Rockets and Blue Lights E-Book

Winsome Pinnock

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

Seitenzahl: 93

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

'I am the slave ship. Wrecked. Empty. I am a shark, livid with the desire for blood. I am the sea, boiling with fury.' On the set of a new film about Victorian artist J.M.W. Turner, young actress Lou is haunted by an unresolved history. Meanwhile, in 1840, Londoners Lucy and Thomas try to come to terms with the meaning of freedom. Moving between London past and present, Winsome Pinnock's astonishing play retells British history through the prism of the slave trade. Fusing fact with fiction, and the powerfully personal with the fiercely political, Rockets and Blue Lights asks who owns our past – and who has the right to tell its stories? Winner of the 2018 Alfred Fagon Award, the play opened at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in 2020, directed by Miranda Cromwell. It transferred to the National Theatre, London, in 2021. 'Rockets and Blue Lights places at its center one of the nineteenth century's most famous paintings: J. M. W. Turner's "The Slave Ship". Moving between several sets of characters and ranging from the 1800s to the present, this intricately plotted drama compels us to confront the horrors of our shared past. It does so with compassion and wit, never once compromising Pinnock's vision of theater as the communal creation of new, stranger, and perhaps truer histories' Windham-Campbell Prize committee, on awarding Winsome Pinnock a Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama in 2022

Leseprobe

Winsome Pinnock

ROCKETS AND BLUE LIGHTS

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Original Production Details

Dedication

Characters

Rockets and Blue Lights

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Rockets and Blue Lights was originally developed on attachment at the National Theatre, London, and subsequently developed and first performed at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, on 12 March 2020. The cast was as follows:

BILLIE

Anthony Aje

TURNER/ROY/PETER PIPER

Paul Bradley

THOMAS/TREVOR

Karl Collins

LOU/OLU

Kiza Deen

CAESAR/REUBEN

Natey Jones

ESSIE/LUCY

Rochelle Rose

RUSKIN/JOHNSON/DECKER

Matthew Seadon-Young

JESS/JEANIE

Kudzai Sitima

DANBY/MARY/MEG/VONNIE

Cathy Tyson

CLARKE/PEARSON/BENJAMIN

Everal A Walsh

Director

Miranda Cromwell

Designer

Laura Hopkins

Lighting Designer

Jessica Hung Han Yun

Sound Designer

Elena Peña

Composer/Musical Director

Femi Temowo

Associate Musical Director

Elizabeth Westcott

Associate Director

Mumba Dodwell

Assistant Director

Chantelle Walker

Voice/Dialect Coach

Joel Trill

Casting Director

Vicky Richardson CDG

Stage Manager

Louise Martin

Deputy Stage Manager

Sylvia Darkwa-Ohemeng

Assistant Stage Manager

Sarah Barnes

Rehearsal Historian Consultant

Dr Gemma Romain

Rehearsal Historian Consultant

Dr Kristy Warren

Dramaturg

Suzanne Bell

With special thanks to Barbara Crossley and Martyn & Valerie Torevell for supporting the creation of this production.

Rockets and Blue Lights opened at the Dorfman auditorium, National Theatre, London, on 2 September 2021. The cast was as follows:

BILLIE

Anthony Aje

TURNER/ROY

Paul Bradley

THOMAS/TREVOR

Karl Collins

LOU/OLU

Kiza Deen

ESSIE/LUCY

Rochelle Rose

RUSKIN/JOHNSON/DECKER/PETER PIPER

Matthew Seadon-Young

JESS/JEANIE

Kudzai Sitima

DANBY/MARY/MEG/VONNIE

Cathy Tyson

CLARKE/PEARSON/BENJAMIN

Everal A Walsh

CAESAR/REUBEN

Luke Wilson

UNDERSTUDIES

Hannah Sinclair Robinson David Rawlins

All other parts played by members of the company

Director

Miranda Cromwell

Set and Costume Designer

Laura Hopkins

Lighting Designer

Amy Mae

Composer and Music Director

Femi Temowo

Sound Designer

Elena Peña

Movement Director

Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster

Fight Director

Yarit Dor

Dialect and Singing Coach

Hazel Holder

Company Voice Work

Simon Money

Associate Set and Costume Designer

Charlotte Henery

Original Lighting Designer

Jessica Hung Han Yun

Staff Director

Mumba Dodwell

Casting

Vicky Richardson CDG

Additional Casting

Bryony Jarvis-Taylor

Dramaturg

Suzanne Bell

For Vivia, Ayana, Gifford, Affoline and Steve

Characters

2006/2007

LOU, an actress, black, plays Olu in The Ghost Ship

REUBEN, African-American marine archaeologist

TREVOR KING, forties, a writer/director, black

ESSIE, thirties, a teacher, black

ROY, mid-sixties, an actor, white, plays Turner in The Ghost Ship

BILLIE, fifteen years old, black

VONNIE, Lou’s sister, black

CLARKE, eighties, Lou’s grandfather, black

JEANIE, PA on The Ghost Ship

ACTOR PLAYING PEARSON

ACTOR PLAYING JOHNSON

1840

THOMAS, a sailor, black

LUCY, his wife, black

JESS, fourteen/fifteen, their daughter, black

MEG, seventies, a runaway, black

J.M.W. TURNER, artist, white

BILLIE, fifteen years old, black

BENJAMIN, a beggar, black

PETER PIPER, a beggar, white

HANNAH DANBY, Turner’s housekeeper, white

MARY, Turner’s mother, white

DECKER, a recruiting officer, white

CAESAR, a shantyman, black

RUSKIN, artist, white

And SAILORS, COFFLE OF ENCHAINED AFRICANS, BOY AT DANCE, OVERSEER

Suggested Doubling

ESSIE/LUCY

LOU/OLU

THOMAS/TREVOR

REUBEN/CAESAR

CLARKE/PEARSON/BENJAMIN

TURNER/ROY

RUSKIN/JOHNSON/DECKER/PETER PIPER

DANBY/MARY/MEG/VONNIE

BILLIE

JESS/JEANIE

Note on Text

When Meg and Lucy use an accent, it indicates they are speaking in another language.

Note on Play

Two of the many inspirations for this play are J.M.W. Turner’s paintings: The Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and the Dying – Typhoon Coming On) and Rockets and Blue Lights. Popular belief is that Slavers portrays the Zong massacre which took place when Turner was a child, but some think it tells another story. Either way the painting suggests the ongoing legacy of the slave trade. The play explores this legacy and attempts to reconstruct the lives of black Londoners after abolition. The slave trade ended in 1807, but slavery wasn’t properly abolished until around 1838, and may have continued beyond that.

This text went to press before the end of rehearsals and so may differ slightly from the play as performed.

ACT ONE

Scene One

The play opens in 2007. We are onboard a replica of a slave ship. The ship has been transformed into a museum where two women who have just met for the first time – ESSIE and LOU – contemplate J.M.W. Turner’s painting The Slave Ship.

LOU. Tell me what you see.

ESSIE. The ship tries to distance itself from the nightmare, but is dragged back to the furious feeding frenzy by the undertow. Amber, gold, chrome, the darkest-darkest sea.

LOU. I nearly drowned once. At the lido in Streatham. Swimming bodies made it look easy, so I dove in. When they fished me out I was limp, dead for a split second. (Slight pause.) Why does he have to make something so ugly, beautiful?

ESSIE. Haydon painted noble victims, saintly abolitionists; Turner comes up with this… massacre. It’s incredible. (Slight pause.) What do you see?

LOU. The first time I looked at this painting I couldn’t make out what was going on. All I could see was Turner’s use of colour, his elegant suggestion of bloodshed in a captured sunset. I didn’t think about what had just happened to those poor men, women, children. They were invisible. I had to look, really look. And then I saw it and I couldn’t turn away… A hand, a leg, a woman’s breasts…

ESSIE. We can’t see the drowning bodies, but we know they’re there. We have to imagine, and what we imagine is so much worse than anything he could show us. He turns the world upside down. The sky reflects the carnage underneath. You can taste the blood in the water, you can hear their screams.

LOU. The only person we can see has her head submerged. We watch their hands search for ours, but we can’t help them. All we can do is stand here looking.

ESSIE. The critics had never seen anything like this. They all thought he’d gone mad.

LOU. I’m inside Turner’s mind. And that is not a good place to be.

ESSIE. He painted what he saw. In his mind’s eye. It’s art. All it can do is bear witness.

Interested, LOU watches ESSIE looking at the painting.

LOU. Have you seen that new film about Turner?

ESSIE. Oh yes, that film. The Ghost Ship. Yes, I’ve seen it. It has its moments, but it’s…

LOU. Not your kind of thing? I know what you mean. But what can you do? England is an abolition theme park right now. And this boat museum is the main attraction. This painting is a monument to white saviourism.

ESSIE. Is it-is it, though? I mean, look at it. Isn’t it an in-yer-face indictment of that very narrative?

BILLIE enters carrying a clipboard.

Hello, you. What are you doing here? Where’s Mr Richmond?

BILLIE. Don’t know, miss.

ESSIE. You’re supposed to be doing the coffle walk with him.

BILLIE. I don’t like him, miss. I prefer to hang with you.

ESSIE. Just because we’re not on school property doesn’t mean that we’re ‘hanging out’. You’ve got to treat today like one long lesson.

BILLIE (notices LOU). Oh my days. It’s her. Captain thingy. It’s her, miss.

ESSIE (amused by BILLIE’s excitement). What are you talking about?

BILLIE. It’s her, miss. Off the telly. Captain Sola Andrews off the spaceship SS Rego. That programme, miss: Space Colony Mars.

ESSIE. Oh. (Suddenly realising who LOU is.) Oh.

BILLIE. What’s she doing here, miss?

LOU. Very nice to meet you.

ESSIE. Where are your manners, Billie? Say hello.

BILLIE. And she’s in that film.

ESSIE. The Ghost Ship.

BILLIE. I seen her picture on all the posters. Can I have your autograph, Captain?

LOU. Of course. And you don’t have to call me Captain. You can call me Lou. Do you have a pen? Where shall I sign?

BILLIE gives LOU his clipboard.

(To BILLIE.) I don’t want to sign on that, do I? It’ll look as though it’s my drawing instead of yours.

BILLIE gives LOU a scrap of paper to sign.

There.

BILLIE hands her the picture.

BILLIE. You can keep it, Captain. Hang it on your wall. It’s a picture of this boat museum.

LOU. I can see that. You’re a very talented artist.

BILLIE. It’s going to take us up the river. When’s it sailing, miss?

ESSIE. It’s leaving at five. After the coffle walk.

BILLIE. Are you coming with us, Captain?

LOU. Me? Oh no. I’ve just come to look at this painting. I’ll tell you a secret, though: this is the boat we used in our film.

BILLIE. Is it? Wow.

LOU. The production company donated it to the Foundation and they turned it into this floating museum.

BILLIE. And I’ll tell you a secret… I’m going to be famous, too. I’m going to be a footballer or a boxer, or a street dancer.

LOU. Well, you’ve got a lot of options there.

BILLIE. Man U’s gonna buy me for millions of pounds.

ESSIE. Run off and find Mr Richmond, Billie. He’ll be going mad with worry.

BILLIE. He might be going mad, but I don’t think he’s worried, miss.

ESSIE. Go on, Billie. I’ll catch you up.

BILLIE. When I see you on that screen I feel like you’re speaking for me… You’re awesome, Captain.

LOU. Well, I think you’re awesome too, Billie.

BILLIE runs off.

ESSIE. I’m sorry… I didn’t recognise you…

LOU. We wouldn’t have had such a lovely chat if you had. And I did rather set you up. I’m having a party tonight. Will you come? There’ll be a lot of creative people there. I think you’ll fit right in.

ESSIE. I er… I um… thank you, but I [have to get the students home].

LOU (interrupting). I bet you’ve heard of Reuben Sumner, haven’t you?

ESSIE. Of course… he’s amazing. He makes those underwater sculptures…

LOU. Did you see that? The woman in the painting… She moved.

ESSIE. Sorry?

LOU. I thought I saw… That’s ridiculous.

ESSIE. You’ve been nominated for an award, haven’t you? Of course. That’s why you’re…

LOU. There! Look, she did it again. She pulled her head out of the water. She looked right at me. Jesus.

ESSIE. I love your dress, aren’t you going to be late?

LOU. I’m not going. No point. I won’t win.

ESSIE. You might. It’s an interesting film.

LOU. I need to get out of here. I’ve got to organise… You are coming, aren’t you?

ESSIE. If you’re sure…

LOU. Here’s the address.

LOU scribbles down the address.

You know, when Turner died John Ruskin tried to burn his old friend’s secrets: lurid sketches he’d discovered of genitalia and couples fucking. To my mind that proves Turner’s pornographic tendency. I’m not surprised that this painting drove Ruskin mad. It’s beginning to have the same effect on me.

Scene Two

A rehearsal room, several months earlier. TREVOR is on his mobile phone. REUBEN is putting papers into files. JEANIE, the PA, has a tape measure around her neck and is handing out cups of tea and coffee.

ROY. Fancy meeting you here. Long time no see.

LOU. Good to see you, Roy.