Writer and actor Nicholas Vince is famous for his portrayal of the Chatterer Cenobite in Hellraiser and Kinski in Nightbreed. He is about to head onto the stage for a one-man show entitled I Am Monsters!, which will be premiering at the London Horror Festival. We caught up with him to find out more…

STARBURST: Where did you fascination with monsters come from?

Nicholas Vince: Two sources: Doctor Who, I was four years old when the TV series started so I watched it from behind the sofa particularly Daleks but I knew by the age of five and a half, I was really entranced by the monsters on the programme, like the Zarbi, the giant ants. I can’t remember anything about the plot, but I remember making Zarbis out of cut offs of the pastry that because my mother was making. Then there was a book, the Golden Treasury of Myths and Legends that I read as an eight-year-old; I was fascinated with things like the Minotaur, Medusa, and the Sphinx; I vaguely remember the heroes’ names, but knew which monster they killed.

So what was the impetus to put this together into a stage show?

I’ve been telling all the stories about the makeup and so on, and the experience of making the films, which was a huge amount of fun. I just wanted to flesh out the background, and put it in a bit of social context. It’s also my personal story about being fascinated with monsters. I realised I was gay when I was 18 years old in the late ‘70s, and it wasn’t the easiest time to be gay. It got more challenging in the ‘80s with Thatcher; they were interesting times. I just wanted to share my love of monsters, I think that monsters are fun.

And they do say a lot about society today, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of a correlation there.

Yeah, absolutely.

So how did you manage to condense your whole life in to an hour?

[Laughs] With huge difficulty! There’s going to be a Q&A at the end, so I’ve got to learn about 50 minutes of me talking. When I did the first read-through, it was about an hour and 20 minutes, so it needs working on! I think it’s just concentrating on the points; I want it be about bringing home what’s important to me and make it an entertaining evening. I’m incredibly fortunate that Clive [Barker] asked me to be in Hellraiser, and then Hellbound and Nightbreed. It’s not going to be my long life! [Laughs] That would be a very long show!

Is there a structure to the show or is it more free flowing?

We’re still working on that at the moment. I’m working with a director and they keep coming up with good ideas: let’s try this, let’s do it like this. We started off kind of: ‘I was born, I fell in love with monsters, etc…’ We said that’s ok, but it’s not as interesting, so now it’s more weaving the story of making Hellraiser and then in flashback relating that to growing up and the monsters I’ve encountered and so on. There are a couple of biographical pieces in there as well. There have been times in my life when I’ve been made up to be a monster, but I’ve done things wrong in my life. Things I regret. It’s not all isn’t life lovely… there is fun, but there’s a little bit of darkness in there as well.

You have to have the light and shade.

Yeah, and I think I want to say to anybody who’s going through what I went through that it’s okay. It does get better, it’s true. There have been times in my life when I have been completely lost and not known what the hell was going on and I look back now and think ‘yeah, I’m okay’. I’ve been very lucky. From difficult times really interesting fruits can grow.

You did a couple of storybooks about monsters, did that influence you to to do this?

There’s been a couple of things. I’ve been the patron of the London Horror Festival since 2016, and I’ve been involved in it since 2013. I’ve watched a lot of their shows. I love horror theatre; there’s something very immediate it; it’s a completely different experience to being in a cinema. I was inspired by watching these people, but I’m not intending to terrify people as much as I have been in these shows! [Laughs] In terms of the books, you’re right. I’ve written short stories, and Hellraiser and Nightbreed comics back in the ‘90s. I was lucky enough to bring Clive’s characters from Nightbreed bring them back into the comics that Marvel did. The title of my first collection of short stories is What Monsters Do – the subtitle was ‘it is not our flesh but our acts which make us monsters’. Clive’s Nightbreed is about people who are strange, who are wonderful and human beings want to destroy that, because they’re different.

And very similar to the way homosexuals were treated; they were treated as monsters at one time…

Oh god, yes! When I was doing the research, a part of the show was very difficult to write – I went back to the Thatcher years, with Section 28, and there were horrible, horrible things said about gays that I found really distressing reading and listening to what politicians were prepared to say. You can see today that gay rights has come on leaps and bounds but the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

A lot of what is wrong in the world is because people are scared. We saw it in the financial crash. Horrendous things were done to people in terms of losing their homes, jobs and job security. We’ve now got it that profit is everything and zero hour contracts. People are treated appallingly in the workplace. This is because power is moving towards the few rather than the many. We’ve got some tough times at the moment. You can see what happened during the last war that my parents were part of, a lot was being fought for, and you can see what was done then and how easy it is to exploit people’s fear of a group. The people who scare me the most are the bombasts who create monsters for their followers to fear.

Absolutely.

I was talking to Clive Barker about the show and he said, “It’s not that the demon’s different. It’s that difference is the demon”. We don’t handle different well. It seems we can only feel safe by oppressing another group. Those are the things that worry me.

Will there be any performances elsewhere?

We’re talking about that, I’m really hoping there will be. Either in this country or in the US. There are conversations already taking place. So Yeah, so if all goes well, that is the definite plan. It won’t just end as part of the London Horror Festival, I hope to take the show out on tour to various parts of the country and abroad.

So could it be performed at conventions and the like then?

Yes – I deliberately designed it so that it doesn’t require technical things. At the end of the day is making on stage telling stories and chatting with people. I was talking to an actor friend of mine and he said, “You’ll be fine, you’ve just got some people in your front room and you’re telling stories – that’s all it is”. I like that idea!

Nicholas Vince will be performing I Am Monsters! at the Pleasance Theatre in London as part of the London Horror Festival on October 8th to 10th at 7pm. For more information and to book tickets, head here.