Inside/Outside E-Book

Various

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

Seitenzahl: 127

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Six short plays in two complementary programmes, exploring estrangement and loneliness, moving towards redemption and hope. Inside looks at the lives of three women forgotten by the world, but not by themselves. - Guidesky and I by Deborah Bruce - When the Daffodils by Joel Tan - Ursa Majorby Joe White Outside presents three stories of finding connection in the darkness and coming together after so long apart. - Two Billion Beats by Sonali Bhattacharyya - The Kiss by Zoe Cooper - Prodigal by Kalungi Ssebandeke The six plays were first performed at, and livestreamed from, the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, in March 2021.

Leseprobe

Inside

Outside

Six short plays by

SONALI BHATTACHARYYA

DEBORAH BRUCE

ZOE COOPER

KALUNGI SSEBANDEKE

JOEL TAN

JOE WHITE

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Introduction

INSIDE

Original Production Details

Guidesky and I by Deborah Bruce

When the Daffodils by Joel Tan

Ursa Major by Joe White

OUTSIDE

Original Production Details

Two Billion Beats by Sonali Bhattacharyya

The Kiss by Zoe Cooper

Prodigal by Kalungi Ssebandeke

Author Biographies

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Introduction

Guy Jones

As I write, the Orange Tree Theatre has been closed for a year. It’s time to switch the lights back on. Inside/Outside will be the first time we have told stories here since March 2020.

It feels important that we reopen with new plays – by writers who have been an important part of the Orange Tree’s story over the last few years, and to new writers who we are excited to introduce to audiences. I’ve been thinking back to how these playwrights came into our lives. Together, they tell a story about how the Orange Tree has made its name as a home for new plays.

Deborah Bruce’s The Distance was the first new play in artistic director Paul Miller’s inaugural season at the Orange Tree in 2014. I remember Paul sending it to me with that sense of glee – finding an excellent new play can be like finding treasure. I read it in a Costa Coffee in Finchley, and marvelled at how Deborah used the play to ask difficult questions about motherhood, with such humour. I replied to Paul immediately – we had to see if we could do it. We did, and it was an immediate success.

We met Zoe Cooper in the Attenborough Room at the theatre, where so many of our ideas start out, drinking tea from ugly cups. The team had fallen in love with Jess and Joe Forever in one of our script meetings, and we couldn’t wait to talk about it. Zoe’s plays tell stories of queer people with warmth and inclusivity, with actors turning out to the audience and welcoming them into their worlds. In both Jess and Joe Forever and Out of Water she is concerned by the world we are passing on to the next generation. The impact of the virus on young people is immeasurable, and so I’m glad that in Zoe’s play The Kiss, and in Sonali Bhattacharyya’s Two Billion Beats, we create the space to think about the world we want them to grow up in, and the role grown-ups might play in shaping that.

Both Sonali and Joe White are graduates of the OT’s Writers Collective programme. The Collective has been a key part of the theatre’s offer to the playwriting community: we meet in the rehearsal room amidst unwashed-up mugs from the day’s rehearsal, and spark collaborations and conversations as we explore new ideas for the theatre.

Sonali went on to be the OT’s Writer on Attachment through the Channel 4 Playwrights’ Scheme in 2018, and it was a treat to work with her during that year. As the world becomes a harder place to live, Sonali’s work combines political energy with optimism for the human spirit, and that is just what we need now.

After his time on the Collective, we produced Joe White’s play Mayfly, and the production remains a favourite amongst our audiences. The characters in Joe’s plays aren’t used to being given the microphone – lost souls in search of connection, often erased from the national story because of accidents of class or geography.

Kalungi Ssebandeke and Joel Tan are writers new to the Orange Tree. Kalungi came into our lives when he was cast in our production of Blood Knot in 2019. It was clear to everyone that here was a fantastic actor, and one day between a matinee and an evening show we sat down for a chat and he pushed a fascinating play about the boxer Bill Richmond across the table (or at least into my inbox).

I first heard about Joel when his epic and shape-shifting play Love in the Time of the Ancients was nominated for an award run by the tireless champions of new work, Papatango Theatre Company. Joel had been putting down roots in the London playwriting scene having arrived here from Singapore. He came in for a meeting at the Orange Tree shortly before the world shut down, and optimistic conversations about what we might be able to do evaporated. So it feels right that with Kalungi and Joel we can pick up where we left off, championing the work of new talent.

The threshold between the inside and the outside has felt particularly impermeable over this last year, as we have been asked to stay in our homes. We have also been particularly attuned to the way the shifting weather outside our windows has affected our ability to ride this storm: ‘Now the sun is here, I am all-powerful,’ said one of the directors to me during a script meeting a few weeks ago, with her face bathed in sunlight.

As we Zoomed one another during the winter lockdown at the end of 2020, ‘in’ and ‘out’ felt like an appropriate axis by which to examine the world we inhabit now, anticipating a time when our freedoms might return.

The Inside/Outside plays also remind us that we can’t take those freedoms for granted, and that the victims of this year are many. Homelessness is on the rise, loneliness is deadly, the monster of racism lurks in everyday interactions, and is far from being weeded out, the pandemic has put families and relationships under enormous strain and many of the inequalities we live with are written into the systems in which we are asked to participate.

But the plays also offer hope. Two strangers learn that they can help one another move forwards in Joe White’s Ursa Major, and in Zoe Cooper’s The Kiss, Lou is changed by the time she has lived through, but still committed to how she might pave the way for a new generation. Like Meg in Joel Tan’s play, we are looking forward to when the daffodils come, and we can once again tell one another stories, breathe the same air, embrace.

March 2021

Inside

Inside was first performed and livestreamed from the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, on 25 March 2021. The cast and creative team were as follows:

Guidesky and I DIANA

by Deborah Bruce Samantha Spiro

When the Daffodils MEG SAMIA

by Joel Tan Samantha Spiro Jessica Murrain

Ursa Major JAY CALLISTO

by Joe White Fisayo Akinade Sasha Winslow

DirectorDesignerLighting DesignerSound Designer & ComposerCastingCompany Stage ManagerStage Manager

Anna Himali Howard Shankho Chaudhuri Jessica Hung Han Yun Anna Clock Sarah Murray Jenny Skivens Caoimhe Regan

The

Guidesky and I

Deborah Bruce

Characters

DIANA, late fifties/early sixties

Young MAN

Older MAN

1.

DIANA has her coat on, a tote bag of piano sheet music over her shoulder, a large road atlas under her arm.She’s holding a fan heater and a flattened blue cat cave.

DIANA.

Dear Guidesky125,

The cat cave has arrived.

This IS NOT what I ordered.

I ordered a heather-grey merino-wool cat cave and I have received a blue synthetic thing in two – flimsy parts – with a, shoddily attached zip joining the two parts together.

You need to send me a REFUND IMMEDIATELY

please.

Yours Sincerely,

Diana Harris Ms.

Pause.

When will they reply, do we think? How long do these things take?

Can you get a refund straight back into your bank account if you paid for something on PayPal?

Maybe I should send an email to PayPal.

Such an idiot.

Why can’t I do things.

DIANA wants to put the cat cave down but doesn’t know where to put it.

She remembers the fan heater.

Oh. Now. Does this work?

She is looking around for a plug socket, she finds one and plugs it in.

It blows heat at her and smells bad.

Yes it does.

She lets it fan-heat for a few moments to make sure.

Good.

She unplugs it, picks it up.

She’s flustered.

FAO Guidesky125

Hello.

This is Diana Harris again. Just to amend my previous email.

I will also be taking this up with PayPal having looked at the comments on your website and realised that this is what you do! Take decent people’s money and send them something cheap and nasty when they ordered a – high quality product in good faith. Goodness me! What a – way to behave. I wonder if you feel ashamed of yourself?

Pause.

I demand a refund.

Of the full amount you fraudulently took from me.

Immediately.

Yours Sincerely

Diana Harris. Ms.

Pause.

Should I leave some lights on, make the place look lived in?

I haven’t a clue when I’ll be back.

2.

DIANA is seated.

That’s six roadkill on the A3, mostly foxes, a badger. Some poor thing that looks like a German shepherd but can’t be, surely.

It’s more trafficky than usual.

(Mock/playful shouting out.) Where are you all going? You’re not supposed to be going anywhere!

They’re probably looking at me thinking the same!

Don’t worry! I’m only moving between my little flat in Chiswick and my mother’s house in Brookwood not seeing a single soul in between so don’t worry about me, I’m not spreading the virus.

I’m just going to jump out of the car when I get there run straight into the house lock the door behind me.

What about unloading the boot? That can wait.

Not a single soul.

I have an underlying feeling of unease.

I used to sing along to songs!

(Sings out.) They say no no it won’t last forever!

(Quietly, to herself.) I just took a trip on my love for him.

Think of normal things. Stop imagining a dead cat. Not Misty, a ginger one. With its whiskers frayed, its claws snapped. There’s blood trickling out of its nose. Hit by a car most probably.

Why am I thinking about that? I don’t even know a ginger cat.

3.

DIANA is standing in her coat, holding several bags.

Well it looks the same.

No reason for it not to.

In you go then.

Here we are.

She stands without speaking for a while, looking round the space.

Dear me. Piles and layers. All covered in dust.

Should have brought some, there’ll be plenty here. Dusters. Dust pan and brush on the arm of the chair, she’ll have been sweeping out the hearth.

She’ll have been kneeling down to sweep it. You can get dizzy if you stand up too fast.

I’ve got my work cut out here then. I’m going to be working my socks off with this lot.

Good thinking to bring the fan heater, it’s cold through to the brick.

She snaps into action, puts her bags down, takes off her scarf and coat.

Gillian’s daughter has overfed Misty. Biscuits under the rim of the plate – spilled out everywhere. There’s a biscuit, all the way over there on the floor, by the sink. She’s written a note – with her left hand it looks like. ‘Dianna’, double ‘N’, ‘If – something – let us know.’ I can’t read that. I’ve forgotten my other glasses. Damn.

Left useless on my bedside table, next to my pills, lit by the light seeping in from the hall – why did I leave the hall light on, who sits in the hall in their own home all night, no one. What a chump. If someone breaks in I won’t be surprised. I’ll deserve it.

Well this Wi-Fi is bad and slow.

What if they’ve said something about the cat cave and I need to say something back?

The floor’s sticky. The fridge smells of off. She hated waste. That map needs folding back into its cover. Where do I start?

Have I stepped into someone else’s body leaning on a kitchen counter waiting for a kettle?

‘Do you want a hottie?’

I don’t mind Come Dine with Me. I’ve seen this one before but I can’t remember who wins the money. I’m suspicious of everyone, people only think of themselves.

Everyone signed my ‘Sorry to Hear You’re Leaving’ card, even Head Office, and they knew I’d been there the longest and it wasn’t fair.

That banging sound. It’s the wind making the plastic sheeting on next door’s roof slap against their scaffolding. Did I lock the car? It’s pitch black out there like the deep inside of a head.

I want to tell someone that I’m here, who should I tell?

‘I’ve arrived safely.’

‘I’ll probably be here for a few days.’

Yes I’m here get used to it. No point gawping at me, miaowing. I thought cats were supposed to sit on laps.

I saw a YouTube video of a lady wrapping her cat in a towel and sort of bundling it in a box. I bought you a bed!

I saw it poking out of the envelope, what’s this? That’s not merino wool. It’s not what I ordered, they know it’s not. There’s no picture of it on the website. You can’t click on it by mistake. They lured me in. All the nonsense of choosing the different colours. They saw me coming. Merino wool’s supposed to be warmer than alpaca that’s why I chose it why didn’t I read the reviews? Too late now so more fool me.

All the things that need doing here.

The sheets will be damp I expect.

Lucky Sal in Australia! Lucky her there’s a travel ban! Good excuse not to have to clear out a house.

4.

Empty stage.Distant sound of the piano being played somewhere in the house.After a while it stops mid-tune, the music left hanging.

5.

DIANA holds a piece of toast and seems distracted.

Should I keep the calendar? Put it in the car and drive it back to my flat. Her handwriting up to August. The back of the empty pages I could use for scrap paper. I should keep it to treasure and remember. She had the same one every year. What is it about perforated edges, I used to beg to be the one to tear them as a child.

Throw it away. For God’s sake! A plain calendar! Not even pictures, just. Plain old. What’s wrong with you? Come along now. Lots to do.

I’d rather not drive to the dump in the dark.

The doorbell rings.

DIANA stands completely still.Waits.

Where’s my mask? In a pocket. It’s safer not to answer.

Someone bringing me something home-made. Forcing me to be grateful so they can be kind, I know that dance.

People never stand two metres away anyway

goodness look how the skin on my hands is chapped. Chapped hands warm heart.

Are they still there?

Go. Go. Go.

They’ve gone.

Too many clocks in this house, listen tick tick tick it’s an infestation.

6.

DIANA stands with her car keys in her hand and a bag-for-life full of Tupperware at her feet.

‘Dear Customer