Ric Renton arrives for our interview slot having just taken a tumble, slipping in wet autumn leaves, hitting his face and also cutting his hand.
But he brushes it off and doesn't take a moment to tend to his injury. He's had worse problems to deal with, he points out. And, as audiences at Live Theatre are soon to find out, Ric's life experiences to date, including decades of abusing drink and drugs, are far beyond what most people endure or could even imagine.
The 40-year-old, originally from Denton Burn in Newcastle, is currently starting rehearsals at the quayside theatre on his new play One Off - his second - which will open its debut run there on November 10. It is based on his real-life experience at HMP Durham as a 21-year-old inmate and he'll be one of a cast of four telling the story.
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It also draws from his previous experience of two previous institutions and, crucially, from time spent talking with a prison worker who during evening conversations - spread over months - through the locked door of a cell offered him support and guidance. This nightwatchman, whose face the young Ric never got to fully see through the door's grid, actually worked at Deerbolt young offenders' institution but the character has been switched to Durham for the purpose of the play.
In reality, the move to this category A prison was a terrifying shock to the system for Ric whose stay there lasted a few months following a three-year sentence for drugs-related offences. The play's title comes, he explains, from the prison warders' shout whenever there was a suicide.
When Ric arrived at HMP Durham, he didn't know what the shout meant. When he found out, he was horrified at how regularly it happened. It was a terrible time but his life now is about as far removed from his early days as it's possible to get.
He hasn't just changed his life around from the troublemaker he accepts he was. He has gone on to achieve a remarkable level of success, seizing opportunities and adopting a mind-set that has seen a boy who left school without any GCSEs set about educating himself and go on to become an actor and a writer with upcoming projects which now involve film and TV.
"I've always been blessed by ambition and drive," he says. Next year, he is sure, is going to be the best year of his life yet. He lives in London now, well placed to take advantage of those opportunities which began to emerge after he joined a writing group and went on to have his first play, Nothing In A Butterfly, staged in the capital earlier this year.
In One Off, he plays Shepherd - based upon himself - with three other actors as fellow inmates in the drama, a theatre co-production involving Live, which brings him back to his home city - where his face is prominently featured on promotional posters.
The theatre is directly across the road from Newcastle Crown Court and he finds it incredible to think that he'll be taking to the stage for the play's November 10-26 run just a stone's throw from where he received his three-year sentence all those years ago.
"It's surreal," he says. "I can't describe how fortunate and grateful I am to be in this position." He'd appeared at the court several times, and at magistrates courts in the area before that. It was a culmination of years of difficulties he'd had growing up in a family with a long history of drink and drug problems.
He recalls his grandad as a hard-drinking Irishman who beat his gran and remembers the visits to hospital to see her. He maintains a good relationship with his mam and also now his dad who he says had problems too. Ric's own issues started early, at around the age of eight or nine.
"Then from about 12 things began to get crazy," he says. "I started getting arrested for foolish things." He recalls taking a car and getting into a pub fight with someone from school.
The family had moved to Woolsington, with Ric attending Ponteland High School, and he says: "My teenage years are a blur - amphetamines, alcohol, ecstasy, eventually cocaine." He'd bunk off school to drink cider and remembers a meeting with a child psychologist.
"I was a difficult kid," he says. "There was so much chaos around me." He accepts blame for his behaviour and doesn't complain about the general lack of support or how he was dealt with.
He even credits the judge's three-year sentence with saving his life. He was sentenced to a year on each of two drugs possession charges and one for intent to supply. Up until he was around 18 he'd looked upon his many magistrates' court appearances as being "a bit of a lark".
Reaching the age to be dealt with as an adult proved a very different kettle of fish, he says. "I absolutely deserved what I got. I think I was one of those people who had to have that experience.
"It did save my life because I wasn't going anywhere good." His time inside had taken in Castington and Deerbolt young offenders' institutions and he only ended up in Durham when he was deemed to have broken parole during a release "on tag".
He is adamant he hadn't, citing issues over a signal failure, and he found the prison experience horrendous. He witnessed vicious attacks there with home-made weapons. "I say now that if I owned Durham and I owned hell, I would rent out Durham and live in hell."
During his spells inside he got into fights, everybody did he says, and one day when sent to solitary confinement for an attack, he was offered a Bible which he declined. On the spur of the moment he asked for a dictionary instead.
And so began a self-education. "I started reading from 'A'," he says. He reached 'M' before his release and afterwards carried on reading.
Life outside was beset with difficulties. Problems continued to dog him and although he kept finding jobs he also kept getting sacked once employers discovered his full record. He worked in Dubai for a spell where he seemed to have it good but he wasn't fulfilled.
It was only when he asked himself what he would choose to do if he had only a short time to live that he came up with the answer of performing arts - an interest he'd had as a child. Having found his purpose in life has still meant a difficult journey, affected by mental health lows.
"Drugs and alcohol were my best friend and my worst enemy," he says now. But when he got to 34 he "knew this wasn't working for me" and he cites the exact date of the start of his recovery: March 15, 2017.
He remembers the previous New Year's Eve when he'd gone out, all dressed up, and ended the night in a police station cell. "I felt as low then as I ever can remember," he remembers.
When he got out the next day, he considered drinking to forget about it. But then: "I thought 'I'm going to kill myself. Maybe my life is this - maybe I just can't get out of this'.
"I made an agreement with myself - I'd give myself a year to do every single thing I was told to do". Then after a year, if he still hadn't changed his life, "I could check out".
He adds: "So I did." He sought help, got a sponsor, attended workshops and did everything he was told. And his recovery ended more than 20 years of drink and drugs, spanning the ages of 12 to 35.
For his elder brother Joe - who also had turned to acting and appeared in the likes of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and Billy Elliott - there was to be a tragic ending, when he died in 2019 after years of his own drink and drugs problems.
Ric now has been clean for five years. His wide book-reading has included Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl who wrote words which resonate most with him. It's a quote about the realisation, during the height of his suffering, that there's a space between its "stimulus and response" that allows freedom to choose that response.
"I thought if he can go through that, I can get through this. I can choose what I feel," says Rik, whose own command of language continues to get him noticed. While he only started writing around 2018, his work has attracted huge interest and he has ideas next for a relationship-based drama.
He's fully focused and remains grateful to those who have helped him. And he is in a good place: he met his partner during an acting job and they've been together now for three years.
One Off might go into prisons, he thinks, where he is always willing to share his story to spread hope and positivity to others. Other projects, which he can't yet reveal, are in the pipeline and involve TV, film and a well-known actor.
"I feel very, very blessed," he says, as the interview ends and he prepares to go into rehearsals: "I feel like I'm at the beginning of something ... I feel it in my gut, and spirit and bones. Something big is about to happen!"
Live Theatre says tickets are selling fast for One Off, which is a co-production between Live, Paines Plough and Synergy Theatre Project: see here.
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