Clive on Incarnations and Forms of Heaven
"I think what happened in that period was that I got very certain of what I wanted to do, very focused on what I wanted to do, which meant when the 'Books of Blood' came out, with no fiction published anywhere else before in magazine form or anything, it was a coup. It wasn't planned to be a coup. Maybe my editors at Sphere knew that it would be, I certainly wasn't aware it would. But it turned out to be a more definitive statement than I think I realised it was, and I think that was a direct consequence of my having spent a lot of time working doing stuff like 'Frankenstein in Love', 'The History of the Devil', 'The Secret Life of Cartoons', pieces which in very different kinds of ways mapped out the kind of territory that I'm now beginning, in a different medium, to examine and explore."
Babel's Child
By Mark Salisbury, Fear, No 2, Sept/Oct 1988
"Storytelling has always been for me a process of putting on skins; of living lives and dying deaths that belong to someone else. And the more unlike me I look with these borrowed faces, the more interested I am to see the world through their eyes. The thrill of living for a little time as a visionary painter like Goya, or as the Devil, or - as in Frankenstein in Love - a murdered fan-dancer blithely awaiting the end of the world, brings me back to my desk in the certain knowledge that I am venturing where my daily life would never take me. I am, if you will, addicted to incarnation."
The Painter, The Creature and The Father of Lies: an Introduction
Introduction to Incarnations, by Clive Barker, Los Angeles, 1995
"In the last two years, I've published through HarperPrism two collections of my plays. One is called "The Incarnation," and the other called "Forms of Heaven." At the beginning of these volumes, I invited theatre companies, whether amateur or professional, to mount these plays and present them to the public. I've offered the rights of this material for the princely sum of $1. The result has been a whole host of productions. In fact, one of the plays, the History of the Devil, is presently being performed in Portland. There are upcoming productions in New York, the Midwest, Chicago, Australia and Canada. I have no plans at present to write new plays. That's not because I've lost interest in the theatre; it's just a function of a very full schedule."
AOL Appearance
Transcript of on-line appearance, 18 August 1997 (online at http:/users.aol.com/midian0/transcripts/cb897.htm)
"Since the publication of the two collections of plays, Incarnations and Forms of Heaven I've been delighted that productions of the plays have sprung up all around the world. Right now, there are productions going on here in America and in Sweden, Germany, England, and Scotland ."
People Online Appearance
Transcript of on-line appearance, 30 July 1998
"I want to encourage people to read plays. In many communities productions of fine plays are just not available. And something as extraordinary as Tony Kushner's Angels in America comes across wonderfully well on the page. If I can turn a few of my readers on to getting some of these plays and playing them out in the space between their ears, it would be great."
Coming Out No Horror For Barker
By Wilder Penfield III, Toronto Sun, 17th August 1996
Clive's comments on the individual PlaysIncarnations, Forms of Heaven and other publications of the plays bibliography
Clive's further thoughts and work in the Memory, Prophecy and Fantasy series
