Brute E-Book

Izzy Tennyson

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

Seitenzahl: 57

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The true story of a rather twisted schoolgirl. Poppy's just started at an all-girls state school in a provincial English town, where there are rules with no logic, sadistic jokes that aren't actually funny, and the most sinister games played out of boredom. Izzy Tennyson's solo show Brute won the 2015 IdeasTap Underbelly Award, had a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and transferred to Soho Theatre with Damsel Productions in 2016.

Leseprobe

Izzy Tennyson

BRUTE

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Original Production

Dedication

Brute

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Brute was first performed by Izzy Tennyson and directed by Ellie Browning at Underbelly, Edinburgh, as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, on 6 August 2015. It transferred to Soho Theatre in March 2016, directed by Hannah Hauer-King. This script is the version performed at Soho.

For Pipps

With special thanks toHannah, Jules, Penny, Kitty and my dad, Peter

Characters

POPPY

Voices of

MR GOODMANCHLOEDANIEMILYWOMANMUM

Scene One

POPPY enters with school tie, jumper, and backpack.

POPPY. I keep forgetting I have dogs. You know? It’s weird, because I don’t really see the point of having them. Not any more. My mum sat down and explained to me, that there is a possibility, because they’re old, that they might die on the plane. In the boxes. I imagine them arriving to the house and we open the box that they were packaged in and there are just dead dogs in there. But I find it funny, because it would be so tragic. You know? I don’t know if it would just be easier if we just sort of just left them there. It was an option, you know, to leave them. Planes cause serious stress to animals. But my mum wouldn’t have that, because she really loves those dogs. She said it was selfish really, on her part. But you want them too don’t you? And I said yeah I do, I do want them. (Pause.) The thing is we might have killed them, you know.

POPPY starts getting dressed for school.

You know I don’t know one boy in England. I don’t know one boy in the whole of England. Not one. I used to be only with boys in Spain, at Newtons, my school. My mum loved that. Poppy and her boys. She used to give us lifts to football. I loved football, I was the only girl who played, and I used to be picked last, for the teams that is, but then, when I got better, I was actually really, really good, I got picked third. And that’s because you have to pick your strikers first, then defence. Mum said maybe Poppy, maybe that’s why you’re not having a good time at the moment, because you’ve always gotten on better with boys. Always…

Pause.

I’ve got a group now, who were in my form group, they were there all along. I had to sit with Natalie Danes and Becca Carr for a bit. They sat outside the science labs by the massive bins. But I just stopped meeting them, and they haven’t said anything. No I’m with Danielle, well Dani, who actually is the one who showed me around. On the first day.

I ignore Kathleen on the walk up for a while and being with Dani, made that easier. It’s really horrible but sometimes you just can’t be nice to people, or they just like don’t leave you alone. I really hate the walk to school. We have to walk up to Somerfields, then up a massive hill of houses. It’s bit like a toy town really, the houses are all identical and really close together. And they’re all little cubes. Dani actually lives in one of them, so it would only take her three minutes to get to school if her mum didn’t make her walk her young brother and sister to nursery. My house wasn’t bad, compared to the toy houses, well it was okay. English houses are generally smaller than the ones in Spain. Dani always stops in the little corner shop to buy sweets before school, which Mum thinks is absolutely disgusting.

So it’s fine. Dani’s proper nice though, she’s a bit like the gentle giant. She’s like massive, and everything is a bit muddled, she’s like a jigsaw puzzle that hasn’t been put together properly. Everything is a bit out of proportion you know, like she’s got very broad shoulders and her boobs look like they’re too high up just under her collarbone, and really long legs so she towers over me. And her eyebrows are huge, like caterpillars, but her eyes are tiny and her mouth is really long. I wonder if it’s all going to come together at some point, because it’s not right at the moment. She’s so strong, like once she pushed me, like joking and I proper flew across the playground.

She likes David Beckham, and that’s how we got talking about it. I once got into a detention because I touched David Beckham’s car. He came to have a look at the school in Spain, to take his kids there, when he was playing in Real Madrid, and I was waiting by the road outside to get picked up and his car was parked there and my headmaster came out because I was standing next to it, and he thought I was waiting for Beckham, when I was just waiting for my mum.

And I got a detention. I was leaning against the car, you see. Actually this didn’t happen to me it happened to my older sister but I tell it like it happened to me anyway. People like the story. She tells it better than me because she was actually there. So I sit with them now. Dani’s lot, well it’s more like Chloe’s lot. I’m with Chloe’s lot now.

A school bell rings. POPPY goes to sit at a desk.

I think the only reason Chloe actually likes me, is because I am as stupid as she is. We’re both in set seven for everything, Which means we’re fucking thick as shit. Set seven is for the proper pikeys, like Jasmin Smith. Jasmin Smith was known for dipping tampons in Ribena and throwing them at people. She once tried to make me chew one of them and reassured me that I did in fact really want to chew the tampon because ‘I was a fucking lesbo, and I fucking love it.’ When she didn’t have tampons she would colour in sanitary towels with a red pen, you could normally hear her aggressively scribbling while she did this in the back of the room where she always sat, and then you would sit there hoping it won’t be your hair she decides to stick it in. She always sat with Claudia, this ginger girl whose skirt was so short her arse cheeks would hang out the back of it. She didn’t say anything, she just giggled. At the front there were the emo comic fan girls, that just drew things. Weird angels and dying flowers – (Pause.