Inspired by histories of fakes and forgery, theatrical maverick David Leddy explains how he created Long Live The Little Knife

In 2010, I chanced upon a book called How Pleasure Works, written by Yale professor of psychology Paul Bloom. In the book, he argues that basic pleasures are deeply influenced by our belief in hidden “essences”. If you lose your wedding ring, for example, an exact duplicate will not hold the same essence for you. You will know in your heart that the new ring is a fake.

He also says art forgeries are a major challenge for our brains, because they are both real and false simultaneously. As an illustration, he describes the art forger Han Van Meegeren, who swindled Herman Goering by selling him a counterfeit Vermeer. Apparently, when Goering found out that his Vermeer was a fake, “he looked as if, for the first time, he had discovered there was evil in the world”.

I wanted to make a theatre piece about art forgery and the line between what’s real, what’s fake and what lies in the grey area between. What’s a real man, a real woman and, most importantly, what’s real love?

The first stage of writing Long Live The Little Knife took place while I was on holiday in Spain. The weather was so blazingly hot that a ginger boy like me couldn’t go out in the midday sun. So, I bought hundreds of coloured Post-it notes from the newsagent. I turned the wall of the apartment into a vast graph, with different columns for different themes, events and characters. The only drawback was the industrial-strength fan I used to combat the heat. It kept blowing the Post-it notes right off the wall.

Around the same time, I was asked by the Royal Shakespeare Company to make a microscopically small show in the British Museum, as part of their Shakespeare Staging The World exhibition. A seven-minute long performance, based on my reactions to a specific exhibit. Of course, the notion of forgery and authenticity is always present and problematic for museums.

So, it seemed natural to give the characters from Long Live The Little Knife a “prequel” in the gent-eel world of the British Museum. The same characters and the same themes, but an earlier escapade. It was a great way to test the waters and see how audiences reacted to their madcap, quick-fire delivery. Most of all, it was a thrilling exper-ience to perform in the museum I visited so often as a child. I’ll always remember a meeting we had late, at night after the dress rehearsal. The museum was completely empty and we were alone in almost total darkness under the huge glass canopy of the Great Court. It was truly magical.

Long Live The Little Knife, is on at The North Wall, Oxford, next Tuesday (8pm). Tickets: £13/£11.
Call 01865 319450 or visit thenorthwall.com