Oil E-Book

Ella Hickson

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

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

The Bronze Age. The Iron Age. The Age of Oil. The Stone Age didn't end for want of stones. Oil follows the lives of one woman and her daughter in an epic, hurtling collision of empire, history and family. Ella Hickson's explosive play drills deep into the world's relationship with this finite resource. It is 'the single most gloriously audacious piece of playwriting of the last few years' (Evening Standard) and won the Catherine Johnson Award for Best Play in 2013. Oil premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London, in October 2016, in a production directed by Carrie Cracknell and starring Anne-Marie Duff.

Leseprobe

Ella Hickson

OIL

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Original Production

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Epigraph

Characters

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Oil was first performed at the Almeida Theatre, London, on 14 October 2016 (previews from 7 October). The cast was as follows:

MAY

Anne-Marie Duff

MR FAROUK

Nabil Elouahabi

THOMAS/MR THOMAS/TOM

Brian Ferguson

MA SINGER

Ellie Haddington

SAMUEL/OFFICER SAMUEL/SAMMY

Patrick Kennedy

AMY

Yolanda Kettle

JOSS

Tom Mothersdale

ANNE/ANA/AMINAH

Lara Sawalha

WILLIAM WHITCOMB/NATE

Sam Swann

FANNY/FAN WANG

Christina Tam

Direction

Carrie Cracknell

Design

Vicki Mortimer

Movement Direction

Joseph Alford

Lighting

Lucy Carter

Dramaturg

Jenny Worton

Composition

Stuart Earl

Sound

Peter Rice

Video

Luke Halls

Casting

Julia Horan CDG

Resident Direction

Taio Lawson

Costume Supervision

Claire Wardroper

Design Assistant

Matt Hellyer

Associate Lighting Designer

Max Narula

Sound Assistant

Harry Johnson

Video Associate

Alex Uragallo

Video Programmer

Dan Bond

Dialect

Kay Welch

Farsi Translations and Dialect

Haydeh Eftekhar

Arabic Translations and Dialect

Silvia El Helo

Mandarin Translations

Cennydd John

Pinyin Translations

Ruhua Hele

Mandarin Dialect

Jessica Dong

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the NT Studio, The MacDowell Colony, Pentabus Theatre, Laura Diehl and the Goethe Institute Berlin, the RSC and The Upton Cressett Foundation for their generosity in providing the space and time to write. My thanks to Rachel Taylor for constantly good counsel.

I would like to thank Colin Campbell for the hours he spent sharing his work on Peak Oil with me and Richard Baker for putting us in touch. I’d like to thank my dad, Peter Hickson, for answering endless questions about the industry.

I’d like to thank Rupert Goold, Ben Power, Rob Icke, Ian Rickson and Sacha Wares for their input along the way. My thanks, especially, to Rupert for his longstanding and unflinching faith in me and in this project.

I would like to thank my friends and family for six years of encouragement and conversation, their support has been crucial in completing a project of this scale.

This play has benefitted hugely from the creative input of an incredible team and company. It has been a pleasure and privilege to work with you all.

My thanks to Jenny Worton and Carrie Cracknell for their intellectual rigour and compassion in the dramaturgical wrangling of this play. It’s been a dream team.

Thank you, Crackers, for taking the solitude out of ambition. It has broadened the horizons of what is possible.

E.H.

For my family

‘The urge to form partnerships, to link up in collaborative arrangements, is perhaps the oldest, strongest, and most fundamental force in Nature. There are no solitary, free-living creatures, every form of life is dependent on other forms.’

Lewis Thomas

‘You cannot be a feminist and a capitalist – feminism is about freeing women from oppression, and capitalism oppresses all women.’

Ruth Wallsgrove

‘…the first half of the age of oil now closes… it lasted 150 years and saw the rapid expansion of industry, transport, trade, agriculture and financial capital – allowing the population to expand six-fold. The second half now dawns, and will be marked by the decline of oil and all that depends on it; including financial capital.’

Colin Campbell

‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’

Arthur C. Clark

‘My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet airplane. His son will ride a camel.’

A Saudi saying

Characters

MAY

AMY

JOSS

MA SINGER

ANNE/ANA/AMINAH

THOMAS/MR THOMAS/TOM

SAMUEL/OFFICER SAMUEL/SAMMY

FANNY/FAN WANG

WILLIAM WHITCOMB

NATE

MR FAROUK

Settings

Part One: 1889, Cornwall

Part Two: 1908, Tehran

Part Three: 1970, Hampstead

Part Four: 2021, Baghdad

Part Five: 2051, Cornwall

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

PART ONE

Farm, Cornwall – 1889

The Singer Family Farm: a remote smallholding in the West Country countryside.

Late afternoon, winter; it is bitingly cold, the snow is thick – the air is purple-grey.

A white sun is low in the sky. JOSS, twenty-five – physical, bulky – is splitting logs with a long-axe. MAY, twenty – hardy, slim, muscular and three months pregnant. MAY is frozen, dirty and hungry. MAY watches JOSS. MAY waits for JOSS JOSS JOSS JOSS JOSS .