A Song for Ella Grey (NHB Modern Plays) E-Book

David Almond

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 119

Beschreibung

Grey and her friends are ordinary kids from ordinary families in an ordinary world. They fall in and out of love, play music, stare at the stars, yearn for excitement, and have parties on the beautiful beaches of Northumberland. One day a stranger – a musician called Orpheus – appears on the beach, entrancing them all, but particularly Ella. Where have they come from and what path will Ella follow? A Song for Ella Grey is a version of the myth of Orpheus that sings of the madness of youth, the ache of love, and the near-impossibility of grasping death. Zoe Cooper's stage adaptation of David Almond's award-winning novel was first produced in 2024 by Pilot Theatre, in association with Northern Stage and York Theatre Royal. This edition includes the full text of the play along with a range of teaching materials and resources designed to help educators bring the play to life for their students. Praise for the novel: 'Infused with lyricism and with the fire and oddness of adolescence. Fresh, involving and lucid, it is a song in itself and teens will find it fills them with poignant longing and joy' Telegraph 'The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is retold against a wild Northumbrian landscape: life, death, love and myths. Just wonderful' Bookseller 'Extraordinary' Metro 'Spell-binding& impossible to resist' Herald

Leseprobe

David Almond

A SONG FOR ELLA GREY

adapted for the stage by

Zoe Cooper

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Original Production

Director’s Note

Characters

A Song for Ella Grey

Resources

About the Authors

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

This adaptation of A Song for Ella Grey was first performed at Northern Stage, Newcastle, on 1 February 2024, produced by Pilot Theatre in association with Northern Stage and York Theatre Royal. The cast was as follows:

SAM

Amonik Melaco

ANGELINE

Beth Crame

ELLA GREY

Grace Long

JAY

Jonathan Iceton

CLAIRE

Olivia Onyehara

MUSICIAN

Zak Younger Banks

Director

Esther Richardson

Designer

Verity Quinn

Composer & Musical Director

Emily Levy

Lighting Designer

Chris Davey

Sound Designer

Adam P McCready

Video Designer

Si Cole

Movement Director

Ayesha Fazal

Assistant Director

Eliza Beth Stevens

Production Manager

Luke James

Casting Associate

Shannon David

Company Stage Manager

Sarah Goodyear

Deputy Stage Manager

Gabriela Oliver

Assistant Stage Manager

Lizzie Hayward

Technical Stage Manager

Miles Cruden Smith

Wardrobe Supervisor

Naomi Daley

Costume Assistant

Maddy Williamson

Relighter

David Phillips

Musicians (recorded)

Guitar, Bass

Mark Creswell

Drums, Recording, Production

Sam Hobbs

Clarinet, Saxophone

Richard Ormrod

Harp

Eleanor Turner

Viola

Aby Vulliamy

Pilot Theatre Staff

Artistic Director & Joint CEO

Esther Richardson

Executive Producer & Joint CEO

Amanda J Smith

Company Administrator

Sarah Rorke

Immersive Director & Head of Communications

Lucy Hammond

Associate Director

Oliver O’Shea

Digital Officer

Sam Johnson

Production Manager

Luke James

Finance Director

Helen Nakhwal

Filming Development Manager

Melanie Paris

For Pilot Theatre

Education Consultants

Carolyn Bradley and Anna Cantrell

National Press & PR

Duncan Clarke

Director’s Note

Esther Richardson

In 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic, I met the great David Almond to discuss Pilot making a stage version of his novel A Song for Ella Grey. As the UK went into lockdown, we had been securing the rights, discussing the live music that we knew would be essential to this production, and of course pondering the question of who would be an ideal adapter.

Cut to the end of that seismic year, when, with other touring companies, we were making our first tentative steps into outdoor work to bring some light and joy back into the world after a devastating year for theatre – I found myself working with brilliant Zoe Cooper for the first time. In fact, on another beautiful short storytelling piece, set in Newcastle, and also inspired by Greek myth.

Almost everything Pilot produces is a contemporary tale, with relatable young protagonists centre-stage, but it is something truly special to do this whilst also attempting to remake, or rewrite, a myth as old as time. Zoe’s wonderfully lyrical and moving adaptation of this beloved book set in the north-east – a modern classic in my opinion – has been an honour to commission, develop and present in a first production to our audiences.

Writing this note in 2024, it’s true that 2020 feels in many ways like a time from another world. A time we all had to make different individual and collective journeys into, through and out of a dark, scary and strange pandemic underworld. Now I reflect on it, there are very few plays for young people that explore how we actually process devastating loss and grief, and that is what we still urgently need to process as a whole society. So I’m very grateful that in the end we did have to wait to 2024 to fully realise this project. And I’m grateful to everyone, especially to Zoe, who came on the journey.

Characters

CLAIRE

ELLA

JAY

ANGELINE

SAM

The main characters are all aged seventeen or eighteen. Right on the cusp.

Setting

The story takes place in Newcastle and on the Northumberland coast.

Dialogue

When a character is telling the story speech is set out like this:

CLAIRE. So to begin.

When a character is speaking to another character within the story it is set out like this, with speech marks around the dialogue:

ELLA. ‘Claire. Are you awake?’

The main characters also perform as other people in the story. When a character is performing as another person within the story speech marks are used, and the secondary character’s name is indicated after the primary character’s name. Like this:

ANGELINE (as MRS GREY). ‘Your phone died I expect.’

A Note on Text

A forward slash (/) indicates the point at which a speaker is interrupted.

Words in square brackets indicate what is implied but not spoken.

Words in dialogue that are in brackets but not in italics are meant as asides, spoken to the audience.

A Note on Orpheus

There are five performers in this play. Claire, Ella, Angeline, Sam and Jay conjure Orpheus between them, they speak and sing Orpheus’ words. For this reason there should not be a sixth actor cast as Orpheus. However, you may choose to have offstage musicians to help strengthen the music.

A Note on Music and Song

Stage directions or dialogue in bold italics indicate where music or singing should or might occur.

For the original production the award-winning British singer and composer Emily Levy wrote and composed a beautiful set of songs, which were performed across the play. In any future productions you are invited either to invent your own musical landscape and score, or you can enquire about the possibility of using Emily’s work by contacting [email protected] in the first instance.

This ebook was created before the end of rehearsals and so may differ slightly from the play as performed.

Prologue

CLAIRE. So to begin. In the middle. In the hottest June on record. It felt like there was no breeze at all. The air completely still.

Chimes / bell / foghorn sounds as:

Only the wind chimed over the Velux in unison with a river bell rung on a turning tide and a foghorn groaned far out at sea.

ELLA. ‘Claire.’

CLAIRE. She said.

ELLA. ‘Are you awake?’

CLAIRE. And I, stupidly: ‘I thought you were asleep.’

ELLA. ‘No.’

CLAIRE. And she didn’t move. She didn’t move or turn from me in that moment, in my little attic room, in my too-small bed, wrapped in the soft-washed sheets that smelt of us. Us and all the sleepovers we had had, since we were six years old. So her next words were breathed into me:

ELLA. ‘It’s love, Claire.’

CLAIRE. And the next part:

ELLA. ‘I’ve been awake all night. Just thinking of them.’

CLAIRE. Because I’m the one who’s left behind. I’m the one to tell the tale. I knew them both. Knew how they lived and how she died. It didn’t happen long ago. I’m young, like them.

CLAIRE is briefly unsure if she can go on with this story / remembering ELLA. She pulls herself together.

(To the audience.) Like you. Can that be possible? Can you be both young and dead? I don’t have time to think of that. I’ll tell it fast and true.

ACT ONE

Scene One

CLAIRE. It is six months earlier.

JAY. January.

CLAIRE. On a bone-cold night, and we are all huddled together on a grassy slope…

ANGELINE. Outside a pub…

CLAIRE.…That runs down to the Ouseburn river.

JAY. The Cluny.

SAM.…That still wouldn’t serve we.

ANGELINE. Even though some of us had real ID.

SAM. And all of us were rising eighteen.

ANGELINE rises, swigging from a bottle of wine. She marches about, being MR KRAKATOA, our gang’s A-level English Literature teacher.

ANGELINE (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘Right, Year Thirteen, it is time… Time to start to listen up and write things down and hoard away all the knowledge I have generously bestowed on your adolescent heads. Because I have got to tell you… ‘

SAM (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘…Despite my easy-going nature…’

JAY (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘…which I know you have all come to relish in our last half-a-dozen orbits round the sun together…’

ANGELINE (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘That just six short months from now all this will reach boiling point.’

JAY (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘June.’

SAM (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘A levels.’

ELLA (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘The Big Reckoning.’

ANGELINE (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘The Great Sorting.’

SAM, ANGELINE and JAY (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘The boiling!’

ANGELINE (in an impression of MR KRAKATOA). ‘When you will be required to conjure arguments out of air, thin air! On John Donne’s “souls unbodied, bodies uncloth’d” and Milton’s account of the tempting of Eve.’

The wine continues to be passed round through the following:

CLAIRE. ‘Because Mr Krakatoa wouldn’t know any better…’

SAM (agreeing). ‘…he’s just a teacher…’

CLAIRE. ‘Because the exams he suddenly seems so obsessed with are not what is going to count in this next part of our lives anyway.’

ANGELINE. ‘Aye, mebbe not for you…’

CLAIRE. ‘Aye, because I don’t need a constellation of A-stars to be a poet, do I?’

CLAIRE swigs from the bottle.

‘Oh… The north. Why do we live in the frozen north where nothing ever happened? Why not Italy or Greece or somewhere else, where the sun beats down, the wine costs cents and stories start?’

JAY. ‘Oh but we do.’

SAM. ‘Eh?’

JAY. ‘We are sitting on the same mass of land I mean as those… because it was all part of the same supercontinent once, which was Pangea…’

SAM and CLAIRE groan, they have heard JAY’s lectures on geology before.

SAM. ‘Ladies and gentleman, Jay Blakeley, our very own budding geologist.’

Nevertheless JAY persists, raising his voice slightly…

JAY. ‘Which existed during the late Palaeozoic and early Mesozoic eras.’

SAM. ‘Alright, you’re not at Cambridge yet, pal…’

JAY. ‘Because it was drawn together from the earlier continental units of Gondwana, Euramerica and Siberia during the Carboniferous Period…’

SAM. ‘Fascinating.’

JAY. ‘Because it was this one huge continent drawn together from all those separate land masses…’ (Pointing at each of them as ANGELINE says the next bit.)

CLAIRE. And we, Jay, Ella, Angeline and Sam.

ANGELINE. And Claire.

JAY. ‘…fused into one huge mass.’

ANGELINE. Who had all been friends since long before English Literature A level.

JAY. Who had been close as kin since primary.

They have somehow all coalesced through the last bit to form one huddle of teenagers most solidly.

CLAIRE. And we were all. On that bone-cold night, like we said, fed up to the back teeth with the grim prophesies of teachers set on spoiling our fun, passing around a bottle of Tesco’s Finest Valpolicella, contemplating the idea of that huge and ancient continent, breath swirling round us.

SAM (to JAY). ‘Think you might be a bit pissed, mate.’

JAY. And we did all laugh.

CLAIRE. Only in that moment.

ANGELINE. On that bank.

CLAIRE. By our river, by the pub that wouldn’t serve us. When I was leaned back, my legs stretched out.

JAY. The mass of us all tucked together like that.

CLAIRE. Ella leaning back on me, our fingers interlaced.

A song, far away at first.

ANGELINE. That was when we first heard / it…

CLAIRE. When she heard it first:

ELLA. ‘What the hell is that?’

SAM. ‘Is what?’

ELLA. ‘Is that.’

JAY. ‘I can’t hear anything.’

ELLA. ‘That. Listen.’

CLAIRE. We listened.

ANGELINE. We heard something…

SAM. And then we didn’t.

CLAIRE. ‘There is something.’

SAM. ‘Aye, mebbe.’

CLAIRE. ‘It’s canny quiet though…’

SAM. ‘Mebbe there is something.’

ANGELINE. You jumping to agree with Claire, as usual, even though I am pretty sure you could hear nowt. But I was beginning to make something out: ‘That kind of singing or something?’

ELLA removes her hand from CLAIRE’s, moves away. CLAIRE watches her.

A song becomes a voice, but still no words.

ELLA. ‘Like singing.’

They all try to listen for a few moments as the voice gets a little clearer. Maybe there are snatches of words now, but nothing more.

The song starts to shift as it is described.

CLAIRE. But also like a mix-up of the water sounds…

SAM. The drunks…

ANGELINE. The air on our faces, bits of birdsong and traffic…

CLAIRE. Like all of those familiar things, but with a new note in them…

ANGELINE. And so that was why we did get up then and started searching for its source.

SAM. Inside the Stepney Stables, tethered horses stomping ice-slushed puddles.

ANGELINE. Down on the quayside, a busker bundled up, ‘The Blaydon Races’ on penny whistle rising to join the sound of it as two women with orange legs danced under a streetlight.

Echoing:

SAM. Under the echoing bridge, in front of a poster.

CLAIRE. That poster that always gave me the creeps.

ANGELINE. That stated clearly, in big letters:

CLAIRE and ANGELINE. ‘“Do not stop here, do not say Essalamus three times.”’

CLAIRE. ‘Essalamus Essalamus Essalmus!’

SAM rushes at CLAIRE and grabs her round the waist / tickles her.

SAM. ‘“You know what will happen!”’

Through the following, a song gets louder and louder. Any lyrics remain indistinct. Nothing to anchor it, it keeps shifting and changing.

CLAIRE. Us all searching the source of that sound. Until we all found ourselves drawn back together at the outpipe, our river spinning and spiralling and gurgling as it flowed out from beneath our city. Gushed metal bars of locked gates. Us all gazing at the bolts and massive padlocks, the rusted warning sign with skull-and-crossbones, arched tunnel beyond. Deep darkness and the song echoing out louder and louder.

JAY. And I did watch the dark silhouette of a skein of swans suddenly swoop down.

The shadow of a skein of swans swooping down, they all duck.

Rushed the water.

And then stopped.

The song stops.

CLAIRE. Nothing again.

ANGELINE. ‘God, remember how scary this place used to be.’

SAM. ‘Remember staring in, peeling our eyes to see who could see the furthest.’

CLAIRE. ‘Seeing all those fiends and monsters.’

SAM. ‘And all those rats that slithered out that time.’

CLAIRE. ‘Remember how we made masks and put on costumes.’

ELLA. ‘Remember when we told a whole tale that took place in those tunnels.’

CLAIRE. ‘Before we had the joy of stories sucked out of us.’