Jane Darke Popular Books

Jane Darke Biography & Facts

Nick Darke (1948–2005) was a British playwright. He was also known within Cornwall as a lobster fisherman, environmental campaigner, and chairman of St Eval Parish Council. Early life Nick's great-grandfather, William Leonard Darke, was a sea captain and master mariner. Nick's grandfather, Temperley Darke, was also a master-mariner and sea-captain who spent his life at sea, and was wrecked twice off the Cape of Good Hope. His father Temperley Oswald ('Pop') Darke, was a North Cornwall chicken farmer, and a distinguished ornithologist. His mother, Betty Cowan, was an actress, who performed throughout the UK. Betty's father was the organist at Hampstead Church, and played organ for Elgar. After acting, Betty ran a cafe called 'Betty's tearooms' from the home that Nick was born in. As a small boy Nick remembered uninvited holidaymakers snooping around parts of his house, even his bedroom, and his contempt for the ravaging effects of unchecked, unregulated tourism, began. Nicholas Temperley Watson Darke, was born in Wadebridge, Kernow, and was raised, and later moved back to Porthcothan, where his family have lived for four generations, after moving there from Padstow. He was educated at St Merryn Primary School and Truro Cathedral School, from where he was expelled for blowing up the cricket pitch, with a sugar and weed killer bomb. He then attended Newquay Grammar School. Nick's aversion to empire, and the English ruling class, began at boarding school during the sixties, where he experienced sadistic institutionalized bullying, and extremely poor sanitary conditions. He was accepted into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but couldn't afford the fees, so instead trained as an actor at Rose Bruford College, Kent. Early career After making his professional début at the Lyric, Belfast, he went on to learn his craft in repertory theatre, at the Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent, England. Over a ten-year period he acted in over eighty plays at Stoke, and between 1977–79 also directed Man Is Man, The Miser, Absurd Person Singular, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and A Cuckoo in the Nest. His love of theatre in the round began at Stoke, 'fluidity of action, jump-cuts from location to location, short scenes, diversity of characters, music as narrative were the bread and butter of the Vic and I've fed on them ever since'. He believed the best advice to learn how to be a playwright was to 'go and be an actor'.At Stoke he wrote his first full-length play, Never Say Rabbit in a Boat, which won the George Devine award in 1979. He then gave up acting to write full-time. Playwriting Over the next twenty-seven years, he wrote twenty-seven plays which have been performed throughout the world, and London's leading writer-led theatres The Royal Court Theatre, The Donmar Warehouse, The Almeida Theatre, The Bush Theatre, The Lyric, two for The Royal National Theatre, and eight for The Royal Shakespeare Company. Three of his plays, The Catch, Kissing The Pope, and The Dead Monkey, were originally directed by Roger Michell. Prominent actors performed his work, including Tim Roth, Ralph Fiennes, Pete Postlethwaite, Frances Barber, Lesley Sharp, Geoffrey Hutchings, Phillip Jackson, and Antony O'Donnel. 'By turns dreamily inconsequential, passionately satirical, and sharply observant, he is one of the most interesting of our playwrights,' Sunday Telegraph. 'Fiercely original and scaldingly funny,' The Washington Post on The Dead Monkey. Having grown up in a secluded agricultural community similar to Laurie Lee, Nick was a natural fit to adapt Cider With Rosie for the stage, in 1981. During his career, Nick also wrote twelve radio plays and presented five radio documentaries for Radio Four. When he returned to Cornwall during the latter part of his career, Kneehigh Theatre performed his work. Kneehigh's London debut, The King Of Prussia, was written by Nick, commissioned by The Donmar Warehouse in 1996. Kneehigh's second London outing was also written by Nick, The Riot was commissioned by, and performed at, The National Theatre, Cottesloe, in 1999. Screenwriting Nick wrote a Play for Today entitled Farmer's Arms (1983), a comedy western set in the parish of St. Merryn, near where he grew up, starring Phillip Jackson, Colin Welland, and Brenda Bruce.In 1999 Nick wrote a TV Movie called The Bench, starring Geoffrey Hutchings and Leslie Grantham. Nick also worked with Geoff twice in the theatre, with one-man, one-act monologue Bud at the Almeida in 1985, and later Geoff had the central role in The Riot at The National Theatre, 1999. A film version of his first play Never Say Rabbit in a Boat was in pre-production with APT Films, when Nick died in 2005. His son Henry Darke made short film versions of his plays Danger My Ally in 2003, and Highwater in 2006. Documentary The Wrecking Season (2004) was his final work, and his first documentary. He wrote, presented, and narrated the film, which his widow Jane Darke filmed and directed. The Wrecking Season charts the lives of Cornish 'wreckers', traditionally Cornish farm-hands who collected bulk wood that washed in after a storm, to sell for additional money and supplement their income when farming was slack, or to use to build with. More broadly the film explores the journey of long haul drift and general sea debris, notably sea beans from the Amazon basin, and tuna and lobster fisherman's tags from the Maine and Massachusetts fisheries, and how 'wreck' follows a consistent route around the Gulf Stream, arriving specifically on the west coast of Ireland and the North Cornwall coast. Nick talks to oceanographers, wood specialists, and fisherman on both sides of the Atlantic. Nick himself was a 'wrecker' after moving permanently back home to Porthcothan in 1990. He self-built part of his home with wreck wood salvaged after storms from beaches across Cornwall, and traded fishing gear that he found, with Padstow lobster fishermen, for bait and lobster pots that he then used to fish with. During their wrecking, Nick and Jane Darke personally amassed one of the largest collections of Tropical sea-beans in Europe.The documentary was innovative at the time for its investigation into the variety of plastics on Cornish beaches, including microplastics such as 'nurdles'. The Wrecking Season was broadcast on BBC4 shortly after Nick's death. Environmental activism Nick made a vital contribution to the culture of Cornwall, though he claimed his greatest achievement (and that of his wife Jane) was campaigning North Cornwall District Council to end the mechanical raking of beaches on the North Cornwall coast. A system of cleaning that did great harm to the natural eco-system of beaches in Cornwall. This followed in the footsteps of his father, conservationist 'Pop' Darke, who as St. Eval Parish Council Chairman before Nick, prevented a carpark from being built on the site of Porthcothan sand-dunes. Personal life Nick Darke met painter and documentary filmmaker Jane D.... 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