me to no end when she did a reading from the play. I knew her as a comedic performer and used her as Trincula, the jester, in The Tempest for that reason.
“Her audition was hilarious and fast and powerful and I knew that I had the perfect Trincula on my hands when I offered her the role in The Tempest.
“However, I had no idea whether she could do sympathetic, cruel, angry, depressed and broken. Charlie has said on multiple occasions prior to this that she would love to do more serious roles and, after picking a scene in The Inner Selves to perform to me, I suddenly understood that Charlie has been wrongly pigeonholed into comedic performances. A phenomenal comedic actor, but an equally strong serious one.
Josh Woodgate’s Caliban in Black Sheep Theatre Productions’ The Tempest at Theatre@41, Monkgate, in March
“Josh Woodgate was my Caliban in The Tempest and I’d previously worked with him on American Idiot. Josh’s use of his body for Caliban was inspired. The way he was able to move in a sub-human way throughout the show was a spectacle in itself but his voice is his strength.
“From shouting at Prospero to immediately giggling about wine, Josh is able to reach the highest of heights and the lowest of lows with it whilst swapping emotions within a split-second.
“Josh’s ability to embody different emotions with his voice so clearly is incredible. For a character like Henry’s Self that requires strength and conviction, weakness and doubt, fear, anger, loathing, as well as a softness and a calming tone, Josh stood out to me as the perfect choice for the role.
“He’s been a constantly uplifting person to have in a cast and has been a pleasure to work with on four shows now.
“I initially met Dan Poppitt on American Idiot and knew I would be working with again on Rent by the time he auditioned for The Tempest and was subsequently asked to do The Inner Selves.
“I had a thoroughly good time working with Dan on American Idiot, with his incredible vocal range allowing us to strengthen harmony parts or option up on certain lines, creating a unique show that featured some amazing singing.
“Across American Idiot, we saw Dan tackle some of the darker moments of the show (e.g. injury in war and being left wheelchair-bound after the amputation scene). “However, it was in Rent where Dan’s serious acting ability was properly allowed the time to flourish and shine. This is through no fault of Inspired By Theatre’s productions of either, but more just because Roger has more stage time than Tunny.
“It was through working with Dan on character and line delivery in Rent and The Tempest that I really saw how talented an actor he is, and not just an amazing singer, and the choice to have him play Henry, a character that has large amounts of silence to fill through body language alone, was clear.
“All four actors in the play are incredibly intelligent and have brought a lot of their own ideas into the play. It’s been a relatively smooth directing process from my end, with relatively little stress required, because the cast are so strong and so powerful in their performances. Despite the play’s themes, it’s been a delight to work with them on this show.”
The poster artwork for Black Sheep Theatre Productions’ The Tempest
What did you learn from staging The Tempest, as opposed to musical theatre pieces?
“A musical is a very different beast from a play. Musicals have song and dance, which plays tend not to; or plays tend to not have song and dance as a major focus at the very least.
“The Tempest has some song and dance but the added pieces of music were far from the main feature of the piece, unlike in a musical. I tend to enjoy sung-through musicals over more traditional song-and-dialogue musicals; however, I think what I actually enjoy more so is theatre that focuses on character rather than spectacle.
“Plays are an excellent way of focusing on character over spectacle, as a lot of the spectacle of movement and music is largely absent.
The poster artwork for Black Sheep Theatre Productions’ The Tempest
“Something I find that draws a line between the golden age of musical theatre and the productions that followed is the character-driven narrative focusing on ‘real’ people and their problems, rather than having the backdrop of a large dance number in front of an American town in the old Mid-West, like Oklahoma for example.
“This play allows the audience time to really ingratiate themselves with Henry and Nora and to feel the struggle of relatively familiar characters without the option to focus on the wonderful singing or the choreography in order to make them seem, in some ways, larger-than-life heroes of the story.
“The stripped back nature of a play allows you to feel each character, especially when there are only two characters (divided between four actors), more intensely and with a rawness that would have been lost in more traditional musical theatre.”
What part will music play in your production?
“The Tempest was almost an experiment in music being added to a show. Myself and Greg Harper created a score that played on dissonance and used a lot of non-harmonic and non-melodic modes.
“Instead of using the Ionian mode that we see as the major scale or the Aeolian mode that we see as the minor scale, a lot of the music we composed utilised the Dorian, Phyrigian, Locrian, Lydian and Mixolydian modes in order to create music that’s unfamiliar to a Western ear and highlight the strangeness of the island the characters landed on.
“We used an eight-piece band (contrabass, violoncello, viola, violin I & II, guitar, harp and auxiliary percussion) with some unusual instruments (i.e. the waterphone) to really accentuate the horror of the situation; the fear generated by the power of Prospero; the growing romance of Fernanda and Miranda, and the levity of more comedic scenes (e.g. Trincula, Stephana and Caliban).
“Charlie Clarke is a phenomenal comedic actor, but an equally strong serious one,” says The Inner Selves writer-director Matthew Peter Clare
“The Inner Selves is an experiment in silence more so than music. There is music that plays during the opening scene during the prologue, showing the life of Henry and Nora before the events of the play, utilising a portion of a Sonata I composed (Piano Sonata No. 2 – Movement 3 – Elegy).
“This is the only non-diagetic sound that happens during the play, covering the sounds of various life events so that the younger Henry and Nora cannot be heard. The rest of the play exists with no underscore at all so to increase the isolation and abandonment of the characters and to heighten the audience’s anxiety through the remainder of the play.”
What are the features of Anne Loren Enriquez Comia’s set design? Have you worked with her before?
“Anne worked with Black Sheep Theatre on The Tempest as a stage manager and has previously worked on several productions in theatre and film.
“She’s been instrumental in the design and look of this show. I initially spoke to Anne about this show whilst working on The Tempest and discussed the bleak and unwelcoming atmosphere of the home of Henry and Nora.
“Anne has created a beautiful design and has made my life infinitely easier. The level of detail she has brought to this project has been a godsend.”
Why should we see The Inner Selves?
“The Inner Selves is a play that shows the realness of life. It may well do so through two actors playing one character but it shows the realness of a situation that is all too relatable for many people.
“They have a terrible job, no prospects, no ambition; they’re tired of each day being meaningless whilst carrying around previous hardships and trauma whilst being unable to forget and forgive. This is a very real thing.
“It’s definitely worth noting that not everything in life is good or healthy for you. Many shows out there are unrealistic and show an overly joyful happy ending, whereas life is not like that.
“This show highlights the difficulty and the brutality of dealing with your own thoughts as they present themselves, as harsh as they can be. This play shows that ‘happily ever after’ is so incredibly unlikely but it is possible to try to improve things, so long as you’re strong enough to do so.
Charlie Clarke, left, and Chloe Pearson in rehearsal for Black Sheep Theatre Productions’ premiere of Matthew Peter Clare’s The Inner Selves. Picture: Matthew Peter Clare
“I think that the realness of The Inner Selves is why people should see this show. People will see things in the characters of Henry and Nora that they cannot publicly state they recognise in themselves, but I think people will see them and recognise them. For that, it is real.”
The Inner Selves carries the content warning: “Alcohol, Smoking, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Discussion Around Self-Harm, Marriage, Divorce, Loss Of Child, Suicidal Thoughts, Mental Health, Swearing”. Are there shards of humour amid the trauma? Is there any sense of hope?
“A lot of this play focuses on the reality of the situation. Often that is bleak. There are moments of humour for the audience, but they are more on the awkwardness and the juxtaposition rather that the outright comedy of a scene.
“It’s pithy one-liners that are used to cut at or brutalise their partner, rather than to deliver a cheer of laughter.
“As far as ‘Is there any sense of hope?’, the play closes with the end of the night, Henry and Nora going up to bed. It’s for the audience to decide whether they have a quiet night in bed, whether either character re-enters the stage, or whether they just spent the night arguing.
“I think there is some hope; however, I would want the audience to have a desperate hope that tomorrow is different from today. Praying that either Henry or Nora has learnt from the night of the play that they cannot continue in the way they are and that some kind of action is required. It’s for the audience to decide what that action is and whether any of it actually works.”
What’s next for Black Sheep Theatre Productions?
“After The Inner Selves, we almost immediately start working on The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, to run at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre from October 8 to 18. Auditions are on May 23 to 25 at Poppleton Methodist Church Hall and details can be found on our facebook page by clicking on the audition link:
“After that, we’re looking at another two-week run at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre in 2026 and several week-long or two-week long runs at Theatre@41. We have exciting plans and are filling these slots with phenomenal shows from writers such as Ibsen, Kafka, King and Linehan, although details are yet to be confirmed.”
Black Sheep Theatre Productions, in association with AKA Theatre Company, presents The Inner Selves, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, May 13 to 17, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk. Age guidance: Parental discretion is advised. Not for young children
The Inner Selves production team comprises: Matthew Peter Clare: playwright, director & composer; Anne Loren Enriquez Comia: set designer; Will Nicholson: lighting designer.
Black Sheep Theatre Productions’ poster for this month’s auditions for The Hunchback Of Notre Dame
