Swallow E-Book

Stef Smith

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

Seitenzahl: 62

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

'Who said smashing things up was a bad thing?' Three strangers are about to face their demons head on. Balanced precariously on the tipping point, they might just be able to save one another – if they can only overcome their urge to self-destruct. Passionate, painful and playful, Stef Smith's Swallow takes a long, hard look at the extremes of everyday life. The play premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, as part of the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it received a Scotsman Fringe First Award. It was directed by Traverse Artistic Director Orla O'Loughlin, and featured original music by LAWholt.

Leseprobe

Stef Smith

SWALLOW

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Original Production

Foreword by Orla O’Loughlin

Foreword by Stef Smith

Epigraph

Characters

Swallow

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Swallow was first performed at the Traverse Theatre,Edinburgh, on 9 August 2015. The cast was as follows:

SAM

Sharon Duncan-Brewster

REBECCA

Anita Vettesse

ANNA

Emily Wachter

Director

Orla O’Loughlin

Designer

Fred Meller

Lighting Designer

Philip Gladwell

Composer/Sound Designer

Danny Krass

Assistant Director

Katherine Nesbitt

Additional Music

LAWholt

Voice

Ros Steen

Choreography

White & Givan

Foreword from Director Orla O’Loughlin

It is February 2015. I am sitting in a packed studio theatre next to Traverse Executive Producer, Linda Crooks. Beside her is playwright Stef Smith. We are here, at the Doosan Arts Centre in Seoul, to see a public rehearsed reading of Stef’s Traverse commission, Swallow. In Korean.

As ever at these kind of events, I watch the audience as much as the performance. I am very curious to know what these characters and their stories will mean here, over 5000 miles from home. I wonder how Swallow might translate narratively, emotionally, politically and culturally.

Linda, Stef and I share a giddy mix of jet lag and nerves before the performance starts, but once it does, we settle and, like the audience, are very focused and at times deeply moved. The play clearly takes flight with ease. The performers are very still and give enormously detailed and delicate performances. And the majority of the audience stay for a question-and-answer session following the show.

Questions for Stef relate mostly to her writing process, and for me are concerned with how I will direct the play. The audience have questions about how the play came into being and how, now it exists, it will translate into three dimensions. It strikes me very powerfully that no questions arise in relation to the characters, plot, themes or form. It seems that the world of Swallow is readily accepted in the terms within which it is presented.

I’m surprised and delighted. Surprised because Swallow isn’t a straightforward kind of play. It is fragmentary, poetic and tonally diverse. It invites questions at every moment as to the who, what and why. I am thrilled that none of this gets in the way. Rather it creates an eloquence and internal logic all of its own.

The experience proves a shot in the arm for me. Proof, if it were needed, that Swallow is ready for production.

So, now, here I sit typing this. It is July 2015. I am in the Traverse rehearsal room in Leith. We are midway through week two and I am as inspired, challenged and excited as I have ever been about a project.

The actors and Stef are swapping romantic anecdotes in the green room, the gulls are squawking overhead and we are preparing to dive back in to the vivid, troubled and wonderful world of Swallow.

I’d like to thank the entire company for their fearless embrace of the play, its complications and celebrations. Dream creative and production teams for really going on the journey and supporting all our creative adventures. The actors for their bravery, tenacity and sheer class. And to Stef, for her tireless pursuit of better and for the blistering, clarion call of Swallow.

Foreword from Writer Stef Smith

This process and play feel very special to me. I spent my student days seeing plays at the Traverse and, no matter where in the world I go, the Traverse will always be a particularly significant place for me, both professionally and personally. Over the last two years, I have had the utter privilege to work with some very generous and talented people who have supported me and spurred me on to write Swallow. The first draft of the play was written quickly and intensely, it just poured out onto the page. It was a play born of my absolute anger and anxiety that the world wasn’t the place I felt it could be.

Creating this play has been a hard but hopeful process. Hard, because of the darkness it deals with – at times this play is raw and relentless – and ensuring a clarity in that can be a tough technical task. However, it has been hopeful because I’ve had the chance to share and swap stories with people who have made me feel a little less alone in my fears and fury. I hope too that I have helped them feel a little less alone.

Whether this play is a mirror to something you’ve felt or a window into an unfamiliar world, I hope that you see not particular answers to problems of the modern world, but rather you simply see the modern world. So often we see things how we wish to see them, because what is actually there is complex and contradictory with no solutions in sight. I often wonder whether we should call out these dark times rather than attempt to displace them. They might then have a little less control over us.

I’ve never doubted that we all wrestle with the chaos of deep, dark, hard things. We behave badly, drink too much, sleep too little, punch walls or pull our bodies apart. Rarely are we given the healthy tools that enable us to deal with this chaos. And yet, and yet, deal with it we do – we still get up the next day. And that’s one of the main things that Swallow looks at – the chaotic ways in which we continue. After all, it’s one of the things humanity does best. We continue or, at the very least, we try to.

So I’ll let you continue on to the play. Enjoy, and good luck – with everything.

‘I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.’

Frida KahloAs quoted in Vogue, 1937

Characters

REBECCA

SAM

ANNA

All the characters are in their thirties or forties. They can be any race, the reference to Sammy Davis Jr. should be changed according to the race of the performer playing Sam.

A (/) at the end of a sentence denotes an interrupted line.

There are no stage directions, imagine it as you wish.

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

ANNA

Who said smashing things up was a bad thing? It’s actually quite liberating. People should really smash up more things. Sweat drips down my back as I stand in the middle of my living room clutching a claw hammer. I should have done this sooner, after all – they’re just

things

.

REBECCA