Bold Girls E-Book

Rona Munro

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: NHB Modern Plays
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 107

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

It's 1991 in West Belfast. With their husbands either locked up or killed, Marie, Cassie and Nora are just trying to get on with their lives, despite the bombs, burning buses and soldiers trampling the flower beds. Life must go on – after all, there's still laundry to do and kids to feed. But when a mysterious young woman turns up on Marie's doorstep and disrupts their girls' night out, the devastating revelations which ensue will shatter dreams and threaten their friendship irrevocably. Sharply funny, moving, yet never shying from the harsh realities of life during the Troubles, Bold Girls is a celebration of women's strength under siege. It was first performed by 7:84 Scottish People's Theatre at Cumbernauld Theatre in 1990 and on tour. The play announced Rona Munro as one of the best playwrights of her generation, winning her the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for 1990-91. This new edition was published alongside the revival at Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, in June 2018.

Leseprobe

Rona Munro

BOLD GIRLS

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Original Production

Bold Girls: Then and Now

Dedication

Characters

Bold Girls

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Bold Girls was performed at Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, on 21 June 2018, with the following cast:

DEIRDRE

Lydea Perkins

MARIE

Sarah Kempton

NORA

Christine Entwisle

CASSIE

Alice Imelda

West Belfast, 1991.

Director

Bobby Brook

Designer

Louie Whitemore

Lighting Designer

Tim Mascall

Composer & Sound Designer

Jon Nicholls

Associate Director

Gabriella Bird

Dialect Coach

Charmian Hoare

Fight Director

Peter Macqueen

Casting Director

Sue Scott Davison

Costume Supervisor

Claire Nicolas

Company Stage Manager

Becky Saville

Deputy Stage Manager

Charlotte Briggs

Assistant Stage Manager

Sarah Marsland

Scenery built by

Top Show

Bold Girls was commissioned by 7:84 Scottish People’s Theatre and first performed at Cumbernauld Theatre, Strathclyde, on 27 September 1990 with the following cast:

DEIRDRE

Andrea Irvine

MARIE

Paula Hamilton

NORA

Joyce McBrinn

CASSIE

Julia Dearden

Director

Lynne Parker

Designer

Geoff Rose

Lighting Designer

Stephen McManus

Music

Debra Salem

This production subsequently toured during October and November 1990 to Glasgow, Stirling, Lochgelly, Greenock, Musselburgh, Blairgowrie, Dundee, Govan, Dumbarton, Kirkintilloch, Ayr, Edinburgh, Paisley, Belfast, Kilmamock and Selkirk

Bold Girls: Then and Nowby Neil Cooper, theatre critic of The Herald Scotland

Rona Munro’s Bold Girls is set in Belfast during The Troubles, and focuses on three women whose husbands are either in prison or have been killed in the crossfire of the conflict. It was something of a rarity when first staged at the Cumbernauld Theatre in 1991 in that it humanised the still ongoing situation in Northern Ireland without polemic.

‘It’s kind of odd,’ said Munro. ‘A bit of me doesn’t even remember who I was when I wrote it. It’s also odd looking at it now, because it’s looking at a piece of history that happened in my lifetime.’

She added that David Hayman, then director of 7:84 Scotland, wanted to commission someone to write something about women in Ireland and she worked on it while leading drama workshops with women in West Belfast.

‘I think everyone expected me to study the history of all that, and to present it as some kind of drama documentary. I realised that I didn’t want to do a play about two hundred years of women’s experience in Ireland. There were all these things happening around me, and listening to these women, there was something so alive about their day-to-day experiences of living in Ireland at that time.

‘One of the things not being reported at the time was how young people were being affected, not just by the war that was going on, but by the huge level of unemployment as well. There was no access to any kinds of social services; people were living in this extreme poverty, and young people in particular were living in this wasteland.’

Dramatising what was happening in such a volatile community was one thing, but taking the play to a still divided Belfast was potentially asking for trouble.

‘It had a mixed response,’ said Munro. ‘The women were fine with it, but the men who came to see it on the whole were a bit put out. To talk about allegiance to one side of the war or another in a play in that political climate was quite rare, I think, but at that time no one was prepared to stand up for the rights of these people apart from the IRA. There was absolutely no one else on these people’s side. At the same time, to say anything critical of certain situations was not welcome.’

Whether regarded as brave or foolhardy, it was something Munro felt she had to say. ‘I was at an age and a stage in my writing career that I wanted to do and say what matters. Some of the consequences of that were a bit of a surprise, especially when the play was put on the school curriculum. There were some responses saying in very robust terms that it wasn’t welcome.’

Bold Girls arrived at a crucial time in the history of female self-determination. Throughout the 1980s, women’s voices came increasingly to the fore in political struggle, be it through those manning the barricades where nuclear weapons were stored at Greenham Common and Faslane, or else forming support groups during the miners’ strike. While receiving less recognition, something similar was going on among the women of West Belfast.

‘It was a time when women’s experiences in all political struggles was seen as support workers. Only in subsequent decades has that changed and the importance of women’s contributions been recognised in terms of giving those political struggles a longevity. What happens when communities find themselves in extreme situations, whether that’s war or poverty, there’s a tendency for male and female roles to be reversed.’

Although she had been working as a professional playwright for a decade prior to Bold Girls, the play marked something of a turning point for Munro.‘I think it was the first play where I felt like I knew what I was doing. It felt like a solid piece of work, and was the one that broke through in as much as it allowed me to establish myself as a working playwright.’

The world has changed since Bold Girls first appeared. The Troubles are no longer taboo in drama, and Munro no longer attracts any objections to the play.

‘That’s partly because I’m not a very public writer. I don’t do Twitter or Facebook, and I don’t know how some of my colleagues have the guts to have people tell you what they think of your work in that way. But attitudes have changed as well. Even if some people still do have sectarian views, it’s not acceptable to voice them any more.

‘It’s a story about women’s experience and in a way the political background of the play is not as important as the fact that what these four women are going through is universal.’

This is an edited version of an interview that first appeared in The Herald Scotland in January 2018.

For Pat

Characters

DEIRDRE

MARIE

NORA

CASSIE

Scene One

MARIE’s house.

It is irons and ironing boards and piles of clothes waiting to be smoothed, socks and pegs and damp sheets waiting for a break in the Belfast drizzle for the line; it’s toys in pieces and toys that are just cardboard boxes and toys that are new and gleaming and flashing with lights and have swallowed up the year’s savings. It’s pots and pans and steam and the kettle always hot for tea; it’s furniture that’s bald with age and a hearth in front of the coal fire that’s gleaming clean. At the moment it’s empty, an unnatural, expectant emptiness that suggests this room is never deserted; it’s too stuffed with human bits and pieces, all the clutter of housework and life. There is a small picture of the Virgin on one wall, a large grainy blow-up photo of a smiling young man on the other, he has a seventies haircut and moustache. DEIRDRE is not in this room, she’s crouching on all-fours on her own talking out of darkness in which only her face is visible.

DEIRDRE moves from all-fours.

DEIRDRE. The sun is going down behind the hills, the sky is grey. There’s hills at the back there, green. I can’t hardly see them because the stones between here and there are grey, the street is grey. Somewhere a bird is singing and falling in the sky. I hear the ice-cream van and the traffic and the helicopter overhead.

Lights off on DEIRDRE.

MARIE bursts into the room with her arms laden with four packets of crisps, two of Silk Cut and a packet of chocolate biscuits. Drops one of the crisps, tuts in exasperation, looks at it, shouts back out the door.

MARIE. Mickey! Mickey, were you wanting smoky bacon?… Well this is salt and vinegar… well, why did you not say? Away you and swap this… Catch now. (Hurls the bag.) No you cannot… No… because you’ll not eat your tea if you do. Mickey, pick up those crisps and don’t be so bold.

MARIE comes back into the room and starts two jobs simultaneously.

First she puts the crisps, etc., away, then she fills a pan with water and throws it on the stove; she starts sorting her dry washing into what needs ironing and what doesn’t; she sorts a few items then starts peeling potatoes; all her movements have a frenetic efficiency.

NORA comes in with a pile of damp sheets.

NORA. Is that the last of them, Marie?

MARIE. Just the towels… Oh, Nora, you didn’t need to carry that over, wee Michael was coming to get them.

NORA. Och you’re alright. These towels is it?

MARIE. That’s them.

NORA. This’ll need to be the last, I’ve a load of my own to get in.

MARIE. Oh here, Nora, leave them then!

NORA. No, no, we’re best all getting our wash done while it’s dry. We’ll wait long enough to see the sun again.

CASSIE sticks her head round the door.

CASSIE. Can I ask you a personal question, Marie?

NORA. Have you left that machine on, Cassie?

CASSIE. Do you have a pair of red knickers?

MARIE. I think I do, yes.

CASSIE. With wee black cats, with wee balloons coming out their mouths saying ‘Hug me, I’m cuddly’?

MARIE (stops peeling potatoes briefly, gives CASSIE a severe look). They were in a pack of three for ninety-nine pee.

NORA. You see if you leave it, it just boils over, you know that, Cassie.

CASSIE. And did you put those knickers in the wash you just gave my mother?

NORA. It’s because that powder isn’t really biological, it’s something else altogether.

MARIE. What’s happened to them?

NORA. I think it’s for dishwashers. But it was in bulk, cheap, you know? I got a load of it at the club last month, awful nice young man, do you know that Dooley boy?

CASSIE. And did my mummy just drop those bright-red knickers with their wee cats, right in the middle of the road, right by the ice-cream van as she was coming across from our house to yours?

NORA. Did I what?

MARIE. Oh no! (Increases the pace of her peeling.)

NORA. Cassie, will you get back over the road and see to that machine before the foam’s coming down the step to greet us.

MARIE. Where are they?

CASSIE. At the top of the lamp post, I didn’t know wee Colm could climb like that, he’s only nine.

NORA. Och I’ll do it myself. (Moves to exit with a heap of towels.)

MARIE. Hold on, Nora, I’m coming too.

CASSIE. I wouldn’t. After what’s been said about those knickers I’d just leave them alone, pretend you never saw them in your life.

NORA. All my lino’s curled after the last time. I’ll never find a colour like that again.

NORA exits.

CASSIE. And did you know your wee Michael’s just swapped a packet of salt and vinegar crisps for a wee plastic cup full of raspberry ice-cream syrup?

MARIE (erupting towards the door). MICKEY!

CASSIE. I’ll get him. (Calling off.) Mickey, come here… ’Cause I want you.

MARIE finishes the potatoes, dives into the ironing again.

MARIE. He doesn’t just drink it, he wears the stuff.

CASSIE (talking off). Give me that cup now.

MARIE. In his hair and everything.

CASSIE (off). Because it’s poison.

MARIE. Then he won’t eat his tea and what he does eat comes straight back up again.

CASSIE (off). I am an expert on poison, a world expert, and I’m telling you that stuff will kill you. I do know. I took a GCSE in identifying poisons.

MARIE. Threw his hamburger clear across the room last time. Frightened the life out of his Auntie Brenda.

CASSIE (off). It gets your intestines and eats them away till they just shrivel up like worms. It’s worse than whiskey.

MARIE. I wouldn’t mind but he doesn’t even like the taste, he just likes being sick.

CASSIE (off). I’ll tell you what happens to all those men that drink whiskey and all those wee boys that drink raspberry ice-cream syrup; their intestines get eaten away and their stomachs get eaten away and all the other bits inside just shrivel up and die. Then they’ve no insides left at all and all they can do is sit in front of the television all day and cough and shout for cups and cups and cups of tea because that’s the only thing that can fill up their awful, empty, shrivelled insides… Yes just like him… and him as well, so will you give me that cup? That’s a good boy.

CASSIE