Douglas tells sparky stories from the department of Births, Deaths and Marriages.  Stories of commitment, loneliness, romance and loss.  His plays are empathetic and soulful.  They're often comic.  And broken hearted.

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Despite his best intentions, there are recurring themes: sacrifice, betrayal, exclusion, grief; our responsibility to animals and the natural world; long-term relationships; race, class, control; booze, bands and aspiration.   

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His central characters tend to share a hope of redemption.  There’s a desire for renewal and rebirth. 

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His early work came from his small-town upbringing in Girvan, Ayrshire and was written for younger audiences, with characters in their teens and early twenties.  Now most of his characters are in their late forties, living in cities, dealing with the blurred shapes and sharp edges of the adult world.

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He writes for all scales: from tight studio dramas to shows with casts of over forty...from the books of mainstage musicals to one-person monologues.

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His plays have zesty, idiosyncratic set-ups, but they’re always easy to grasp and audience friendly.  They’re steeped in popular culture, particularly music.  The comedy dances between the urbane and the happily vulgar. 

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The plays exist in a very recognizable world – usually Scotland, usually right now – and the characters tend to come from that no-man’s land between the working class and the lower middle class. 

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But just as often the texts have a magical, dreamlike inner life which lift them into a much stranger, more overtly theatrical form. 

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Or, as one perceptive wiseass in a High School once said: “they start off funny and real…but they end up sad and weird”.

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Douglas is a passionate supporter of new theatre.  He has taught playwriting in schools, theatres and universities.  He has been a dramaturg on countless productions and a friend and mentor to a generation of playwrights and directors. 

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He lives in Glasgow with his wife and two daughters.