Sea Things E-Book

Hassan Abdulrazzak

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

Seitenzahl: 99

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

A bold and startling comic thriller about climate crisis, conspiracy, and what lurks beneath the waves…  It's 2050 and, due to the rising sea level, a small coastal town in Britain is now underwater. Some of the town's inhabitants have taken shelter in a manor house, which has been converted into a camp for climate-change refugees. It's run by Maxscore, a shady private company. As they face power cuts, food scarcity and blackmail, the camp inmates start to realise that people are mysteriously disappearing. A strange force has been unleashed and is set to destroy them. Can they stop it before it's too late? Hassan Abdulrazzak's play Sea Things was first performed at Southwark Playhouse, London, in a production by Oxford School of Drama. The Nick Hern Books Multiplay Drama series features large-cast plays specifically written to be performed by and appeal to young people. For more information, visit www.multiplaydrama.co.uk.

Leseprobe

Hassan Abdulrazzak

SEA THINGS

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Introducing Multiplay Drama

Original Production

Characters

Sea Things

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Introducing Multiplay Drama

Every year, many original plays are commissioned and performed by drama schools, educational institutions, and youth, student and amateur-theatre companies. Reading them, talking to their writers, seeing them in production, we are often struck by the ambition of their themes, the invention of their storytelling and the calibre of their playwrights.

Some of these plays have gone on to be revived in professional productions – for instance, Blue Stockings by Jessica Swale was first seen at RADA in 2012 before being professionally produced at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2013 – but most don’t usually have further life. It seems like the very raison d’être of many of these plays – the creation of large-scale original pieces for young, large casts – has meant theatre companies, hamstrung by ever-shrinking budgets, haven’t been able to find a way to give the plays the continuing existence that they deserve.

That’s why Nick Hern Books created Multiplay Drama – a series aiming to bring back to the fore some of the best plays for large casts we’ve read. We first launched the series in 2019, with ten high-quality plays that had originated with various drama schools and youth-theatre companies, providing a selection of complex, dramatic and theatrical works with one common factor: large casts of rich, exciting characters for teenagers and young adults to perform.

Launching the series was something of an experiment. Would there be an appetite for this kind of work? Gratifyingly, it has been a huge success. Hundreds of drama schools, youth theatres, student-drama societies, sixth-form colleges and amateur-theatre companies have read, studied and performed the plays we published in the first ‘season’ of Multiplay Drama, and the initiative was nominated for a Music and Drama Education Award.

Now, four years after we made these first plays available, we’re expanding the series with ten more brilliant and imaginative pieces of work. As we sought out this new set of plays, we had a few goals in mind. We wanted to offer more work that would appeal to younger performers, so that a wider group of schools and amateur companies could benefit. We wanted to diversify the forms and genres of the pieces, so that there was a range of theatrical styles available – from naturalistic drama to period comedies, from sci-fi adventure tales to plays packed with music and song. And we wanted to continue to preserve and share work by some of the best and boldest writers working today.

So, if your performance group is looking for a play that builds a post-apocalyptic world and focuses on a large group of identifiable characters navigating through a dystopian vision of Britain – we have the play for you; if you prefer a play where a chorus comes and narrates across time zones and locations, splitting up voices to tell a fragmented story – we have the play for you; if you want to wonder what it’s like to spend every day in a psychiatric unit; traversing London to deliver a message to the Queen herself; or even what it’s like to metamorphose into an animal – we have the plays for you…

Multiplay Drama is a great way for plays with large casts to find even larger audiences. Commissioned by some of the most renowned educational and youth groups in the country, and featuring playwrights whose work has been seen on the most celebrated of stages, the twenty plays now available offer rigorous storytelling, thoughtful and theatrical explorations of the issues that matter to young people, and rich opportunities for big ensembles looking to experiment and play. They are ideal for companies with a lot of performers looking for fresh, exciting work, and we can’t wait to see them staged far and wide.

October 2023

Big new plays for great big casts, specifically written to be performed by and appeal to children, teenagers and young adults.

Season One

Season Two

BlisterLaura Lomas

As We Face the SunKit Withington

BlueJoe Ward Munrow

A DreamChris Bush

katzenmusikTom Fowler

HORIZONKwame Owusu

LandminesPhil Davies

The Multiverse is Gay!Lewis Hetherington

The Real EstateFreddie Machin

The Playhouse ApprenticeJessica Swale

The Red HelicopterRobin French

Sea ThingsHassan Abdulrazzak

SkunkZawe Ashton

smallHolly Robinson

Spooky Action at a DistanceEve Leigh

Space GirlHelen Stanley

THREESophie Ellerby

The VillageAbi Falase & Tatenda Shamiso

VS09Hayley Squires

Wellington 24Rachel Harper

www.multiplaydrama.co.uk

Sea Things was first performed by the students on the Oxford School of Drama 2021 One Year Course at Southwark Playhouse, London, in September 2022, directed by Hal Chambers.

Characters

1) AGATHA, community organiser

2) NEIL, drug dealer. Diver

3) JAKE, religious. Diver

4) SAM, obsessed with Agatha

5) SALLY, camp authority

6) KIERAN, camp authority

7) PAT, camp officer

8) MALIKA, brilliant engineer. Expecting

9) NIKOS, Malika’s husband

10) BECKY, misses her dead father, into Korean culture

11) TABITHA, an unscrupulous plastic surgeon

12) AMY, Becky’s friend, worried about her Korean obsession

13) TINA, expecting

14) ARETHA, Tina’s sister. Protective

15) MALCOLM, Tina’s partner

16) KIT, ex-theatre director, disillusioned

17) JOHN, IT salesman

18) RICK, cancer patient. Informant

The cast also double up as the chorus.

Note on Text

Time: The year is 2050.

Setting: an English manor house and surrounding grounds / the sea.

A forward slash (/) indicates an interruption.

ACT ONE

Prologue

The sea.

CHORUS 01. We rage.

CHORUS 02. We foam.

CHORUS 03. We ebb.

CHORUS 04. We flow.

CHORUS 05. We bury people.

CHORUS 06. We bury secrets.

CHORUS 07. We are the giver.

CHORUS 08. And the destroyer.

CHORUS 09. We contain multitudes.

CHORUS 10. Suppressed voices.

CHORUS 11. Bubbling away.

CHORUS 12. Mutating.

CHORUS 13. Forming.

CHORUS 14. Taking hold.

CHORUS 15. Coming to the surface.

CHORUS 16. To shine magnificent.

CHORUS 17. Taking over.

CHORUS 18. Putting the world to rights.

Beat.

CHORUS 01. Three months ago we overwhelmed the town of

Hellsworth.

CHORUS 02. Buried it under our waters.

CHORUS 03. Some fled up to the hill.

CHORUS 04. To Glenhope.

CHORUS 05. An English manor house converted into a camp.

CHORUS 06. For Internally Displaced Persons.

CHORUS 07. IDPs.

CHORUS 08. The camp is run by Maxscore.

CHORUS 09. A private, for profit, company.

CHORUS 10. The IDPs who end up there have nowhere else to go.

CHORUS 11. They hope to be ‘processed’.

CHORUS 12. Given more permanent accommodation elsewhere.

CHORUS 13. The manor has many rooms.

CHORUS 14. People fight over them.

CHORUS 15. We like them fighting.

CHORUS 16. We love to see them stressed.

CHORUS 17. We’re devouring them slowly.

CHORUS 18. Like a good meal.

Beat.

CHORUS 05. A countdown has begun.

CHORUS 06. A change is coming.

CHORUS 09. We ebb.

CHORUS 15. We flow.

CHORUS 04. We rage.

ALL. We are the sea!

Departure

A hall in the manor. It’s July. Temperature 42°C.

JOHN. This is goodbye, I guess.

KIT. I’m going to miss your clichés.

JOHN (with a sigh or an eye roll). Thanks, Kit.

AGATHA. Kit is kidding.

KIT. I can speak for myself.

AGATHA. Don’t I know it.

ARETHA. Where’re you going, John?

JOHN. Maxscore has found me a job in Manchester.

ARETHA. Lucky you. We’re still waiting to be processed.

JOHN. It’s in IT sales.

AMY. Sounds fab.

JOHN. It is… except for one thing… well, for two things, really. Or one big thing, depending on how you look at it.

SAM. Spit it out already.

JOHN. I hate sales. Oh and I hate IT.

BECKY. Then why are you taking it?

JOHN. Beggars can’t be choosers.

KIT. If you drop the clichés, your life might improve.

JOHN. And your life would improve if you stop being so combative.

TINA. You’re lucky to be getting out of this place.

MALCOLM. We’re stuck here like wellies in cow shit.

KIT. I hope you’ll have AC in Manchester.

BECKY. Anywhere but here must be better.

KIT. I doubt it. The country’s gone to shit.

AGATHA. That’s the spirit, Kit.

KIT. And your optimism, Agatha, is stifling like the weather, not to mention deluded.

SAM. Leave Agatha alone.

KIT. She’s not your girlfriend.

NEIL and JAKE arrive.

NEIL. But she’s mine. Hello, darling.

AGATHA. Hey, Neil. Hi, Jake.

JAKE. Hello… everyone.

NEIL. Fuck me, you all look like you’re at a funeral. Lighten up. The worst has happened.

BECKY. You mean the flood?

NEIL. The flood and ending up here at the ironically named Glenhope. Once you’re at the bottom, the only way is up.

KIT. Don’t count on it.

NEIL. Run out of uppers, have you, Kit?

KIT. You’re an unreliable supplier, Neil.

NEIL. John, mate, I’ve got something for you.

NEIL puts a carton of pills in JOHN’s hand or pocket.

JOHN. I don’t know, Neil.

NEIL. A trip for your trip.

JAKE. He doesn’t want it.

NEIL. Sure he does.

JAKE. John, I’ll pray for you to have a safe journey.

NEIL. Jesus wept.

JAKE. People are disappearing. They’re leaving the camp and are never heard from again.

JOHN. People just want to put this place behind them.

AGATHA. John, you’ve got to tell the outside world about this camp. How badly it’s run.

KIT. Yeah, I can really see John doing that.

AGATHA. Unlike us, he’ll have internet access. He can start a campaign.

BECKY. Is that true, John?

JOHN. I’m not sure, Becky. The government is trying to regulate the internet.

KIT. You mean censor it.

BECKY. You could stream BTS all day long!!

JOHN. Stream what?

BECKY. BTS? The Korean band? You’ve never heard of them?

AMY. Few have, Becky.

BECKY. That’s not true, Amy. BTS are huge.

AMY. They were, but like thirty years ago.

BECKY. My dad adored them.

AMY. It’s 2050. Get with the times.

BECKY. The past was way better.

KIT. What happened in the past is what’s led to this disaster.

SAM. People were afraid to look at the harsh reality.

NEIL. Not afraid. Just bored. Climate change is boring.

JAKE. How can you say that?

NEIL. I took a truth pill. I wish you would too.

ARETHA. Here is some money.

JOHN. What for?

ARETHA. Get formula for my sister’s baby.

MALCOLM. She hasn’t given birth yet.

ARETHA. You’re stupid or something? She’s due.

TINA. Don’t kick off.

JOHN hands ARETHA back her money.

JOHN. I don’t know if the army will allow me to come back here once I leave.

AGATHA. The camp authority should be supplying those things. And giving Rick his medicine.

JOHN. Rick, you haven’t said anything.

RICK. I can’t believe you’re leaving.

JOHN. I’m going to miss you, mate.

They hug.

You’re gonna be alright?

RICK. They tell me my medicine should arrive any day now.

KIT. You’re better off dead.

JAKE. Jesus, Kit.

JOHN. That was inappropriate.

NEIL. Kit, darling, you need to chill.

JOHN. Remember what I told you, Rick.

RICK nods.

SALLY, KIERAN and PAT arrive wearing distinct uniforms. The atmosphere shifts.

NEIL. Here comes the law.

SALLY. Are you ready, John?

JOHN. I am.

KIERAN. Bags packed?

NEIL. What bags? Poor sod has only the clothes on his back.

KIERAN. We need to talk, Neil.

NEIL. I have nothing to say to you.

KIERAN. There are rules about what can be brought from Hellsworth and how.

AGATHA. If you were doing a better job, Neil wouldn’t need to /

JAKE. Agatha!

KIERAN. Wouldn’t need to what?

AGATHA. Nothing.

SALLY. Cat caught your tongue?

Beat.

John, Pat is going to take you to the train station.

KIERAN. In the company car. We will be charging you for the cost, I’m afraid. Not now, when you get paid.