The Faith Machine E-Book

Alexi Kaye Campbell

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

Seitenzahl: 127

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Travelling from America to Britain to a remote Greek island, The Faith Machine explores the relationship between faith and capitalism and asks fundamental questions about the true meaning of love. On a beautiful September morning in New York, Sophie forces Tom into a decision. The choice he makes, and the events of that day, will change their lives for ever. Alexi Kaye Campbell's play The Faith Machine premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2011.

Leseprobe

Alexi Kaye Campbell

THE FAITHMACHINE

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Dedication

Original Production

Characters

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

In memory of Stephen Tredre

‘Life is lived forwards but understood backwards’Søren Kierkegaard

The Faith Machine was first performed at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, London, on 25 August 2011, with the following cast:

TOM

Kyle Soller

SOPHIE

Hayley Atwell

EDWARD

Ian McDiarmid

PATRICK/LAWRENCE       

Jude Akuwudike

TATYANA

Bronagh Gallagher

SEBASTIAN

Alan Westaway

ANNIE

Maya Wasowicz

AGATHA

Kezrena James

Director

Jamie Lloyd

Designer

Mark Thompson

Lighting Designer

Neil Austin

Music & Sound Designer

Alex Baranowski

Characters

in order of speaking

TOM, ages from twenty-four to thirty-seven during the play, American

SOPHIE, ages from twenty-two to thirty-four during the play, English

EDWARD, in his seventies, English

PATRICK, in his forties, Black Kenyan

TATYANA, in her thirties or forties, Russian

SEBASTIAN, in his forties, Chilean

LAWRENCE, ages from thirties to forties, Black British

ANNIE, in her thirties, American

AGATHA, seventeen

The roles of Patrick and Lawrence are to be played by the same actor.

Bold letters in the Russian pronunciation indicate stress.

ACT ONE

Scene One

2001

New York radio: something about the weather, it being a sunny September morning, maybe a traffic update.

Lights up:

The bedroom of TOM’s apartment in downtown Manhattan. A slick, expensive place, sparsely but tastefully furnished – the home of a young, successful man.

Early morning. TOM is still in his dressing gown but gets dressed during the scene. SOPHIE is half-dressed. She is putting things into a suitcase. She packs throughout the scene.

TOM. So what are you asking me to do?

She doesn’t answer.

Because I’m sorry, but this is who I am. I work in this city, I live in this world. I am a part of it.

SOPHIE. We both are.

TOM. But I have a feeling that if you finish packing that bag – will you please stop, just put that down, stop packing that bag, will you, GIVE ME THAT AT LEAST, put the fucking – whatever that is – put it down.

She stops packing.

Thank you. That if you finish packing that bag, that if you leave New York this afternoon, if you go back to London, then fuck me I don’t know where that leaves us, but I don’t know –

SOPHIE. I need to think.

TOM. – if we can ever pick things up is what I’m saying, resume things, because if you really want me to be honest here –

SOPHIE. You know I do.

TOM. – well, to be honest I feel judged, vilified in some way, frowned upon, Jesus, yes, just continuously judged –

SOPHIE. By me?

She resumes packing her bag.

TOM. – and I’m sorry I’m not Jesus or Mahatma Gandhi or fuck knows who you want me to be –

SOPHIE. I want you to be you.

TOM. – but the fact is, Sophie, this is who I am, and you just have to accept that: a good man who happens to work in a field that you – fuck me, I don’t know, disapprove of – a good man who just happens to work in advertising.

SOPHIE. I know you work in advertising, Tom, I know how things evolved –

TOM. It’s what I do.

SOPHIE. – to what they are, and I know that the world needs to keep turning.

TOM. Oh, you do?

SOPHIE. Buying, selling, supply, demand.

TOM. And it’s advertising that helped us move into this apartment –

SOPHIE. I liked Brooklyn.

TOM. – and that happily funded your postgraduate degree at Columbia.

SOPHIE. My inheritance could have paid for that.

TOM. It’s all you fucking have.

SOPHIE. But there’s a line, Tom. That’s all. A line.

TOM. A line?

SOPHIE. Let’s call it the Fletcher line.

TOM. Jesus.

Pause.

SOPHIE. Why did you take the Fletcher contract, Tom?

TOM. Because it’s a means to an end.

SOPHIE. Why did you chase it?

TOM. Because it opens doors. Because another two contracts like it and I can stop working. And then fuck knows, maybe we can save the world –

SOPHIE. You’re believing your own sound bites.

TOM. Build a fucking orphanage in Kenya, Vietnam.

SOPHIE. ‘It’s a means to an end.’

TOM. Fucking Mozambique.

SOPHIE. Jesus, Tom.

TOM. I mean, I have been working so fucking hard –

SOPHIE. What for?

TOM. Joe Ikeman called me yesterday and said, ‘It’s unheard of.’

SOPHIE. I’m sure it is.

TOM. He said, ‘For someone who’s been writing copy for less than three years to head the Fletcher account is amazing. It’s history, advertising history.’

SOPHIE. ‘The Power to Heal’. It’s pithy, I’ll give you that. No wonder they liked your pitch, you should be proud.

TOM. Well, fuck you, Sophie, I am proud and you know I too wish we lived in some idyllic, some, no, what’s the word, utopian world, yes, if we lived in a fucking utopia then I would be earning a hell of a lot of money –

SOPHIE. We don’t need a lot.

TOM. – for writing confessional novels about dysfunctional childhoods, but I’m afraid we don’t, we live in the real world –

SOPHIE. Is that what it’s called?

TOM. – and the real word is harsh, and cruel and full of compromise.

SOPHIE. Leave the ad-speak at work, I beg you. Let’s keep something untouched.

Pause. EDWARD walks into the room: they cannot see him.

TOM. And this is all about your father, by the way.

SOPHIE. No, it isn’t.

TOM. And I keep saying to myself it’s part of the mourning process, one of the phases, you know, what do they say, the seven stages of mourning –

SOPHIE. Five.

TOM. So this is maybe stage five because ever since he died he’s like, I don’t know like, he’s in this bedroom with us –

SOPHIE. The bedroom?

TOM. And I can understand it, I mean, the man was exceptional in every possible way, visionary and courageous and spiritually ambitious –

SOPHIE. He was.

EDWARD. Thank you, darling.

TOM. But having him in our bedroom twenty-four-seven isn’t exactly conducive to a healthy relationship.

SOPHIE. Are you saying I can’t think for myself?

EDWARD. His socks are inside out.

TOM. I’m saying that you need to let go of certain dogmatic ways of seeing things which are filled to the brim with the love of humanity, whatever you want to call it – but which are also incompatible with the world we happen to be living in right now and – dare, I say it, ever so slightly obsolete and archaic.

EDWARD. Ethics?

SOPHIE. Ethics are obsolete and archaic?

TOM. So it really is time to let him go.

EDWARD. Oh, he provokes.

SOPHIE. Your socks are inside out.

Pause. He takes them off, puts them on again the right way round.

EDWARD. Show him the file.

SOPHIE. The file.

TOM. What file?

EDWARD. You’ve done your homework, you have the evidence. Show him the file.

SOPHIE. I’ve put together a file.

TOM. What file?

EDWARD. Show it to him, Sophie.

She walks over to the bedside table and opens the drawer. She takes out a thin cardboard file.

SOPHIE. The Fletcher file.

TOM. First we had the Fletcher line, now we have the Fletcher file. I’m intrigued.

EDWARD. That’s a start.

TOM. And pray tell, what is this Fletcher file?

EDWARD. Read it to him.

SOPHIE. Cases, case histories, that kind of thing. Clippings, articles, the odd opinion piece. Gleaned from the internet mostly, and the library.

TOM. You’ve been busy.

EDWARD. Very.

SOPHIE. I know you’re late for work so I’ll keep it brief.

TOM. How considerate.

She opens the file and starts going through the clippings.

SOPHIE. Most of it I won’t bore you with, endless examples of corruption, bribery, fiddling, what not, unethical this, unethical that, pretty much what you’d expect from one of the world’s leading pharmaceuticals.

TOM. Okay.

SOPHIE. I won’t even go into the spurious marketing of four drugs including –

TOM. Detoxtrin.

SOPHIE. – thank you, and Flaxorin which led to seven deaths including that of a six-year-old epileptic girl in Minnesota last year, which followed the wilful suppression of unfavourable studies –

TOM. There was a settlement –

SOPHIE. Yes, I’m sure her parents are living in splendour somewhere –

TOM. Remind me again why we’re doing this.

EDWARD. Because you need to hear it.

SOPHIE. Or the continuous promotion of various drugs for non-approved uses, including, of course, the misbranding of Fenerak, the destroying of documents pertinent to the investigation being a detail I’ll just skim over in this instance –

TOM. What is your point?

SOPHIE. And instead I’ll just focus if you don’t mind on the one case –

TOM. Uganda.

SOPHIE. – choosing it perhaps – because of the constrictions of time and the urgency to communicate my grievances – in a representative, if you like, way –

TOM. Representative?

SOPHIE. – as the most telling example I mean of this company’s – excuse me, of your new client’s – character and in order to focus some of the questions I’d like to ask you on just this one case, using it as a point of reference –

TOM. Go on, then.

SOPHIE. – as a launch pad, if you like, for me to discover –

TOM. Interrogate.

SOPHIE. – who it is I’m living with these days.

TOM. Fuck you, Sophie.

EDWARD. Read it to him.

Pause. She takes a deep breath before launching into it. She reads from a clipping, interjecting from time to time with her own remarks.

SOPHIE. ‘Two years ago, in 1999, an outbreak of measles, cholera and bacterial meningitis occurred in a region of Eastern Uganda –

TOM. I know all this.

EDWARD. Louder, with feeling.

SOPHIE (increasing in volume and intensity). About one hundred and twenty miles north of the capital, Kampala. Representatives of Fletcher’s were there within a fortnight to assist’ –

EDWARD. Assist!

SOPHIE. That’s the word it uses – assist – ‘the affected population. An experimental antibiotic, Maloflaxacin, was administered to approximately three hundred children. Local officials reported that more than one hundred of those children died from infection within two days of ingesting the drug, whilst the great majority of the rest developed mental and physical deformities.

TOM. I said I know all this.

SOPHIE. According to consistent reports of various witnesses, Fletcher administered the Maloflaxacin without parental consent.’

TOM. It’s going to court.

SOPHIE. I know, here it is, there’s more: ‘In the lawsuits, Fletcher is accused of using the outbreak to perform unapproved human testing as well as allegedly under-dosing a control group –

EDWARD. Unapproved human testing.

SOPHIE. – being treated with traditional antibiotics in order to skew the results of the trial in favor of Maloflaxacin.’

TOM. Would you please tell me where the fuck this is leading?

SOPHIE. It’s leading, I suppose, to the fundamental question, Tom, which is not ‘What are you doing working with these people?’ or ‘How do you feel in your heart helping this company promote an image of themselves which is at the very least dishonest?’ or not even ‘In abetting a criminal –’

TOM. Abetting?

EDWARD. That’s the word.

SOPHIE. ‘– do you in fact become an accomplice to the crimes of murder, perjury, corruption…’

TOM. For fuck’s sake.

SOPHIE. But the question it’s leading to, the essential question to which I need to know the answer, Tom, if we are to continue living together, trying to form a home together, is quite simple really and the question is –

TOM. You’re unbelievable.

EDWARD. ‘Who are you?’

SOPHIE. Is ‘Who are you, Tom?’ Who are you? Who are you?

TOM. Who am I?

Pause.

SOPHIE. Are you, for instance – and this is just one possible strand, one of many directions we can choose to go in – are you, for instance, a racist, Tom?

TOM. How can you even ask that?

SOPHIE. And as a racist I don’t necessarily mean someone who walks around in a hooded white top with – I don’t know – a pitchfork or a blazing torch in his hand – no, that would be crude, too obvious –

TOM. How can you fucking ask that?

SOPHIE. But more someone who believes that the life of a child born in another part of the world, who just happens to be of a different colour and belongs to a whole other socio-economic group from his dear self, is not quite worth the same as that of a child living in, let’s say, I don’t know, Hartford, Connecticut or Paris, France?

TOM. The fact that you even –

SOPHIE. Because it feels to me, Tom, that your new friends at Fletcher do make that distinction, they make it most emphatically by choosing to send their teams to Uganda in order to ‘assist’ in this particular way, knowing full well that they’re using those children as laboratory animals all in the pursuit of nothing more than the bottom dollar.

TOM. You’re simplifying things.

SOPHIE. Because their lives are expendable, worthless, replaceable.

EDWARD. Simplifying things?

TOM. Things don’t change overnight.

EDWARD. The best lack all conviction.

SOPHIE. Things don’t change at all, Tom, unless you force them.

Pause.

TOM. So what are you asking me to do? I don’t have the time to sit here in this room having abstract conversations about –

EDWARD. Abstract?

SOPHIE. They’re abstract?

TOM. – about the choices we make, about moral decisions, about what it means to survive in a particular society –

EDWARD. To thrive in a particular society.

SOPHIE. Nothing abstract about what we’re talking about.

TOM. Of which we are all a part, like it or not, in which we all try to do the best we can –

EDWARD. Do we?

TOM. – realistically, I mean, within the confines, the constrictions of the real world –

SOPHIE. There it is again, that real world you insist on referring to –

EDWARD. You create that world, Tom, you’re creating it now.

SOPHIE. – as if you’re implying you’re trapped in it, some hapless prisoner –

TOM. Realistically, practically, what are you asking me to do?

SOPHIE. – instead of an active, conscious member of it who has the power not only to question it but to challenge, oppose, radicalise and reconstruct it.

TOM. Realistically.

SOPHIE. Because that is the person I thought you were.

EDWARD. The Power to Heal.

TOM. Jesus.

Pause.

EDWARD. Test him.

SOPHIE. I want you to go in today and turn it down. Turn down the Fletcher contract.

EDWARD. Test his mettle.

TOM. You what?

SOPHIE. I want you to go into work today and tell Roger Hartmann that you are turning down the Fletcher contract. That you don’t want anything to do with it.

TOM. An ultimatum.

SOPHIE. Other jobs, fine, other contracts. But not this one.

TOM. So you’re blackmailing me.

SOPHIE. Am I?

TOM. I think that’s what it’s called. I think you’re saying ‘Turn down the Fletcher contract or I’m going to England and there’s a good chance I may not return.’

EDWARD. That is what she’s saying.

TOM. Well, I can’t do it, even if I wanted to.

SOPHIE. Why not?

TOM. Not that I do because I will not be blackmailed, Sophie, held to fucking ransom.

SOPHIE. Why can’t you do it?

TOM. I can’t turn around after eight months of prepping for the fucking thing and say, ‘You know what, Roger, I have ethical concerns.’