Mike Lucas Interview Extracts

These two interview extracts have been taken Mike Lucas’ Unfinished Histories interview, August 2013.

Transcript 1:
Dr Jo Stanley: So, your dreams been realised then?
Mike Lucas: Well, in the sense that if dreams ever get realised; it never gets to the point were you think you’ve got it sorted because I’ve never known a moment in the period of this 40 years when there hasn’t been a battle of some sorts. When we haven’t been fighting for money or fighting something; fighting Yorkshire Arts; fighting the Arts Council, or whatever. So, you never sit down and think, you never feel like ah we’ve done it now; and even now, even though I’m no longer directly involved I still feel so connected to it.
Jo: You’ve been saying ‘we’ all the way through even though you’ve been talking about, you know, this period after you’ve left.
Mike: Yeah, I’m still very much ‘we’. I think I’m down in the programme as founding Artistic Director or something. I get me credit in the programme [laughs].

Transcript 2:
Jo: How would you like your period of Mikron 1963 to 2000ish, how would you like that to be remembered both within radical history and theatre history?
Mike: Oh gosh, well I think that small can be effective, that being small can have an impact. That doing something in an alternative way, and you have to say that traveling by water is an alternative way, and presenting alternative subjects, I think that one of the things that, one of the biggest legacies is the fact that we’ve covered so many areas in terms of subjects for plays that have never been covered or are not likely to have been covered by other theatre companies and that means that we have a little niche, the waterway niche and the subject niche which are two of the biggest legacies that I think which I think we hopefully have. From both my period and continuing.
Jo: Then there is you yourself, you know, could Mikron have succeeded with another kind of person rather than you at the helm?
Mike: Good God, who knows. Oh, I don’t know, of course it could’ve done if somebody would have had the idea there had’ve been a different personality and it would have happened in a different way, but it didn’t did it. I mean –
Jo: But, there you were cooking, writing, performing, teaching people how to steer, raising your son –
Mike: Raising the son, that was important –
Jo: You did an awful lot, you did multitask –
Mike: Yes, we can you know us men [laughs] –
Jo: You contributed something special don’t you think because of being who you are?
Mike: Its not for me to say, honestly that really isn’t for me to say. I don’t regret what I’ve done. I don’t ever think I oh God I wish I’d have gone off and done that instead, so that must have been good in a sense. I’m not sitting back thinking, I’ve done things, I know I could have done things better, definitely. I mean I think about networking and all those things you have to do now and all these new words which we didn’t have then, but networking I was never a brilliant networker so I could’ve been better on that one. There are lots of things I could have done better so it wasn’t all perfect but it worked.
Jo: Is that you’re last word or would you like another last word?
Mike: [laughs]. That’ll do.

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