There Are No Beginnings E-Book

Charley Miles

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

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

This is not a story about the Yorkshire Ripper. It's 1975 and Sharon just wants to marry Donny Osmond. Her mum, June, is working to keep girls like Helen off the street, and Fiona is desperate to get inside the Milgarth Police Station incident room. Between the years of 1975 and 1980, the women of Leeds lived in fear. With no clue as to who was responsible for the sustained attacks and murders across the city, the authorities urged women to stay at home. From the fear and fury, a steadfast solidarity arose, birthing the Reclaim the Night movement and echoing down the generations to this day. Charley Miles's play There Are No Beginnings was premiered at Leeds Playhouse in October 2019, in a production featuring Julie Hesmondhalgh.

Leseprobe

Charley Miles

THERE ARE

NO

BEGINNINGS

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Original Production

Author’s Note

Thanks and Acknowledgements

Note on Play

There Are No Beginnings

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

There Are No Beginnings was first performed as the opening production in the Bramall Rock Void at Leeds Playhouse on 11 October 2019. The cast was as follows:

HELEN

Natalie Gavin

JUNE

Julie Hesmondhalgh

FIONA

Jesse Jones

SHARON

Tessa Parr

Director

Amy Leach

Set & Costume Designer

Camilla Clarke

Lighting Designer

Amy Mae

Composer & Sound Designer

Charlotte Bickley

Casting Director

Nadine Rennie

Assistant Director

Sameena Hussain

Trainee Assistant Director

Shreya Patel

Audio Description Director

Chloë Clarke

Audio Description Director

Vicky Ackroyd

Observer Director

Anna Marshall

Company Stage Manager

Richard Pattison

Stage Manager

Michelle Booth

Author’s Note

This play was written for, and about, the women of Leeds – of the 1970s and beyond. Women who have failed to be portrayed with voice and agency, women who continue to be underestimated and forgotten.

This is not a play about the Yorkshire Ripper, the victims of his crimes (the claimed, the unclaimed, and those who were attacked), or their families. But it would not be right for us to go without remembering them: most especially, those women who were murdered between October 1975 and January 1981.

Patricia Atkinson

Jacqueline Hill

Emily Jackson

Jean Jordan

Barbara Leach

Jayne MacDonald

Wilma McCann

Vera Millward

Yvonne Pearson

Irene Richardson

Helen Rytka

Marguerite Walls

Josephine Whitaker

C.M.

Thanks and Acknowledgements

As part of the research for this play, I interviewed dozens of brilliant and brave women, and spoke in passing to dozens more. They have made their contributions in huge, story-defining ways, and in the significant, beautiful and terrible details of everyday life. To all I have spoken to as part of this process, who have trusted me with their stories – thank you. I hope we have done your voices justice.

Thank you to Ros Goodman, whose story I could have never found from a history book or documentary.

Thank you to Elaine Benson, for her invaluable knowledge and perspective. I only hope we can begin to match your integrity in this text.

Thank you to Jalna Hanmer, whose academic work became the bedrock for this play.

I absorbed countless books, films and documentaries as part of this process: thank you for those who have done that work – most especially to the inspirational Una for Becoming Unbecoming and to Jalna Hanmer and Sheila Saunders for Well-founded Fear.

Thank you to all those in the Heydays community at Leeds Playhouse who so generously contributed their time and stories. Thank you to the women of Feminist Archive North, for their dedication and tireless energy; we stand on your shoulders.

Thank you to everyone at Leeds Playhouse who continued to support and believe in both this play and my ability to write it over my four-year struggle to do so: most especially to Gilly Roche, Jacqui Honess-Martin, James Brining and Robin Hawkes, and to all who contributed to the development process. Thanks to the Channel 4 Playwrights’ Scheme, for giving me the opportunity to give this script the focus it required.

Thanks to the brilliant women of our cast and creative team, who have interrogated this play with such fierce integrity and sensitivity. Thank you Amy Leach – our director – for bringing light, warmth and joy to even the darkest places.

Thank you to my family; to my touchstone, Tashan; to my partner; and to my agent, Marnie Podos. You all keep me sure.

Thank you, Mum.

C.M.

‘During the five years that the so-called Ripper roamed the North, the consciousness of women began to be transformed. Women began to call on women to depend on each other, and not men.’

Well-founded Fear, Jalna Hanmer and Sheila Saunders

Note on Play

The play should be surrounded by male voices / recordings / music. They should be pressing in on every side.

Bold, italicised stage directions are used for the voices of recordings. The audio as appears in the text has been collated from recordings from the era, but is intended as a guide only. As far as possible, sound design should feature original audio recordings.

– in place of dialogue denotes an active choice not to speak.

– between lines of dialogue denotes an unclaimed silence.

The premiere production featured integrated creative audio description to make the play fully accessible for a visually impaired audience, without the use of headsets. This was achieved in collaboration with an audio description team and the sound designer, creating a soundscape that reflected the action on stage and including the use of some stage directions as dialogue.

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

THE ACTOR PLAYING JUNE

There are no beginnings.

There are no endings.

When we start something we don’t know that we have started on it until

Until we are far down that road and we can

Look back.

THE ACTOR PLAYING FIONA

There are endings.

There’s certainty in endings and

When something ends

You might not know it, here

But you feel it, here.

THE ACTOR PLAYING SHARON

These fixed points these

Stars connecting

Making patterns

These narratives that someone else tells

That makes sense of things

That shouldn’t be made sense of.

THE ACTOR PLAYING HELEN

I can say where this starts.

I can tell you the precise

The exact

The very fucking moment.

THE ACTOR PLAYING FIONA

I could take you right onto the

Edge

The tip

Of the knife that drives into the heart of it.

THE ACTOR PLAYING SHARON

I could make sense.

I could

I could make sense of it all

If I wanted to.

THE ACTOR PLAYING JUNE

There are no real beginnings but here’s one:

Rain.

Can you hear it?

THE ACTOR PLAYING SHARON

A street wi’ houses. Red-brick. Most the lights already out.

THE ACTOR PLAYING HELEN

A dark night.

THE ACTOR PLAYING FIONA

A dark and stormy night.

Like that?

THE ACTOR PLAYING HELEN

And a park.

A sort of park but not one wi’ pretty flowers and benches. Just grass.

The kind of park you might not want to cross by yourself

At night

THE ACTOR PLAYING SHARON

In the dark.

That row of houses just over there.

See them?

THE ACTOR PLAYING FIONA

Some kids waiting in that house

That one right there in the middle.

THE ACTOR PLAYING JUNE

Waiting for their mum to come home.

THE ACTOR PLAYING HELEN

They’ll sit. Cuddled up. Waiting till round five tomorrow morning.

THE ACTOR PLAYING SHARON

Till fog creeps over the fields.

THE ACTOR PLAYING JUNE

Like the weather knows what’s happening.

THE ACTOR PLAYING FIONA

They’ll try and find her

them kids.

THE ACTOR PLAYING SHARON

Hands held, in a row.

THE ACTOR PLAYING HELEN

Little links in a broken chain.

THE ACTOR PLAYING JUNE

Thank God they never do.

–

THE ACTOR PLAYING SHARON

There’s no such thing as beginnings

there’s just

THE ACTOR PLAYING HELEN

You know what happens next.

THE ACTOR PLAYING FIONA

A song plays

THE ACTOR PLAYING JUNE

And we

Begin

‘Crime of the Century’ by Supertramp.

They change their clothes:

FIONA, into a police uniform

SHARON, into school uniform

JUNE, into a blouse, a skirt, a pinny.

HELEN changes into a bridesmaid dress.

Pink, with Bo-Peep frills.

A 1980s triumph.

She feels like a

fucking

goddess.

The vinyl judders.

In Leeds.

HELEN prances; she twirls.

Has this girl ever twirled before in her whole life?

The vinyl skips.

In the red-light area of Leeds.

She caresses the dress

like it’s the most precious silk.

The body of a woman

And suddenly

She can’t stand it on her skin a second longer.

The body of a mother

She tears it off.

Rips it off.

Drags it off.

The body of a prostitute

And she feels our gaze very keenly.

Has been found murdered

She steps into the bath

like it’s by rote.

Like it’s the only thing she knows to do.

Like it’s the thing she’s destined to do

again

and again

and again.

She’s submerged.

The music stops. Or does it come to an end?