Nick Darke was born at St Eval, near Padstow in Cornwall United Kingdom, and lived most of his life in Porthcothan where his family have lived for four generations after moving there from Padstow. His grandfather was a sea-captain who spent his life at sea and was wrecked twice at the Cape of Good Hope. His father T. O. Darke, was a chicken farmer, fisherman and a distinguished ornithologist. His mother was the actress Betty Cowan. He was educated at Truro Cathedral School, where he was unhappy (he was "asked to leave" after doing something dastardly to the cricket pitch). He later attended Newquay Grammar School and trained as an actor at the Rose Bruford College in Kent. After making his professional début in repertory at the Lyric, Belfast, he went on to learn his craft at the Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent, England, where he acted in over 80 plays and directed
Man Is Man,
The Miser,
Absurd Person Singular,
The Scarlet Pimpernel, and
A Cuckoo in the Nest, 1977-79. He wrote over 25 stage plays which have been performed both within Cornwall and nationally. Many of his plays reflect Cornish society and culture such as the tin mining, countryside, fishermen and the quirky nature of country living. During the later part of his career he worked regularly with the Cornish theatre company Kneehigh Theatre. One of his last works, the documentary
The Wrecking Season (2004) which he wrote and narrated, charts the lives of Cornish beachcombers, of which he himself was one having moved permanently back home to Porthcothan in 1990. He married the painter Jane Spurway in 1993 and is the father of film-maker Henry and stepfather of Jim, a marine scientist. He was made a Bard of the Cornish Gorsedd in 1996 taking the Bardic name
Scryfer Gwaryow ('Writer of Plays').
While recovering from a stroke that he suffered in January 2001, Nick Darke was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died aged 56 in June 2005. A unique beach funeral ceremony was followed by burial in St Eval churchyard. His son Henry and wife Jane Darke continued his legacy in film.
The Art of Catching Lobsters, written and directed by Jane Darke, is a moving account of her husband's death and the grieving process. Premiered on BBC Four on 27 September 2007. it was subsequently shown at the 2007 Cornwall Film Festival A film version of his first play
Never Say Rabbit In A Boat is in pre-production and will be made by APT Films. His son Henry Darke has made a film version of
Danger My Ally.
In 2009 the Cornwall Youth Theatre Company began "Darke Visions", an ambitious eighteen-month festival running from Spring 2009 to Summer 2010 celebrating the life and work of Cornwall’s foremost playwright, with the performance of
Hells' Mouth (directed by Harry Forbes-Pearce and Theresa Forbes-Pearce);
The Body (directed by Tom Faulkner); and
Ting Tang Mine (directed by Rory Wilton and Emma Spurgin Hussey). These plays went on tour in Cornwall during March/April 2009. Other events and productions in the festival are planned.
Nick Darke's literary voice is very distinctive and although many of his characters, plots and settings are rooted in the Cornish past, his themes are often of relevance to the Cornwall of today. As one of his earliest reviews, in
The Financial Times stated: "Darke gives shape to a Cornish idenitity that feels vital and real and has nothing to do with clay pipes and clotted cream". Although he made a vital contribution to the culture of Cornwall in the last quarter of the 20th century, he himself claimed only that his greatest achievement (and that of his wife Jane) was convincing North Cornwall District Council not to mechanically rake the beaches in their area that was damaging the natural eco-structure.
Plays
- Mother Goose (1977; Victoria Theatre, Stoke on Trent) - pantomime
- Never Say Rabbit In A Boat (1977; Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent) - his first full-length play, set in Cornwall about an ageing rabbit catcher and a beach seine net company
- Low tide (1977; Plymouth Theatre Company) - about tourism set on a beach.
- Landmarks (1979) - set in the thirties in rural England when horse met the tractor for the first and last time.
- Summer Trade (1979) - takes place in a pub somewhere on the North Cornish coast the day after the ex-landlord's last night. The new landlord has plans to modernise.
- A Tickle On The River's Back (1979) - set on the Thames about a family of lightermen and the decline of the industry on the river over the last 20 years.
- High Water (1980; RSC) - set on a beach early one morning. Two men meet to go wrecking and discover they are father and son.
- Say Your Prayers (1981; Joint Stock Theatre Company) - musical, an atheist's interpretation of St Paul with the help of an American-born again evangelist and an Anglican priest.
- Cider with Rosie (1981) - growing up in the idyllic English countryside between the two world wars (based on the autobiography of Laurie Lee of the same name)
- The Catch (1981; for The Royal Court Upstairs) - two fishermen bedevilled by the EEC cast their nets for a different kind of catch - cocaine.
- The Lowestoff Man (1982; Orchard Theatre Company) - sequel to "The Catch", a mysterious American arrives to claim his cocaine
- The Body (1983; RSC) - musical, an eccentric West Country community contend with the presence of an American airforce base. "Under Milk Wood meets Dr Strangelove" was one critical verdict.
- The Earth Turned Inside Out (1984; community play for the Borough of Restormel, Cornwall) - the rivalries of two Cornish mining communities set in 1815 at a time when the Cornish copper mining industry was healthy but prone to market forces.
- Bud (1985; RSC) - fifity-year-old Bud has spent 20 years without rancour or spite working his wife's farm but his peaceful existence comes to an abrupt halt when a misjudgement forces him to question his motivation and examine the 'acid drop scorchin holes in the startched napkin of our marriage'.
- The Oven Glove Murders (1986) - described by one critic as "an acerbic response to the British cinema revival led by Chariots of Fire".
- The Dead Monkey (1986; RSC) - a childless Californian couple sit down to a candlelit supper to commemorate the death of their fifteen-year-old pet. The party sours after a series of discomforting revelations.
- Ting Tang Mine (1987; for National Theatre) - reworking of the community play "The Earth Turned Inside Out": the fate of two competing mining communities used as a parable for Thatcher's Britain.
- A Place Called Mars (1988)
- The Campesinos (1989; RSC)
- Kissing The Pope (1989; RSC) - set in revolutionary South America, "growing up to be a man in a violent world; having to decide why to kill before you know why to live".
- Fears and Miseries of the Third Term - part contributor (1989, Young Vic Studio).
- Hell's Mouth (1992; RSC) - story after Sophocles, set in post-apoclyptic dystopia with Cornish nationalists fighting for independence from England.
- Danger My Ally (1993; Kneehigh Theatre) - is about what happens to two eco-warriors when they are caught trying to blow up an open-cast mine. (The title is taken from the autobiography of F.A. “Mike” Mitchell-Hedges, the English adventurer and traveller who was the real Indiana Jones of his day.)
- The Bogus (1994; Kneehigh Theatre)
- Knock Out The Pin (1994; Cornwall Youth Theatre Company) - about Newquay lifeboat.
- The King of Prussia (1996; for Plymouth Theatre Royal/Kneehigh Theatre) - based on the life and times of 18th century Cornish smuggler, John Carter of Prussia Cove, West Cornwall.
- The Man with Green Hair (1997)
- The Riot (2000; for Kneehigh production at the National Theatre) - set in the fishing village of Newlyn in 1896, about the so-called "Sabbath riots", when the devout Cornish fisherman whose Methodist beliefs forbade them to fish on Sundays demonstrated violently against the Sunday fishing fleet from Lowestoft.
- Laughing Gas (2005) a comedy script about the life of Sir Humphry Davy unfinished at the time of Nick Darke's death; completed posthumously by Cornish actor and playwright Carl Grose and produced by the Truro-based production company o-region.
Television and films
- Farmers Arms (TV, 1983)
- The Bench (TV, 1999)
- Breaking the Chains (film, 2000) Writer: John Angarrack, Director/producer: Nick Darke. Cornish historian John Angarrack talks to Nick Darke about Cornish cultural suppression and the way forward.
- The Cornish Farmer (film, 2004) Writer: Nick Darke, Directors: Nick Darke/Mark Jenkin, Producer: Jane Darke. Nick Darke talks to his old friend, Warwick Cowling, about threshing and other farm practices. The film uses 8 mm archive film shot by Nick’s father in the 1960s in St Eval.
- The Wrecking Season (film, 2004; commissioned by the Arts Council and directed by his wife, Jane Darke, first broadcast on BBC4 22 July 2005) a film about beachcombing on the Cornish coast - available on DVD from Boatshed Films.
- The Art of Catching Lobsters (film, 2005; first broadcast on BBC4 27 September 2007), Nick and Jane's second film was initially conceived as a film about Nick's recovery from a stroke through such activities as beachcombing and lobster fishing. Nick was then diagnosed with terminal cancer and the film became a record of his attempts to pass on his knowledge and experience of lobster fishing and the ways of the sea to his son Henry, as well as a poignant documentary about love, loss and the grieving process--also available on DVD from Boatshed Films.
- Nick Darke also appeared in the Exmouth to Bristol episode of the TV series "Coast"
Radio
- Foggy Anniversary (1979)
- Summer Trade (1980)
- Landmarks (1981)
- Lifeboat (1981)
- The Catch (1983)
- So Long as Lobsters Swim the Sea (1997; feature) - described as "An occasional series where those well-known in one field talk about another consuming interest in their lives. Nick Darke, author of many plays for radio, the National Theatre, and the Royal Shakespeare Company, is also a keen fisherman. He talks about his lobster pots and nets off Padstow."
- Cider with Rosie (radio adaptation of Laurie Lee's autobiogaphy) (1998), in two episodes broadcast by BBC as "The Classic Serial".
- Gone Fishing (1998)
- Bawcock's Eve (1999) - a mystery story set in Mousehole, Cornwall.
- Flotsam & Jetsam (1999) - a family tale based in Porthnant Bay, Cornwall.
- The King of Prussia (1999) - set off the Cornish coast in 1789. A mad king, heavy taxes, and smugglers...and in the other direction, a country on the brink of revolution. Based on his play of the same name.
- Underground (feature on Cornish tin mining) (2000) - voices of miners and their families are woven into a text by Nick Darke and music by Jim Carey.
- In quest of Joseph Emidy (2000) - the amazing story of Joseph Antonio Emidy an African slave who eventually became a violinist in the Lisbon Orchestra, fought in the Napoleonic Wars, then settled in Falmouth and became a successful teacher and composer. With contributions from Richard McGrady (historian), Tunde Jegede (composer), Nancy Naro (slavery expert) and Emidy's descendants.
- The Fisherman's Tale (2000) - a group of travellers take shelter in a motorway service station from appalling weather. There is no radio or TV, so to keep each other entertained they each tell a story. Darke's contribution to the "2000 tales" series ", written on the 600th anniversary of Chaucer's death.
- Atlantic Drifting (BBC Radio 4, 30th Nov 2001)
- Dumbstruck (2003; first broadcast on BBC R4) - an audio diary which Nick kept when he lost the power of speech after a stroke.
- Hooked (2005; first broadcast 18 July 2005 BBC R4) - a comedy drama-documentary telling the story of a Cornish couple who are asked for their advice by a Londoner on how to fish for sea-bass, who subsequently cashes in on his new knowledge. Recorded on Porthcothan Beach.
Nick Darke also appeared on the Radio 4 programme
"Nature" (broadcast 16 Feb 2004).
Other projects
- The Lobster (1998) for speaker and chamber group ('Thoughts of a crustacean upon entering a trap', text by Nick Darke). Performed at the QEH in 1998 by Nicole Tibbels (speaker) with the Mephisto Ensemble conducted by the composer, Christopher Gunning (born 1944). Recorded by them on the Meridian label (CDE 84498).
