For the last few years, James has been at work on his book Malignant Heroes: The Art of the Horror Actor. It is an exploration of thirteen key actors in classic horror cinema, ranging from Conrad Veidt and Lon Chaney to Christopher Lee and Barbara Steele. Until its completion, readers will have to content themselves with James's appearances on The Evolution of Horror and occasional bits of film-writing.
Much of James's writing has taken the form of the one-man play. His Frankenstein's Creature - a solo reimagining of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - debuted at prestigious new-writing venue Theatre503. It became a feature film in 2018, in honour of the novel's bicentenary, and premiered at Cineworld Leicester Square as part of FrightFest. It can currently be downloaded online, with a commentary track from James.
More recently, James appeared at the London Horror Festival in Irving Undead, his one-man resurrection of Victorian actor and Dracula inspiration Henry Irving. This followed on from the play's pre-pandemic showings at York Medical Society in 2019. James hopes to incarnate Irving until he drops - and he's always open to fresh staging offers.
James is also a teller of ghost stories. James's Ghost Stories for Christmas - his adaptations of A Christmas Carol, The Chimes and The Haunted Man - have made annual appearances at London's Charles Dickens Museum since 2017. During the pandemic, James became a regular reader for The York Ghost Merchants, with whom he streamed his versions of M. R. James's 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad' and The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral as well as Dickens's A Christmas Carol and The Signal-Man. James's site-specific Winter Gothic (St Martin-cum-Gregory's Church) inhabited much the same territory, dovetailing Victorian theatrical warhorse The Bells with tales by Edgar Allan Poe, M. R. James and Thomas Hood.
James's other theatre-writing includes his West End vehicle Sikes & Nancy (Trafalgar Studios) and Scrooge & Marley (Waterloo East Theatre), a raucous two-man Christmas Carol with comic genius George Fouracres.
On three occasions - and for no clear reason - James has also tinkered with an opera libretto: devising on a prodigal scale for The Pantheon of Electric Beasties (SET, Amsterdam), fashioning monologues for In the Penal Colony (Arts Theatre, West End) and hatching Frosch business for Die Fledermaus (West Road Concert Hall).
Much of James's writing has taken the form of the one-man play. His Frankenstein's Creature - a solo reimagining of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - debuted at prestigious new-writing venue Theatre503. It became a feature film in 2018, in honour of the novel's bicentenary, and premiered at Cineworld Leicester Square as part of FrightFest. It can currently be downloaded online, with a commentary track from James.
More recently, James appeared at the London Horror Festival in Irving Undead, his one-man resurrection of Victorian actor and Dracula inspiration Henry Irving. This followed on from the play's pre-pandemic showings at York Medical Society in 2019. James hopes to incarnate Irving until he drops - and he's always open to fresh staging offers.
James is also a teller of ghost stories. James's Ghost Stories for Christmas - his adaptations of A Christmas Carol, The Chimes and The Haunted Man - have made annual appearances at London's Charles Dickens Museum since 2017. During the pandemic, James became a regular reader for The York Ghost Merchants, with whom he streamed his versions of M. R. James's 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad' and The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral as well as Dickens's A Christmas Carol and The Signal-Man. James's site-specific Winter Gothic (St Martin-cum-Gregory's Church) inhabited much the same territory, dovetailing Victorian theatrical warhorse The Bells with tales by Edgar Allan Poe, M. R. James and Thomas Hood.
James's other theatre-writing includes his West End vehicle Sikes & Nancy (Trafalgar Studios) and Scrooge & Marley (Waterloo East Theatre), a raucous two-man Christmas Carol with comic genius George Fouracres.
On three occasions - and for no clear reason - James has also tinkered with an opera libretto: devising on a prodigal scale for The Pantheon of Electric Beasties (SET, Amsterdam), fashioning monologues for In the Penal Colony (Arts Theatre, West End) and hatching Frosch business for Die Fledermaus (West Road Concert Hall).