Suspension of a Sparrow

! 1

I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in. Virginia Woolf

This is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper.

T. S. Eliot

! 2

Characters

- Ciara - meaning dark/dark-haired, Girl with one eye - (who forgets nothing)

- Kane - meaning ancient, enduring, anglicisation of Cian, also nod to Sarah Kane, Old man (w/ alzheimer’s) - the lighthouse keeper

- Adder - young man (forgetful) - allusion to the biblical name “Hazar-addar”, meaning an imprisoned generation. Also in folklore it was thought that adders that were mortally wounded would not die until the sun sets. To Druids they represented the renovation of mankind.

- Schizophrene: only referred to as schizophrene to denote loss of identity, can be male or female (delusional)

! 3

(stage in blackout, with lighthouse lantern projecting light spinning round turns on, does 3 circuits and turns off again, then, said in metallic/somewhat robotic voice through speakers in ceiling/above stage)

Good morning. the night has been interrupted

We apologise for any disruptions this may cause

(Beige material dust sheet lifted upwards off stage and characters by pulley ropes, as we hear the groaning of the electronics/hydraulics and the lights slowly come up, we see that we are in the lantern room of a lighthouse. Circular glass window curving all the way around the back of the stage, made of electric privacy glass - can freeze up at a moment’s notice - and does throughout play as and when director deems appropriate.

Grey light seeps in from outside. There are several lamps placed on different levels around the room.

A raven flies past the back window. This continues cyclically, as if on a loop, every 7 minutes, for the rest of the play. This does not change. The only thing that changes is the direction in which it flies past, switching each time. It never flies close enough to the window for anyone to be able to ascertain whether it is the same bird.

Throughout the play, ivy intertwined with seaweed gradually creeps in through the floorboards and walls.

The weather oscillates between two extremes - the sea and sky are very turbulent, or eerily still and grey, nothing in between, except in transitions, which are sudden and rapid.

The clock constantly reads 3am - the second hand ticks around, but the clock never reads anything other than 3am. _

KANE is sat, between stage left and centre stage, in a ragged, stained, large (tall back) brown leather armchair that dwarfs him. CIARA is sat, between stage right and centre stage, and a little further upstage, curled up in a smaller, pale blue fabric armchair, which she barely fits into. ADDER is sat on the floor, centre and upstage, between KANE and CIARA, legs outstretched, with his back leaning up against the stool which he was presumably sat on previously. SCHIZOPHRENE is sat centre stage, slightly downstage, in an empty paddling pool, with a dust sheet covering them completely, but under it, staring directly ahead and swaying gently in small movements from side to side.

The wind blowing outside is heard.

Kane: [grumbling to himself] Sorry.

! 4

No one’s sorry. Nobody’s in control. Therefore. Nobody’s . accountable. no authority here. pah. sorry.

Ciara: [eyes still shut] At least they’re kind enough to apologise. Disruptions are changes and those are quite the inconvenience.

Adder: [Not looking up] Not wrong. Nobody’s in control. Change can be vicious when that’s the case. I wonder if anything will happen in today’s change.

Ciara: I wonder what Nobody thinks of what’s left.

Kane: Not much I suspect. Just observing the scraps between the ones that remain, and probably glad they didn’t stick around.

[struggling to get up] Will someone please get me my stick. [No one moves].

Anyone! [Everyone remains still]

Ciara: Haven’t you had enough?

Kane: Yes.

Adder: [getting up and sitting on his stool] Why are we here?

Kane: There’s nowhere else.

Adder: [getting up, beginning to pace the room, circling the lantern and occasionally changing direction] What are we supposed to do ?

Kane: Nothing. Tend to this lamp [indicating at lighthouse lamp, one large electronic one with a smaller oil lantern on top].

Adder: But what’s the point of that.?

Kane: Purpose. Which is why I need someone to get me my stick. If it’s not attended to it dies.

[No one moves still.]

Adder: but why? [continues pacing]

Kane: To keep the shadow walking_.1

[ADDER returns to seat and sits back down] [Silence.]

Ciara: Why do we stay here.

“Life’s but a walking shadow”1

! 5

Adder: You heard him. There’s nowhere else.

Ciara: But why do we stay here?

Adder: Well for starters you can hardly see and I can hardly concentrate.

Doesn’t exactly make for cartographical excellence.

Ciara: But we can go. Somewhere. Anywhere. Surely.

Adder: [having not listened] Sorry?

Ciara: What.

Adder: What?

Ciara: Never mind.

[Long silence]

Adder: We should go.

Look for anywhere.

Ciara: What? No. You said it yourself. Nowhere else.

Adder: I said nothing of the sort!

We’re here, suffocating, in this.. this.. this concrete jungle. and I won’t do it any longer. Can’t. Won’t. Can’t. willn’t?

Kane: What concrete Adder, we’re in bloody No Man’s Land. Idiot. Take a look outside, what do you see. [gestures in circular motion at back and front windows].

[grey, stormy weather outside, as if lighthouse is engulfed in a very thick, ash grey cloud]

Adder: [peers out] The Grey.

Kane: You see, we are at the higher apsis of humanity. The aphelion. Apastron. Apogee. Furthest from civilisation. And our orbit has ceased to go on. No one can hear us. No one can see us. If a tree falls next to us did it really fall? They don’t know. We don’t know. There are no trees. We are bound in the ash by stars and stage. In perfect symmetry and perfect misery.

There’s the rub. That’s the thing; there are more ways than one to leave the light, but it’s not the lighthouse

! 6

you should be concerned with escaping.2

Ciara: Right. back to the drawing board then.

Adder: I wonder when they’ll get here. They said they’d come.

Ciara: [exasperatedly] Who.

Adder: Those uh. The men. The ones we met in the valley.

Kane: What valley?

Ciara: We’re by the sea.

Kane: No valleys here.Only cliffs.

Ciara: Barely even land to be honest.

Kane: Sea-to-be.

Ciara: It eats at the ground on which we stand. Sit. Speculate. One day it’ll be gone. As will we.

Kane: Hopefully.

Adder: Yes, the men. The ones who whispered. Souls violent as the wind.

Ciara: Didn’t hear them.

Adder: Well they said they’d come. Where the shadow falls.

Kane: Well it fell long ago. They’re not here. Why would they leave one broken column_ only to find another - one shrouded in darkness. Don’t be absurd. Forget it.

Ciara: Well then.

Adder: What are we doing?

Kane: Hardly living. It perhaps qualifies as existence.

Adder: Then what shall we do today?

Kane: What did we do yesterday?

Ciara: What did we do yesterday?

Is there no way out of the mind? – Sylvia Plath2

! 7

Adder: I don’t know.

Kane: Likely the same as today.

Ciara: Then we’ll do that then.

Adder: Yes. Perfect.

[Long pause]

Sorry, what is that?

Kane: } Wait.Ciara: }

Adder: Ah.

[Silence]

Adder: What are we waiting for?

Kane: } AnythingCiara: } Nothing [SCHIZOPHRENE lets out a cry, but no one notices/pays attention]

Adder: Makes sense.

[Silence]

Adder: When are they coming?

Ciara: They’re not.

Adder: Then why are we waiting.

Kane: No alternative.

[silence]

[verging on furious] Will someone get me my damn stick?! Anyone?

Adder: [completely ignoring/oblivious, unclear which] You know what I want?

Ciara: No.

Adder: No. Nor I.

Kane: Nothing.

! 8

Ciara: Everything

Adder: Both.3

Kane: How dull.

[with emphasis, pointedly at them both] S t i c k ?

[everyone remains completely still, oblivious to KANE’s request. KANE becomes increasingly agitated, stretching in his seat in an attempt to get up, reaching towards the stick. His attempts become increasingly desperate but to no avail. He cannot stand, nor can he reach his stick.]

Adder: You know. I wish I could live a million lives. That’s what I want. One just doesn’t seem worth it.

Kane: One is plenty. Believe you me.

Adder: [ignoring him] There’s so much to be done. Places to see. Things to do. Dreams to chase. Life to live.

But so little time to do it in.One life doesn’t grant half enough time to do what you want.

Ciara: So instead we do what we must.

Adder: Which is what?

Ciara: Nothing.

Adder: So we’re stuck here. Nothing to be done_. How cheerful.

Ciara: Happy days.

Kane: Dreaming is better kept for the daytime in any case. Its sole service is distraction. 4

And there are no places left. None but here.

Unless you wish to venture into the swamp [gestures at audience], but do so at your peril.

Adder: I’m no more than a dilettante. But of life. Useless. Never able to conclude the pursuit of one thing before another poaches my attention. Hopeless attempts to do all resulting in a consequent achievement of none.

Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to 3

wanting nothing. – Sylvia Plath

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by 4

night. - Edgar Allan Poe

! 9

Kane: Then stop trying.

Ciara: Or commit to one.

Kane: I’ve opted for truth. I am not myself. My mask is still in tact.5

Ciara: and I’ve opted for sight.

Adder: But you can’t see.

Ciara: Always set the bar high.

Adder: Not so high it’s out of reach, surely

Ciara: Where’s the achievement in that? Aspirations are to be aspired to. No one ever said they were to be reached.

[pensive pause]

How about living? Not existing, living. There’s a distinct difference_.

Adder: Nobody showed me how to live.

Ciara: It’s easy.

Kane: Simply a state of perpetual growth. (edging closer to the sparrow’s final landing .) But 6

we don’t think about that.

Ciara: Not much thought to it.

Kane: None at all, in fact.

Ciara: Follow the patterns. The routine will do the rest.

Kane: Existence is no more than a geometric sequence. Nothing but the esse and its 7

extensions. Es sea. The es. the mess, the less, the guess. And the sea.

Adder: The sea.

Ciara: Yes. it carries us into the future or the past, depending on the current_ and the time of sight.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the 5

truth. - Oscar Wilde

“There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow” - Hamlet - life viewed as ephemeral thing, 6

flight and fall of a sparrow is symbolic of this

Meaning essence of life - also a ref. to Godot and “Essy-in-Possy”7

! 10

Adder: Perhaps we should dive.

Ciara: From where. To where?

Adder: The catwalk. The sea.

Ciara: We’d die.

Adder: But it’d be quite the scenic route.

Ciara: Why not.

[No one moves]

Kane: Existence is. And it grows through experience. It multiplies itself. It happens to you. Living is taking hold of that impulse, and steering it where you wish.

Adder: Then let’s dive.

Ciara: I never said I wanted to live. Existence suits me fine. It means I don’t have to think.

I thought I was dead but then you spoke they cried [indicating at SCHIZOPHRENE] he stood (or tried to) [glancing at KANE] . That’s enough. I know I exist.

It’s not enough.

I spat in the kitchen sink and it dissolved. Angry young men disappeared with it.Did it exist. I don’t know. It left anxiety. It left flatness. Was it there. The men aren’t angry they’re sad they’re mad they’re crushed.I know enough. I don’t understand.I don’t feel enough. That is all.

[Long silence. Lights flicker and fade and become bright again.]

Adder: What’s that smell?

Ciara: It’s us.

Kane: Eau de stase.

Adder: It reeks.

Open the window.

Kane: Can’t be done.

Adder: It can, and you will do it.

! 11

Kane: Get me my stick.

Adder: No.

Kane: We don’t want it open.

Adder: I want it open. Air is democratic you dithering fool. Now open the damn window.

Kane: And by that logic, we are long since first past the post. And by the power invEsted in us by dEmOcrAcy, the window will remain shut. Thank you.

Consummatum est.

Is that clear? Capisce?

Adder: [raises eyebrows and shakes head, verging on angrily] Everything’s a joke with you, isn’t it?

Kane: No. Everything’s a joke.

The moment it isn’t it becomes a tragedy.

That is the world in which we live. The dichotomy of dramatic life, if you will.

[long pause]

Adder: Dramatic life.

Ugh. I miss the media.

Ciara: Christ, why?

Adder: Connection. The noise. I miss the noise.

I miss the buzz.

About people who were special.

I miss when people were special.

I miss the prospect of being special.I miss being more than nothing. Pretending we could be more than something.I miss Chloe Cruz.

Kane: What’s so special about her?

! 12

Adder: I don’t know. She just was. Is. She was on a TV show. Is.

Ciara: Who’s to say you’re not?

Adder: I’d never thought of it like that I suppose.

Kane: I could put you on a TV show. I couldn’t. Imagine I could. Irrelevant. Doesn’t mean I’d give any more of a toss about you.

Ciara: doesn’t mean you’re special

Kane: Go on, get in that set there [gestures at empty old fashioned thick TV set, glass front smashed just the casing], put on a show, see if I care.

Adder: I’m not special.

Ciara: Never said you were.

Kane: So why are they?

Adder: I don’t know. People care. You watch their lives play out. She’s irrelevant I suppose.

Kane: Aren’t you watching your own life play out?

Adder: I endeavour not to.

Kane: You ought to. If you don’t watch, it disappears. Observation is the only break you get.

Adder: There’s too much I don’t want to see. Blocking it out is preferable. Papering over it with the stories of others. Substitution is infinitely better than confrontation.

I just want. to steal the good moments. and hide them. lock them. in a box. keep them safe. look at them sometimes. Show them off even. Life would be better that way.

Ciara: That’s called lying.

Adder: omitting the truth.

Ciara: also known as lying. deception at the very least.

Kane: But they need it.

Ciara: What?

Kane: The belief. the carefully cultivated compound of self-loathing and society’s endless limerence with celebrity, resulting in our very own societal megalith at which we hurl our prayers, prayers to a broken stone that we mindlessly hope may one day answer back, so we return, day after day, to prove to ourselves we are more than the others. We are more than

! 13

what the voices in our heads tell us we are.

We are more than mediocrity.

Ciara: But we’re not.

Kane: Yes. But that’s beside the point. Don’t shatter the illusion. Some might not make it. That’s what they need.

[pause]

Life is but the poor player didn’t you know. It needs to play. They need it to play. Else it loses its purpose. for many the illusion is necessary to stay afloat. to lose it is their greatest fear.

[long silence]

Ciara: What do you fear most?

Kane: The Dust.

[long silence]

Ciara: We ought to check on the Dreamer.

Kane: Do we have to. Is it time yet?

Ciara: Long since past.

Kane: Fine.

[CIARA walks to one side of the room, flicks a switch, which, as in the beginning, lifts the dust sheet off SCHIZOPHRENE using pulleys, rising to the roof, spreading out like a canopy above all of them just below the stage ceiling, leaving the SCHIZOPHRENE, still swaying gently and staring blankly ahead. They are in a cold sweat, and have blood dripping out of their right nostril]

Ciara: [crouching down a little way away from them, speaking without feeling but not in a hostile manner] How’s it going?

[As SCHIZOPHRENE speaks, lights dim around them, vignetting effect - everyone else goes into the grey shadow and/or darkness while spotlight remains on them from above and slightly in front of them. As they describe the storm, rain begins to pour down violently from the ceiling into their paddling pool, and water in the pool bubbles]

Schizophrene: [looking wildly around, confused and frantic] At sea. Sea. C. ca. Need to move. Need out. Sea. Choppy. Turbulentempestuoustormentuotuberculosis. We need. g-g-go-go. Why are you still?? MOVE! they’re coming!! we will drOwn why are you standing swim swim swim

! 14

how are you walking on the water are you god no no no no he is gone he is gone he spits on us [looks up at rain pouring from ceiling]heleft.

[pause, as if spellbound by something seen in the ceiling, relaxes slightly, enraptured by whatever they think they see. At end of pause, rapid snap back into panic, goes rigid again, deeply perturbed, shaking, hands clasped together shaking]

We must go we will die (would that be bad//???) die death danger danger dream die dreamer dreamer dreamers at sea will drown drown in your dreams dreams dignity disturbed we disturb the universe this is our repayment payment passivity these aren’t my thoughts my 8

thoughts are gone these are my thoughts are they are they i feel like not feeling but they are inserted ice cold ice cold polydipsia please is ice cold can i have some water please please

what?

Ciara: It’s alright. I’ll get you some water.

Schizophrene: WHAT?? NO water? NO. too much water we’re engulfed in water can’t you SEE? WHERE ARE YOUR EYES THEY ARE GONE YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU CANNOT SEE LISTEN TO ME THE WAVES ARE CRASHING crAshing up and down up and down flung back to the floor where did they go where what walls of water climbing crashing clozapine chlorpromazine they say it makes it better they say it lets the light in theylie they lie they’re poisoning me they’re poisoning you they want to kill us all

[CIARA throughout this is shocked and confused, and has been somewhat reduced to tears, though not obviously]

Kane: CALM down. We’re in the lighthouse. Safe. It’s safe here. Please. [Hopelessly] Stop.

[SCHIZOPHRENE stops stock still for a minute and looks at KANE wildly before continuing to jitter/sway/shake/move nonsensically and continue speaking ]

Schizophrene: you can’t see it but you see I can I can they tell meincreased activity in amygdalae, hyperactive hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axishah oooOh multiple incidences of polysubstance abuse they saysevere paranoia they claiman inundation of persecutory delusions ha ha hah nothing wrong with meee they laugh they laugh they laugh at me or with meat melaughter i want to cry i’ll drown in my tears soI’ll laugh

[doesn’t laugh]

Do I dare disturb the universe? - T. S. Eliot8

! 15

to laugh is the radical act laughter is madness the two are mutually exclusive that’s what they don’t know i’ll show them

they know they tell me what to do no one’s in control here they dictate determinism deTURNminism they twist and TURNN the cogs inside mE, my mInd I need freedom what is that liberty you say I haven’t heard of it tell me moretell me more what does it feel like i am confined in my skin it rots but it’s not ripe enough it hurts it’s inexorable i want to leave but i don’t know how how how do i do it I shut my eyes and everything dies as soon as I open them it’s all alive why please stop .

I just want silence but no no words they flood they wash over me they stain my skin they stain the nothingness not even bleach will wash them outthey tell me what they think they don’t like me i am bad they say i am mad they say i should kill myself i should carry on i should hurt myself i should try harder should i i should live life life is experience is perception my perception is the perfect perfectionp-p-positive symptoms positive ha good one ha hallucinations and delusions as if a hideous dream

but they are wrong they got it wrong my perception is perfect i see the same as you only better i see it closer clearer crystalline unimpeded by the chains you call rationality i laugh at your logic you cling to it so blindly when it’s all that prevents you seeing your myopia is self inflicted i have no sympathy for you hah fools fools mankind are none but fools mankind nothing kind about man, Kane, sooner you learnt that the better

hah kindness what kindness what is love i see none here how could any of you love me when they couldn’t i couldn’t I could never even love myself I’ve got so much to love it’s draining it gives nothing back so it burns into something else something stronger what i don’t know what why would they we are strange the world is perplexing, impenetrable, but humans the most so we’d die to be alone but we live for being togetherwe want both we can have neither choices choices everything’s a choice is it yes no i don’t know do you i hope so what is the antidote to loneliness pray tell before we drownwhat is your problem they ask i care i say it is i care i care i care so much too much this isn’t a world for caring those who care are weak, we are swept away the droplet in this hurricane it hurts i cannot tell you how it hurts i feel too much feeling feeling is prohibited or it should be it’s the worst form of torture

[Pauses. Takes a deep breath. Pauses. Looks as though about to collapse. Rain lessens. Another deep breath. They continue.]they watch. look they watch [cameras descending around SCHIZOPHRENE, filming and broadcasting live onto television screens that have descended around the stage, filming them from all angles, inescapable, capturing every single movement, letting nothing go unnoticed] you see they watch there’s no rest. none.

Kane: Who watches?

! 16

Schizophrene: [staring around at all the cameras and screens] Them. the eyes.

Kane: [unable to see them] There are no eyes here. There’s no one to see. None but us.

Schizophrene: They’re HERE. WHY can’t you SEE.

Adder: Who??

Schizophrene: Aliens. I’m sure of it.

Kane: Don’t be ridiculous.

Schizophrene: I’m not. aLeEyenaSHun

a l i e n a t i o n

it’s not a coincidence, Kane.

Though men may be the more logical assumption.

[cameras and screens ascend back up out of sight once they’re no longer the topic discussed]

Ciara: [to SCHIZOPHRENE, delicately, as if dealing with a child] Right. Maybe it’s time for you to go back to your night for a while. Time for more sleep?

Schizophrene: [violently, repulsed by and filled with anxiety at this suggestion] NO. SHUT IT YOU WINKY WONKY WANKER. STAY AWAY FROM ME.

Ciara: [sharply, and walking towards wall where switch is] Well. That’s definitely it. Back you go.

Schizophrene: [broken/begging] NO. Please. Please don’t leave don’t please don’t leave me I I’m stuck I’m sorry I didn’t mean to sorrythe pain the pills the thoughts the voices they ebband flow but they won’t gothey make me someone I’m not I’m sorry they poison the body to save the mind or let the mind go to save the body and I’m doing bothand therefore neither it’s a tightrope and I’m fallingplease catch medon’t let them take my meaning

I’m sorry sorry I’m on the border of my world and yours_ I want to cross I want to leave please don’t leave me here there in the dark let me stay I want company [at this point, increasingly quietly, finishing in almost a whisper] let me live don’t abandon me

! 17

like the rest ofthem.Help meMean somethingto someone.Please.

[moment of stillness. The weather outside begins to clear, the storm fades, leaving a blue/grey stillness. Tears pouring down SCHIZOPHRENE’s cheeks as they look pleadingly. One tear slips out of CIARA’s eye and rolls down her face. KANE unable to look at what’s going on. ADDER observing, not fully understanding, bewildered, upset, and moved in equal parts]

Ciara: [softly] It’s alright. We’ll come back for you soon.

[SCHIZOPHRENE reduced to tears, still with blood on their face from nose, whimpering as dust sheet is dropped back over them, once dropped, fading to silence, but still shaking/convulsing, before gradually becoming completely still. A shocked silence ensues.]

Kane: And there you see a world with no barriers between dreams, nightmares, and reality. Agony epitomised.

Adder: Not dissimilar to ours at this rate.

Ciara: [barely able to speak] Oh no. That is ours. Make no mistakes. You just can’t see it yet.

[silence]

Kane: [quiet, broken] I can’t do this any more.

Ciara: [gently] We have to. We have to go on.

Kane: I can’t.

Why?

Ciara: Because it feels like the end. Which means it’s the beginning.

Adder: How else will we know we exist if we stop. How else could we know we’re not pretending to remember ourselves?9

Kane: We’re all going to disappear anyway. There’ll be nothing left. Nothing is permanent. Why must we bother?

allusion to Pinter - “The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you 9

remember, or pretend you remember.”

! 18

Adder: It’s the pattern. The routine will do the rest.

Ciara: At least we’ll be remembered in these words.

Kane: Very well then. Let’s go on.

The lamp needs attending to.

Will someone please get me my stick?

[CIARA and ADDER remain oblivious to his question, as if they haven’t heard. No one moves]

[Here we see the only moment of good weather. The storm briefly calms. The grey clears. The sky moves through pink purple and orange while the sun sets. Night then sets in. A gale starts to blow, the sea becomes very choppy again, the storm is reborn. The dust sheet is lowered back by the pulleys, covering all on stage but the lighthouse lantern, which flicks on again, and again does 3 circuits. The raven flies past, and this time, shortly afterwards, a sparrow flies past in the opposite direction. The clock moves to 3:01AM. Through the ceiling the metallic/robotic voice booms again:]

We thank you for your patience. And so it continues. Good night.

! 19

Initially for this project I had intended to write an extended essay on (psychological) change; the death of innocence; and the capturing (and decay of) youth in literature, particularly in literature written at pivotal times in history, when eras were coming to an end and massive cultural shifts were taking place. However, I quickly realised that the vast majority of texts I had planned to write on were in fact 20th Century British and Irish plays. On realising this, I decided that a more interesting way to explore the dramatic methods, structures and motives of these 20th Century dramatists would be to instead produce a piece of my own writing - to write a play attempting to amalgamate their styles and their principle concerns, and form them into something nonetheless relevant in a modern context - as a celebration of their work. I did consider broadening my influences to 20th/21st Century Drama instead - and thereby including American drama such as Miller’s All My Sons and The Crucible, as well as Hare’s Stuff Happens, which would have allowed me to pursue a more political approach to writing, however I didn’t feel I could do the genre justice, as it was not one which I was as familiar with. I also didn’t feel I had the depth of historical knowledge (and nor could I gain it quickly enough) to create a piece of really poignant, effective political theatre, and I therefore stuck with 20th Century British and Irish Drama. In terms of keeping my play relevant in a modern context, I was greatly helped by the fact that all of the plays I used as influences are essentially timeless, not being set in any particularly specific place or time - especially in the case of Beckett, whose achronic, nihilistic microcosms in Waiting For Godot and Endgame were my principal influences, and also in the case of Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, which also was a great influence on me and which had no specific setting (not even characters or stage directions) and as such cannot really become dated at all. When setting out to write this play, I decided that Vivian Mercier’s apt summation of Godot was what I was aspiring to create - “a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats”. I wanted to emulate Beckett’s work through adopting his techniques - principally repetitive devices, which he used to “dramatise the ineluctable banality and mundanity of[…]existence” _, and to “reinforce the absurdity of[…]existence, 1

their helplessness, and desolation.” _, in order to create a piece of theatre which dealt with 2

these grave topics that my chosen dramatists (Beckett, Kane, Orton and Pinter) as well as some other poets and authors during similar times (T. S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Oscar Wilde and F. Scott Fitzgerald) were concerned with. These were principally the ideas of old worlds being assailed by the new ones swiftly replacing them (which both Beckett, Osborne [ in Look Back in Anger] and Fitzgerald [in The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise] were doing - trying to come to terms with the drastically changed landscape of a post-war world) , as well as the passing of time more generally, and humankind’s desperate attempts to find meaning within that, and the deep insecurity and alienation that was felt at the times these plays were being written (after wars, and for Endgame and Godot, also during the Cold War). These feelings I quickly realised, are just as, if not more relevant today, in a time when we are trying to come to terms with a world that is imbued with technology, with an increasing focus on self-image and a drastic increase in feelings of loneliness as we become evermore tied up in social media, technology and its advancements. In a world that is rapidly shifting, and one which we the people actually have very little control over, and neither know or understand much about. Esslin said that "Absurdity presents humanity "stripped of the accidental circumstances

Abandoning the Empirical : Repetition and Homosociality in "Waiting for Godot", Andrea L Yates (2004)1

Repetition and Difference in Beckett's Works, Nursel Içöz (1993)2

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of social position or historical context, confronted with basic choices” _, and this is what I 3

wanted to present - I aimed to create a stripped back vision of four individuals, in a bleak landscape, robbed of their individual contexts, simply discussing the anxieties that were prominent in 20th Century British and Irish drama, and which are particularly prevalent today - loneliness and isolation; the (potential) futility of life and the endless cycle of routine; the purpose of life; feelings of irrelevance and not being heard; and the apparent hopelessness that apparently often comes with rapid and unprecedented cultural/societal shifts. The only individual contexts I left my characters with were in my nomenclature and their physiognomy - Ciara’s name meaning dark, and her having only one eye, with very poor vision in the other; Kane being made somewhat physically debilitated, and his name meaning ancient and enduring; while Adder’s name actually stemmed from the biblical name Hazar-Addar, meaning an imprisoned generation - a name which I came across while searching the meanings of numerous other names for potential characters; and finally, leaving the Schizophrene without a name, to denote their tragic loss of identity through their illness and mental incapacitation, as well as the total disregard that this world has for them. In particular I wanted to explore the idea of being governed by an outer realm, and dictated to by an unknown, sinister force, which I implemented through having announcements through an invisible loudspeaker in the ceiling at the beginning and end of the play - setting its boundaries and constraining the characters within them. Tim Fountain’s book, So You Want To Be A Playwright, I found quite helpful, as it presented me with perhaps the most important idea I had at the forefront of my mind throughout the writing process - “Tell them what it is to be human.” This was what I truly sought to do - to honestly represent humanity as best I could - the good and the bad - and to show how different individuals deal with different situations, and how we all may react to such bleak, bland, depressing circumstances, in addition to our general outlooks on life, death, meaning and everything in between. I was also inspired by several performances I have seen over the last year and a half — Sean Mathias’ production of Pinter’s No Man’s Land I found to be deeply sad but incredibly poignant in its treatment of memory and loss, in addition to sustaining it’s humorous tone even throughout banal and depressing (borderline Beckettian) dialogue; Robert Icke’s production of Hamlet which was a very moving exploration of mortality and the psyche, as well as David Leveaux’s production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead at the Old Vic - a production filled with its characters’ shrewd sharp-witted humour, who somehow also manage to never lose their painfully sharp awareness of death and their own mortality. This was something that I tried to do in my play - to treat such dark topics with a measure of humour (if very dry) but equally with the gravity that they are owed. In terms of setting, I decided upon the lighthouse as I wanted to use its symbolism for ironic purposes - it is a beacon, supposedly a sign of stability and safety, a guiding light - except the light is off, and these characters feel anything but stable. It is also an allusion to Virginia Woolf ’s To The Lighthouse, which is essentially a search for the meaning of life, in which the lighthouse is inaccessible - symbolic of a lack of attainability - except these characters have reached it, they’re trapped inside it - they may well have found the meaning of life (or lack thereof), whether they know it or not, and they don’t know what to do with it, or themselves, which I felt reflected the journey (or rather, stasis) that I wanted them to endure, to reflect the tortuous debilitation and suppression that the characters in Godot, Endgame, 4.48 Psychosis, Blasted, and even The Hollow Men had to undergo - exemplified when Pozzo required a “running start” to overcome the oppressive force of the stage space in Godot - a sense of weight and constraint that I wanted to make apparent in my play. I also

The Theatre of The Absurd - Martin Esslin3

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researched the design of a lighthouse for this, and discovered that unfortunately there are very few manned lighthouses in existence, and even fewer that have non-electric lights, but given I opted not to set this play in any discernible era (which I did through completely evading any realistic context), I decided it would be not only manned, but also have the large electric lantern, with a slightly smaller, old-fashioned lighthouse oil (Argand) lamp, placed on top. I made the choice to place the play’s time frame constantly at 3am after reading a line from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Crack-Up, where he made the poignant observation that “In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.”. In terms of writing, I just began writing bits and pieces of dialogue here and there, building on them, and often creating them through looking at and thinking about relevant lines from other plays novels and poetry - perhaps the most influential ones being “I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.” _; “What we call the 4

beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” _; and “The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince 5

yourself you remember, or pretend you remember.” _ The Hollow Men also had a significant 6

influence on me - I find it to be a tragic and beautiful (if bleak) poem (something I have tried to echo), and I have therefore interspersed multiple references to it throughout the play. As I built on these separate parts of dialogue, as they were all fairly thematically similar, I found that the more I wrote, the easier I found it to string them together and fit them into place, only occasionally having to write more to fill in gaps between dialogue for the sake of coherence, but otherwise the writing was a fairly straightforward and fluent process. All my characters, with the exception of Schizophrene, are not modelled on real people - I opted instead to make them embodiments of ideas and different aspects of a combination of my personal views, and the views that I found embedded in the works which were my principal inspirations. For the Schizophrene, I attempted to emulate the voice in Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, with her emotionally charged, manic dialogue and brutal (and sometimes tragic) honesty, which I attempted to do through making the Schizophrene’s speech ostensibly nonsensical but to also infuse it with plenty of feeling, and more meaning than is apparent at first sight. This character was also sadly inspired by someone I knew - one of my close friends had a neighbour who suffered from schizophrenia and would regularly hallucinate, thinking that the roof of her house had collapsed and that frogs were pouring from the sky on top of it, drowning her - something that was incredibly tragic and affecting to see - she would regularly take refuge in my friend’s house for fear of hers falling down on her (when it was in absolutely no danger of doing so). I wanted to represent the agony of this mental health condition as honestly as possible - while the paddling pool may be comic, my intention is not to make the Schizophrene any character to be laughed at, in fact quite the opposite - the paddling pool serves as their boundary that confines them, both a shelter and a prison, and is symbolic of the heartbreaking reduction of such an intelligent astute human to a childish, nonsensical and deeply unhappy individual. I also did a great deal of research into the typical symptoms of schizophrenia and schizotypal behaviour, as well as the drugs commonly used and any side effects, in order to portray this disturbing mental health condition as truthfully as I could, while still preserving its dramatic function. Something that really struck a chord with me was what a reviewer of Edward Bond’s Saved said, which was “What’s really shocking about the play is the vulnerability and

Mad Girl’s Love Song - Sylvia Plath 4

Little Gidding - T. S. Eliot5

Old Times - Harold Pinter6

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humanity of everyone in it, how delicate they are despite the world they live in doing everything to squeeze that out of them” _. While my play contains nothing like the violence 7

of Saved, I nonetheless wanted to represent this idea through it, the overriding humanity and kindness of people even when all seems to be against them, as I hope I made evident in the final interaction between Ciara and Schizophrene, and throughout the play in the instances of kindness amidst the hardship and despondency.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/oct/09/edward-bond-saved-original-cast7

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Bibliography

Fountain, Tim. So You Want To Be A Playwright?, Nick Hern Books Limited, 2007

Kane, Sarah. Complete Plays, Methuen Publishing Ltd, 2001 - Specifically: Blasted, 4.48 Psychosis, and Cleansed

Beckett, Samuel. Waiting For Godot, Faber and Faber Limited, 1956, this edition published in 2006

Beckett, Samuel. Endgame, Faber and Faber Limited, 1958, this edition published in 2009

Fletcher, John. Faber Critical Guides – Samuel Beckett, Faber and Faber Limited, 2000

Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of The Absurd, 1961

Pinter, Harold. No Man’s Land,1975

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, 1599-1602

Orton, Joe. What the Butler Saw, 1969

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own, 1928

Woolf, Virginia. To The Lighthouse, 1927

Eliot, T. S. The Hollow Men, 1925

Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land, 1922

Eliot, T. S. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, 1915

Eliot, T. S. Little Gidding, 1942

Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar, 1963

Plath, Sylvia. Lady Lazarus, 1965

Plath, Sylvia, A draft of a letter to Richard Sassoon, 1955

Plath, Sylvia, Mad Girl’s Love Song, 1953

Fitzgerald, F. Scott, The Great Gatsby, 1925

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia

http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/healthadvice/problemsanddisorders/schizophrenia.aspx

http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/healthadvice/problemsanddisorders/schizophreniakeyfacts.aspx

https://www.rethink.org/diagnosis-treatment/conditions/schizophrenia/symptoms-diagnosis

https://www.rethink.org/diagnosis-treatment/conditions/schizophrenia

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/schizophrenia/

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/schizophrenia/

https://www.time-to-change.org.uk/about-mental-health/types-problems/schizophrenia

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/s/schizophrenia

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/9828583/We-did-not-know-that-our-schizophrenic-daughter-January-Schofields-imaginary-friends-were-hallucinations.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/schizophrenia-henry-cockburn-mental-illness-father-son-patrick-art-folkestone-triennial-art-festival-a7940126.html

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/personality-disorders/types-of-personality-disorder/

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/personality-disorders/types-of-personality-disorder/#schizoid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_keeper

https://www.seathelights.com/other/anatomy.html

http://www.tameri.com/format/wordcounts.html

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/oct/09/edward-bond-saved-original-cast

http://www.samuel-beckett.net/AbsurdAndBeck.htm

https://allpoetry.com/The-Hollow-Men

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2016/may/13/torture-baby-stonings-why-we-need-shock-theatre

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2006/oct/28/theatre.stage

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/oct/12/theatre

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https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/mar/23/theatre1

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2014/jun/30/theatre-of-the-forgotten-breathe-new-life-into-old-talent-sarah-kane

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/jan/12/edward-bond-sarah-kane-blasted

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2000/jun/30/theatre.artsfeatures

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2010/oct/24/sarah-kane-blasted

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/may/11/448-psychosis-sarah-kane-new-opera-philip-venables-royal-opera-house

http://adder.narrs.org.uk/folklore.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lighthouse_lantern_room_with_Fresnel_lens.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cape_Meares_Lighthouse_lens_-_Oregon.jpg

http://www.names-of-baby.com/browser/a/hazar-addar.html#.WmV6QIWnyEf

Abandoning the Empirical : Repetition and Homosociality in "Waiting for Godot", Andrea L Yates (2004)

Repetition and Difference in Beckett's Works, Nursel Içöz (1993)

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