John Constable

John Hamilton Constable (born 22 July 1952) is an English playwright, poet, performer and activist, author of The Southwark Mysteries.

He is also known as John Crow, the urban shaman of Cross Bones.

Constable was born in Much Wenlock, Shropshire in 1952.

He was educated at Oswestry School (1963–69) and Queens' College, Cambridge (1970–73).

In the mid-1970s, he performed at David Medalla's Artists For Democracy.

From 1977-79, he lived in Japan and travelled widely in the Far East, and from 1980–82, toured Europe with the street theatre group Sheer Madness, playing Hamlet in the devised show Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits.

John Constable's first play, Black Mas, was inspired by a visit to the Trinidad Carnival in 1982.

It explores the adventures of two white British musicians visiting Trinidad for fresh inspiration and getting out of their depth under the heady influence of Carnival.

The Guardian's Robin Thornber wrote: "It's a powerful piece that works on many levels, using the exotic trappings of its setting to cast its spell, but probing incessantly into the murky depths of racial and sexual mythology."

The play, directed by Roland Rees for Foco Novo, opened at the New End Theatre, Hampstead followed by a UK tour.

Other early work includes The Fit Up (Nuffield Theatre Southampton) and The Complete Casanova (Proteus-Horshoe Theatre, Croydon Warehouse).

He was commissioned by RADA to write Hot Fondue, a contemporary play loosely based on Schnitzler's La Ronde, directed by Roland Rees14.

From 1984, following the production of Black Mas by Foco Novo he returned to live in London.

His plays included The Fit Up, Tulip Futures, Iceman and The False Hairpiece.

He also wrote children's plays, radio dramas, and dramatisations of Gormenghast and The Mosquito Coast for the David Glass Ensemble.

In 1986 he moved to The Borough, in Southwark, then a poor and much maligned part of south London.

The area had a profound influence on his work, which draws freely on its 2,000 year history and the far-reaching changes that saw it reinvented as prime real estate in the heart of London.

In the 1990s, having worked with physical theatre director David Glass on the devised show Bozo's Dead, he was commissioned to write the stage adaptation of Gormenghast for the David Glass Ensemble.

In Sicily in 1994 he met his companion Katharine Nicholls, a craftworker and community outreach worker.

In their activism and esoteric work at Crossbones and with outsiders, she also became known as Katy Kaos.

One of the poems in The Southwark Mysteries is entitled kateEkaos.

She stage-managed his solo shows and site-specific events, co-produced the epic productions of The Southwark Mysteries and created the original “Hand-Maid” limited edition of The Book of The Goose.

His 1994 play Tulip Futures concerned Tulip mania, the seventeenth century speculation on tulips which nearly bankrupt the Dutch economy.

Tulip Futures was nominated for the Peggy Ramsay Award.

Iceman is a black comedy about the war on drugs: an undercover policeman gets so deep into his cover, he winds up busting himself.

It was short-listed for the Verity Bargate Award and produced by Brute Farce at the White Bear Theatre, Kennington.

In 1995 he wrote and performed a solo show I Was An Alien Sex God.

This inaugurated a new phase of experimental writing which produced his best-known work, The Southwark Mysteries.

These began in 1996 as a cycle of mystical poems revealed to his shamanistic alter-ego, John Crow, by “The Goose”, who claimed to have been buried in the unconsecrated Cross Bones Graveyard.

The Winchester Geese were medieval sex workers in the Bankside brothels licensed by the Bishop of Winchester under Ordinances dating back to 1161.

The Halloween of Cross Bones, conducted annually from 1998 to 2010, ended with a candle-lit procession to the gates of Crossbones, the outcasts' burial ground.

He led a long campaign to protect the burial ground and to establish a garden of remembrance on the site.

The Southwark Mysteries grew from a poem cycle to a contemporary mystery play, first performed in Shakespeare's Globe and Southwark Cathedral on 23 April 2000.

From 2004 to 2012 he was artistic director of the community arts group Southwark Mysteries, conducting guided walks, workshops and site-specific performances inspired by the work.

A new production of The Southwark Mysteries was staged in Southwark Cathedral in 2010.

In November 2010 John Constable was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of London South Bank University for services to the arts and community: “… for his vision and imagination, for his deep commitment to our local area, for his work in reclaiming lost histories and, above all, for his belief in the transformative power of writing and drama... At Southwark's Civic Award Ceremony in May 2011, he received The Liberty of the Old Metropolitan Borough of Southwark.

In recognition of his work at Crossbones, and for the human rights of sex workers and other outsiders, Constable was named Campaigner of the Year at the 2011 Erotic Awards.

His Sha-Manic Plays, Gormenghast, The Southwark Mysteries and Secret Bankside – Walks In The Outlaw Borough are published by Oberon Books.

In 2014 Thin Man Press published Spark In The Dark, his first collection of poetry

In 2020 he moved to Glastonbury, drawing on his first year living in the town for his book 'Grail' (2022).