Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The Journey - ebook

FOREWORD

When producers Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender first proposed their idea for a new play, exploring the themes of family and loss at the heart of the Harry Potter stories, I was intrigued. For years I’d turned down proposals to adapt the books for the stage, but this was something different, something new.

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in life, it’s all about the people you work with. So, when Jack Thorne and John Tiffany were brought into the team to develop the story with me, I knew I could trust them to create something truly extraordinary.

I have so many wonderful memories of the earliest rehearsals, of seeing the costumes and illusions for the first time, but what I remember most fondly about the three of us working together is the laughter. I loved the process from beginning to end.

Collaborating on _Harry Potter and the Cursed Child_ has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my working life and I could not be prouder of what we achieved. There is a power in live theater that cannot be replicated in any other art form, and sharing the story with an audience for the first time was a breathtaking experience I will never forget. I’m thrilled that the magic can now be shared with audiences around the world.

_—J.K. Rowling, 2019_From left, Tom Milligan (James Potter), Christiana Hutchings (Lily Potter), Jamie Parker (Harry Potter), Poppy Miller (Ginny Potter), and Sam Clemmett (Albus Potter) in the Original West End Production

THE JOURNEY

✸B✸E✸G✸I✸N✸S✸

Our first meeting with J.K. Rowling was not just a meeting about story,” producer Sonia Friedman recalls. Producer Colin Callender agrees: “It wasn’t really about business arrangements, or would it be one part or two parts—it was a meeting about parents.”

It was autumn 2013, and Friedman and Callender had arranged a meeting with Rowling through her agent, Neil Blair, to discuss the possibility of a live theatrical stage production based on Harry Potter. They knew this wasn’t the first time Rowling had been approached about bringing Harry Potter to the stage—there had been proposals of Harry Potter musicals, stadium shows, Harry Potter on Ice . . . Rowling had turned them all down. But what idea might spark the author’s interest?

Sonia Friedman and her company, Sonia Friedman Productions, have been responsible for some of the most successful theater productions in London and New York. Since 1990, SFP has developed, initiated, and produced over 170 new productions and together the company has won a staggering 55 Olivier Awards, 24 Tonys, and 2 BAFTAs. “I’m in love with all the genres of theater,” says Friedman, “but at the very epicenter of it is new writing and storytelling. Everything else spirals around it, but new work, new writing, and new plays are ultimately my oxygen.” As an Emmy-, Golden Globe-, and BAFTA-winning producer, Colin Callender was one of the leading forces of the British independent television production sector. As president of HBO Films, Callender played a central role at a time of great commercial and critical success before forming Playground Entertainment in 2012.

Their shared appreciation and support for new work informed the approach the producers took when brainstorming a potential Harry Potter project. “We both knew, without question, it was never going to be an adaptation of the books,” says Friedman. “That was not interesting to us. Let’s do a new play, a new story inspired by the themes and ideas around the Harry Potter stories.”

Producer Sonia Friedman

The producers initially saw this as an intimate character drama, not an adventure driven by narrative and action. “We wanted to think about this as a play that could actually first be seen at the Royal Court Theatre, a real proper play,” Callender explains. “At the same time, we kept coming back to this idea that we were never going to be able to compete with the big visuals of the movies,” he adds. “Our intent, really, was to explore the psychological, emotional landscape of Harry, grown up. How did this boy—this boy living under the stairs who didn’t know who his parents were, who didn’t know he was a wizard, with an aunt and uncle and cousin who were awful to him—how did that boy grow up to be an adult and a father?”

Producer Colin Callender

“I think we came to it from completely different angles,” Friedman says. “Colin came to it as a father, and I came to it as the daughter of an absent father. But ‘father’ was the center. That was our way in.”

As Friedman and Callender approached the street in Edinburgh where they would meet with Rowling, Friedman was suddenly bombarded with memories of her father, Leonard Friedman, who had died in 1994 in Edinburgh. In fact, she knew he had passed away only a few streets from where this meeting was to take place.

Friedman admits she had a bit of a meltdown: “Colin pushed me through the door and said, ‘Work with this, keep going, this is all meant to have happened in this way, don’t try and hide it.’ So, in we went. And that was how the meeting started, with me apologizing for being so emotional, because I was just reliving my dad’s death.”

Parents, children, and how they relate to one another was an apt topic of conversation for a Harry Potter-related meeting, and was key to the themes Friedman and Callender were looking to explore in a Harry Potter stage production. “I don’t know how long the meeting lasted, but it was a good couple of hours,” says Callender. “First it was about connecting with Jo and her understanding where we were coming from; how, with this play, we wanted to tell a new story—not an adaptation, not even a prequel. And second, she needed to meet us in person and feel that she would be in trustworthy hands.”

“I had always been quite resistant, if I’m honest, to the idea of putting Harry Potter onstage,” J.K. Rowling has said, recalling her first meeting with Friedman and Callender. “And I’d always said Harry’s story with Voldemort is done, it’s over. So it had to be something really remarkable to make me change my mind. And then Sonia and Colin came to me with a proposal that I really liked.”

The producers left the meeting feeling hopeful that they had gained Rowling’s trust. “I think that with the combination of Sonia’s body of work as a theater producer and my body of work as a film and television producer, she’d seen the quality of what we’d both done and the subjects we’d tackled,” says Callender. “I don’t think at the time we knew for certain whether she was up for doing it, but she was very engaged.”

“But it wasn’t like, bye, see you at opening night!” Friedman adds. “We first had to figure out the creative team. Jo isn’t a playwright herself, of course, so it was very important to find a writer and director she connected with and felt she could work with. If we could accomplish that, it was agreed we’d move forward. It was stage by stage.”

“Either through naivety or sheer overwhelming excitement, we didn’t feel pressure at that point,” says Callender. “But we knew that we had to put together a brilliant creative team, and our starting point was the director.”

Friedman’s first thought, and Callender agreed, was that they should talk with director John Tiffany. “John’s work is very emotionally and physically based; he’s not a director you associate with high tech or the modern gizmos out there,” Friedman says. “We knew that Harry Potter had to be about storytelling and the magic that’s happening before your very eyes.”

In addition to being a fan of Tiffany’s work for a long time, they had worked together early on in their careers. The first play Tiffany directed, _Gagarin Way_, was also the first play Friedman produced in the West End while at the Ambassador Theatre Group, bringing it over in 2001 from Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, where Tiffany had started his career as literary director. After his time at the Traverse Theatre, Tiffany became associate director of the Paines Plough touring company, which presented new playwrights’ work, and then joined the National Theatre of Scotland in 2004 as associate director of new work. Here he directed the Olivier Award–winning production of _Black Watch_, which dramatized the true stories of Scottish soldiers serving in the Iraq War.

“_Black Watch_ was one of the most powerful theater experiences I’d ever seen,” says Friedman. “You really believed that you were watching these guys at war. And the physicality of it, the emotion and the movement, were so powerful.” Callender had also seen _Black Watch_: “It had its own theatrical sleight of hand, and it was that sort of imagination we wanted to capture.”

“WE KNEW THAT HARRY POTTER HAD TO BE ABOUT STORYTELLING AND THE MAGIC THAT’S HAPPENING BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES.”

—SONIA FRIEDMAN

Tiffany had also directed the Off-Broadway and Broadway productions of the musical _Once_, winning his first Tony. His final production at the National was _Let the Right One In_, an adaptation by writer Jack Thorne of a Swedish novel and film described as a coming-of-age vampire love story.

Friedman and Callender met Tiffany in London at the Covent Garden Hotel. The chosen room at the hotel had shelves of books, a large fireplace, and cushy red-and-gold furnishings. “We asked him, was he familiar with the books? And he said yes,” says Callender. “And then he told this story . . .”

Many years earlier, when Tiffany had just begun working as associate director at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, he often frequented the theater’s café. Occasionally, he would see a young woman with a baby, drinking coffee and writing in longhand for hours. In time, they became familiar enough to nod hello to each other. After _Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone_ was published, Tiffany saw J.K. Rowling being interviewed on television and realized she was the woman from the café. “Because of that, Harry Potter’s always had a special place for me,” says Tiffany. “I’d had a kind of sneak preview. I felt very lucky that I’d seen it before anyone knew what it was, including her.”

“At that moment, the hair on the back of Sonia’s and my necks literally stood up,” says Callender. Later, when Friedman and Callender would introduce Tiffany to Rowling, she commented that he looked familiar. “And then when John told me about the Traverse Theatre connection, that was amazing—it felt predestined,” says Rowling.

While Tiffany listened as Friedman and Callender described what they wanted to explore, he experienced some doubts about working on the project. “I thought, ‘I don’t know if they’ve got the right person here,’ you know?” Tiffany recalls. “I have absolutely no history of doing anything like this. The Broadway musical I did was set in a bar with four tables and eight chairs. I thought, somewhere along the line someone’s going to want a Quidditch match. Not that that kind of challenge wouldn’t excite me, in a way, but I just thought, ‘Is this a stadium show?’”

The meeting ended with one more piece of synchronicity that might be taken as a sign. As Callender and Friedman left the room shortly after their potential director exited, “We realized it was called the Tiffany room,” says Callender. “So between John having met Jo, and now this . . .”

Tiffany continued to meet with the producers to discuss the project and offer his thoughts. It was becoming obvious that the beginning of their new story should be the epilogue from _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_, “Nineteen Years Later.” “Our starting point was there, ready and waiting at the end of book seven,” says Friedman.

Tiffany agreed that theater could tell this story, “but it had to have a similar epic storyline to the books,” he says. “I said we also need to bring evil back, because if it just goes on from the battle of Hogwarts and nineteen years later, then we know there’s no jeopardy. Also, we can’t go from within the canon, because the audience has to know that it might not be all right, otherwise where are the stakes?” Tiffany was now fully engaged in figuring out how to bring a new Harry Potter story to the stage.

There was one other important determining factor that led to Tiffany accepting the project: The nephews and godchildren he had read the books to over the years told him, simply, that he had to do it.

Director John Tiffany (left) and playwright Jack Thorne

On an unusually warm January night in London, John Tiffany and writer Jack Thorne were walking from the Tube to the South Bank Sky Arts Awards, where they were nominated for their achievements in theater with _Let the Right One In_. “We were walking to the awards ceremony,” Thorne recalls, “and he said, ‘I’ve been offered Harry Potter.’” News was already out in the theater community (and beyond) that Harry Potter was planning to make a leap onto the stage, “but I didn’t ever think that I could be part of it,” says Thorne. “So, I went, ‘Oh, wow, mate, that’s amazing.’” Thorne wasn’t sure where the discussion was leading—perhaps Tiffany was asking him about whether the director should do it or not? “And then he went, ‘So, I’m going to do it and I would like you to write it if you’re up for it.’” Thorne literally slipped off the pavement.

Thorne and Tiffany had first met at Cambridge, where Tiffany was teaching a masterclass. The two kept in touch, “and then the very first thing I had after university with professional actors, John Tiffany directed,” Thorne recalls.

Thorne went on to write _When You Cure Me_, his first produced play, which premiered at the Bush Theatre in 2005. The play opened doors to writing in all media for Thorne—stage, radio, television, and film. It was Tiffany who asked Thorne if he would write the adaptation of _Let the Right One In_, which led to their later discussion en route to the awards ceremony.

Sonia Friedman was also up for an award that night. “As it happened, John and Jack won and I didn’t,” says Friedman, but she met up with Tiffany in the foyer of the awards venue. “John said, ‘I’d like you to meet Jack Thorne,’” she remembers. “We didn’t talk about Harry Potter at the time, but I met this beautiful, shy, very modest, very tall man who just said, hi, hi, hi, hi.”

Shortly afterward, Tiffany told the producers he wanted Thorne to write the play, and a meeting was put together. “Frankly, there was no second thought,” says Callender. “It was obvious that Jack and John together were going to be a great match. And there’s something madly engaging about Jack as an individual.

“A lot of Jack’s work was about younger characters,” Callender continues. “And a great thing about his writing is the way he moves between the serious and comedic moments; he intertwines them so that the jokes come at the most unexpected points, or the serious bits emerge out of some of the lighter moments. That’s sort of seamless in his plays and part of the strength of what’s onstage.”

The producers were well aware of Thorne’s talents, but there was one more quality that made him a perfect fit. “Jack loves Harry Potter,” says Friedman. “He had of course consumed the books, and it turned out that he saw every film many, many times and was, I guess, a superfan.”

In his first meeting with the producers, Thorne recalls Friedman saying, “‘I listened to the Stephen Fry Harry Potter audiobooks with my stepchildren, John read Potter to his nephews and his godchildren, you read Potter to yourself.’ And I _am_ that fan—it’s me,” he says. “I’m a Potterhead, and the idea of getting to play in this universe is still bewildering to this day. Daunting, terrifying, exciting . . . It was sitting in a space rocket and you’ve got to go—and by the way, we’ve got a year and a half to get the script right.”

“It was very clear that Jack, himself, had a personal connection to the storytelling,” says Callender. “And then John and Jack went up to go and meet Jo, and she fell in love with them.”

Friedman, Callender, Tiffany, and Thorne had all agreed that the jumping-off point for the play should be the epilogue of _Deathly Hallows_. “We felt sure that the first scene of the play would be the final scene of the last book,” says John Tiffany. “That came naturally.” But after making that leap, where would they land? At their next meeting, they looked again at what was happening in that final scene at the train station and who was present. To Jack Thorne, it was notable that Rowling had put Draco Malfoy’s son and Harry Potter’s younger son in the same year at Hogwarts: Clearly they were destined to meet and, like their fathers before them, would have an impact on each other’s lives. “And as soon as those two were together, it put the dual father-son relationships into relief,” says Thorne.

Tiffany and Thorne didn’t want a whole new story about getting to know Harry. “We wanted it to be about where Harry was now, and the scars that accompany him from that time,” says Thorne. “What happens to a kid when they don’t have any parental support, and they’re entrusted with the world? How do you come out of that with any sense of sanity?”

They also wanted the plot to tie into something in Harry’s early life. “The story that Jack and I both loved was _Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire_,” says Tiffany. “For the first time, the world opens. The characters are maturing and the world is expanding.” In wanting the drama to revolve around Harry as a father to Albus, _Goblet of Fire_ offered another father-son relationship that would create a contrast. “The scene of Amos Diggory, when he finds out that Cedric’s been killed, when Harry brings his body back, it’s just heart-wrenching,” says Tiffany. “The most unnatural thing in the world is to outlive your kid.” Cedric’s death would have left a deep impression on Harry in numerous ways. “That was the first death Harry was responsible for,” says Thorne. “Well, he wasn’t responsible for _anyone’s_ death, but he took Cedric there. He was responsible in a Harry way.”

The playwright also appreciated _Goblet_’s structure. “There’s three tasks,” he explains. “That’s very useful. _Goblet_ had lots of stuff going for it. So, when we went up to see Jo for the first time, we went armed with that book.”

In April 2014, Tiffany and Thorne flew up to Edinburgh to see Rowling. Tiffany remembers a moment of trepidation as he introduced Thorne to her. “Suddenly, I thought to myself, ‘What if they don’t get on?’ But within four seconds, I was like, ‘Hello? _Hello?_’” Rowling has said, “Jack’s just one of my people, I knew instantly. He’s phenomenal, emotionally understanding, and totally unafraid to go into the dark place.”

Rowling brought them to her writing room, where their first meeting lasted the entire day. “Jack, John, and I knew what we wanted to do emotionally,” Rowling has said, “and we discussed ideas I already had about what might have happened next.” She explains further: “I was fascinated by Albus as I wrote the _Deathly Hallows_ epilogue, and felt a real pull to go with him to Hogwarts.” Tiffany and Thorne shared with Rowling their idea to make connections with both the plot and the emotional fallout of _Goblet of Fire_. “It’s Harry’s first death,” says Thorne, “and dealing with Cedric and what Cedric meant . . . It was a transformative year for Harry. So, what if we put Albus and Scorpius in that year, in their fourth year at Hogwarts?” Rowling has said, “The three of us developed this story together, always, I feel, with our eye on family, loss, what it means to be a father, and what it means to be the child of a very unusual father.”

Thorne had questions for Rowling beyond what was in the books in order to be able to shape the story. “I think most of what I found out, and was excited by, I got into the play. Such as, what is Hermione doing now? You sort of knew that Harry was going to become an Auror,” says Thorne. “Where Hermione ended up was really fascinating to me.”

From left, Jack Thorne, J.K. Rowling, and John Tiffany, at work

Thorne drafted a forty-five page treatment, and conversations among the team continued, especially between Thorne and Rowling. “We kept talking, talking, talking,” says Thorne. “It was a mixture of ‘Could we try this?’ and her going, ‘Ooh, that makes me think of this.’ It was a constant deep-core ‘mining.’ The thing is to shake the author for as much information as possible because their knowledge is your secret weapon, and their knowledge isn’t always on paper.

“And this is not hyperbole: She is without doubt the most supportive writer I’ve ever worked with,” Thorne states. “Not that she would say yes to everything. It was in the way she would guide and help and be there.” Thorne and Rowling would bounce ideas back and forth on email when he wrestled with something. “She consistently made it easy and not seem like it was the hugest job in the world, which of course it was.”

Thorne revised his treatment several times before it went to script, constantly rereading and circling back to _Goblet_. “Most times during this process, a writer delivers a draft, you give them notes, and you get the next draft,” says Colin Callender. “And it’s one step forward and two steps back. Well, Sonia and John and I would give notes to Jack, and every time the next draft would be an advance—it never went back. Every draft, the play got better and better.”

As the story development progressed, Thorne and Tiffany realized that—much like the epic adventures of the Harry Potter novels—the adventure they were crafting with Rowling for the play went beyond the scope of the typical stage production. “So we went to Sonia and Colin, and they said, ‘Why don’t you do it in two parts?’” Tiffany recalls. “We didn’t think through any of the practical implications at the time, which we have since had to embrace for all its complexity,” says Callender. “But we didn’t even think twice about it.”

Thorne had one particular idea that was important to him to weave into the story. “I really wanted to get into what it’s like at Hogwarts when you don’t fit in,” he states. “One of the first conversations Jo and I had was about the fact that we both found school excruciating. I said I thought that ten or eleven might be the hardest age for a kid, because that was the age I realized it was possible I might not have any friends. That was the age when I thought, this is possibly the moment when I’m going to be on my own.”

This fear of not fitting in draws directly from the _Deathly Hallows_ epilogue, as Albus voices his concerns about being sorted into Slytherin. It also manifests in the most prominent “new” character in _Cursed Child_: Scorpius Malfoy. While Scorpius is introduced in the epilogue, it’s only in _Cursed Child_ that his character is explored. Albus meets Scorpius onboard the Hogwarts Express, where Harry met Ron and Hermione. It’s apparent that Scorpius is sweet and smart and does not seem to fit the Malfoy mold. Rather, he’s a geek about Hogwarts history, worries about making friends, and wouldn’t hurt a fly. “I think people seem to love Scorpius as soon as they meet him,” declares Thorne. But the writer admits that there’s a lot of himself in the character. “Yes, I wrote myself into Hogwarts. He’s much nicer than me, but he’s like the kid who really couldn’t fit in even if you gave him a crowbar. He doesn’t know how other kids function, and I found other kids bewildering. People find him charming—it’s nice that it’s turned into a celebration of the nerd. But there’s also a lot of pain in Scorpius, and that was important to me.”

Albus and Scorpius become the closest of friends—a pair of misfits banding together in a life-changing, live-saving friendship. “For me, it was always about friendship and about my desire for a best friend who loved me,” Thorne admits. “When you’re best friends as kids, it’s a stronger relationship than you’ll ever have with anyone, because you live in each other’s pockets.”

DEAR JO,

There is video content at this location that is not currently supported on your device. Please download this file on a video compatible device to view.

—ACT ONE, SCENE SEVEN