James Hogan is one of UK theatre's most captivating—and articulate—independent publishers. His company, Oberon Books, publishes many of today's hottest contemporary playwrights, as well as a prolific library of works by and about some of the greatest theatre practitioners in history. Hogan is the people's publisher: widely respected, but unassuming.
We meet at The Ivy Club in London. Hogan is already in the restaurant when I get there – seated in his favourite booth. The restaurant is relaxed and spacious, the furnishings a mix of leather and velvet. He greets me warmly and we talk candidly about the industry, the challenges of publishing in the twenty-first century and more.
Skim his company's back-catalogue and you find one landmark publication after another; over 1,700 hundred plays and counting. So how did it all begin? "It was back in 1984 – I was part of a play-reading group at Riverside Studios, and it occurred to me that there were very few publishing outlets for young writers," he explains. "So, I started one. And ever since, it's been a mixture of love and business… though always the idea was to say yes, not no".
Oberon went on to become one of the UK's most exciting independent publishing houses specialising in drama and the performing arts. "I started it alone, publishing mainly lesser-known writers at small theatres and theatres in the regions," he says. "I went outside of London and luckily a lot of writers working in the regions then came into London and we already had them on our list. We did a lot of work with the Glasgow Citizen's Theatre, I even published a play that premiered in Westcliffe-on-Sea," he smiles.
What you sense in Hogan is an outstanding publisher speaking up for his clients, past, present and future. He gives every writer exactly the attention they need, and Oberon is driven by the tangible, on-the-ground concerns of its authors. He wouldn't have it any other way, but he also has an eye to the changes ahead.
Significantly for Hogan, two plays by the late Edward Albee open in the West End this spring. James Macdonald's production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Harold Pinter Theatre and The Goat, directed by Ian Rickson at the Theatre Royal Haymarket are the first revivals of Albee's landmark plays since his death last September.
And the fact that a new generation are flocking to the West End to see these plays is wonderful to him. Hogan is passionate about the necessity of theatregoing.
Tags: #EdwardAlbee, #JamesHogan, #OberonBooks, #TheGoat, #westend, #WhosAfraidofVirginaWoolf!