Peter Terson
Encyclopedia
Peter Terson is a British
playwright whose plays have been produced for stage, television and radio. His early work in the 1960s focused on growing up in the dead-end working-class culture of industrial England. He was born as Peter Patterson. He was a schoolteacher for 10 years before writing professionally. He taught at what was then Blackminster County Secondary School, near Littleton, Worcestershire. He taught history and P.E. Peter left Blackminster in the mid 1960s.
Plays such as Zigger Zagger, about football hooligans and their pursuit of drink, sex, and trouble, and The Apprentices, showing the cruelties between young men learning industrial trades, presented a dismal view of life with few means of escape. In Zigger Zagger an apprenticeship was the escape from the hooligan lifestyle. These two plays were also taken up by local theatre groups and even appeared in school productions, with local adaptations by the producers for accent, dialect, soccer teams and related slang.
Later works for television took a more optimistic view, especially a series of plays centering on a trio of Yorkshiremen, led by Art (Brian Glover
), and their humorous misadventures. At about the same time he wrote Pinvin Careless and his Lines of Force, a parable about a man at the end of his life pursuing his obsession with ley line
s and related pseudo-phenomena, while remembering his upbringing under a stern father in a cricket-obsessed village culture. Terson treated the situation of men dealing with life in the modern de-industrialized North in the play Strippers which ran in London's West End theatre
s.
. In Belgium
his play The Mighty Reservoir (in Dutch: Het Machtig Reservoir) reached more than 500 performances by the MMT, a theatre in Mechelen
, and a TV-adaption by the BRT, Belgian Television.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
playwright whose plays have been produced for stage, television and radio. His early work in the 1960s focused on growing up in the dead-end working-class culture of industrial England. He was born as Peter Patterson. He was a schoolteacher for 10 years before writing professionally. He taught at what was then Blackminster County Secondary School, near Littleton, Worcestershire. He taught history and P.E. Peter left Blackminster in the mid 1960s.
Plays such as Zigger Zagger, about football hooligans and their pursuit of drink, sex, and trouble, and The Apprentices, showing the cruelties between young men learning industrial trades, presented a dismal view of life with few means of escape. In Zigger Zagger an apprenticeship was the escape from the hooligan lifestyle. These two plays were also taken up by local theatre groups and even appeared in school productions, with local adaptations by the producers for accent, dialect, soccer teams and related slang.
Later works for television took a more optimistic view, especially a series of plays centering on a trio of Yorkshiremen, led by Art (Brian Glover
Brian Glover
Brian Glover was an English character actor, writer and wrestler. Glover was a professional wrestler, teacher, and finally a film, television and stage actor. He once said, "You play to your strengths in this game. My strength is as a bald-headed, rough-looking Yorkshireman".-Early life:Glover was...
), and their humorous misadventures. At about the same time he wrote Pinvin Careless and his Lines of Force, a parable about a man at the end of his life pursuing his obsession with ley line
Ley line
Ley lines are alleged alignments of a number of places of geographical and historical interest, such as ancient monuments and megaliths, natural ridge-tops and water-fords...
s and related pseudo-phenomena, while remembering his upbringing under a stern father in a cricket-obsessed village culture. Terson treated the situation of men dealing with life in the modern de-industrialized North in the play Strippers which ran in London's West End theatre
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
s.
Other
Several of his plays have been produced by the National Youth TheatreNational Youth Theatre
The National Youth Theatre is a registered charity in London, Great Britain, committed to creative, personal and social development of young people through the medium of creative arts....
. In Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
his play The Mighty Reservoir (in Dutch: Het Machtig Reservoir) reached more than 500 performances by the MMT, a theatre in Mechelen
Mechelen
Mechelen Footnote: Mechelen became known in English as 'Mechlin' from which the adjective 'Mechlinian' is derived...
, and a TV-adaption by the BRT, Belgian Television.
External links
.- Entry at Biography.com.
- Entry at the Online Encyclopedia of World Drama.