Mitchell - Family Business

So I always travel hopefully, as though the secret of life may lie around the next corner, across the next river, over the next range of hills. But another part tells me that this is absurd. I am a traveller, you are a tourist, he is a tripper goes the saying, and a tourist is the most I have ever been. As an outsider, an observer, I have never got to understand more than the superficialities of the societies Ive dipped into. And tourism today, with its all too casual wasting of the earths resources, is becoming morally disreputable. I ought to give up all flying, stay at home, and ride a bicycle instead of polluting the atmosphere with an inefficient car which would be better for me anyway.

I cant help noticing, though, that most of the world ignores the evidence of climate change, and continues carelessly on its way towards potential self-destruction. Our political leaders are too afraid of losing their seats to confront the public with the issues; our bankers and businessmen never look beyond their immediate profits; and there is very little opportunity or encouragement for us as individuals to take any action. So I am torn between self-indulgence and responsibility, between greed and green. It is this conflict which gave me the idea of writing a play about a family in the travel business, and a play meant embarking on a different form of travel internal rather than external exploring individual characters rather than countries, and how we think and feel about sex and marriage and parenting, the basics of family life. Attitudes have changed so rapidly in the last century that the British society to which Sigmund Freud came as a refugee in 1938 now seems as formalised and hidebound as ancient Egypt. If he came back today he would surely be astounded by how much we take for granted of his and his followers insights about human behaviour.

Things which in his day were secret and shameful are now openly discussed. He might even be shocked at the freedom with which we deal with them. Yet human nature hasnt changed. Inner and outer exploration those are the subjects of Family Business. Julian Mitchell, July 2011