The Scotsman 7 October 2021

Audiences often ask writers where they get their ideas from. Maybe a better question would be when. For Grant O’Rourke, it was three o’clock in the morning. One night earlier this year, he couldn’t sleep so he got up and grabbed a copy of Molière’s Don Juan, a play he’d last read two decades ago at drama school.

Until that moment, he saw himself exclusively as an actor. Save for the initial panic of lockdown when so much work disappeared, O’Rourke has built a successful career on stage and screen. His presence in a cast is always a sign of quality. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).