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Shona
30th anniversary edition of the inaugural
Verity Bargate Award winning play
The theatre work of award winning-writer
Tony Craze has been described as ' . . .
assured, enthralling, daring, and with an emotional charge powerful enough to
send one reeling . . .'
Shona offers
a precise, piteous and fearful picture of a young girl’s faltering steps in the
no man’s land between the states we call normality and madness.
After 10 years in mental institutions, Shona
steps out into the world and meets Harry who is convinced she can be helped
back to ‘normality’ by understanding and care.
A setback brings Shona face to face with
consultant psychiatrist Dr Ian Wall. The play charts the conflict in the battle
for Shona’s health between Harry’s attempts to care and Dr Wall’s penchant for
psycho-surgery interventions.
Out of a deceptively simple narrative Tony
Craze has mounted a scathing indictment of society’s attitudes to the mentally
disturbed.
Shona is from ‘a voice of honest compassion
and insight into the area where dreams turn into anger, despair and ferocious
frustration.’ (Bloomsbury Theatre Guide)
‘Makes
going to the theatre seem a necessity rather than a luxury or diversion.’
Malcolm Hay (Time Out)
Author’s note
The Verity Bargate
Award was established in 1983 to commemorate the inspiring contribution made by
Verity Bargate to the world of new writing in British Theatre. Working with the
Soho Theatre Company, which she co-founded, Verity Bargate succeeded in gaining
the Soho Poly Theatre an international reputation through her encouragement and
premiering of new writers.
Shona was first
produced at the Soho Poly Theatre in 1983. There have been many productions of
Shona in a variety of versions since – both shortened versions and a much
longer version. The performance text here is that used in the original
production.
The text then has
not been updated to reflect specific changes in approaches to treatment of
those deemed to be mentally ill – reference the Mental Health Act 1983: while
this has undoubtedly dampened the frequency of psycho-surgery operations overall
content of such new Acts often remains effectively the same: Section 65 of the
1959 Act became Section 41 of the 1983 Act . . .
How much then has
really changed? Judging from the report, An Abandoned Illness (Schizophrenia
Commission 2012) – not much: Shona’s story might well have been included as one
of the case studies contained in that report.
Paperback & extract here
Kindle edition here
Squint
Squint was first performed at the Chelsea
Theatre in London on 22 September 2003.
The cast was as follows:
Hugh: Rory Murray
Courtney: Patsy Palmer
Jack: Joe Shaw
Ruth:
Sadie Shimmin
Director: Sue Dunderdale
Designer: Carrie Southall
Sound: John Leonard (for Aura)
Producer: Francis Alexander (for Chelsea Theatre)
(In Courtney’s East End studio.
Present time.
Tuesday 6.30 p.m.)
(Hugh - whisky glass in hand. Before
him, suspended in a clear plastic resin, is a colourful, almost pretty, swirl
of blood stained bandaging, and alongside, as if an integral part of this
art-work, Courtney, aged 30ish, an
absolute mess now - body contorted, waiting for the judgement.)
Hugh
That’s it?
Courtney
That’s how I found
‘em.
Hugh
So I go down to the
local launderette - pick something up, pair of old socks, stick ‘em up – and it
says what?
Courtney
The point is I’ve
kind of suspended a moment of this life – the blood still being fresh, right?
Hugh
And I spent years
studying the history - the applications, the aesthetics?
Courtney
You saying I’m shit.
Hugh
No, Courtney.
Courtney
You’re a fucking
alcoholic.
If I’m shit how come
you’re with me?
Hugh
I like the sex?
Courtney
It’s risk. Because I
dice with God. That’s what I’m telling you.
Hugh
That we wasted years
studying - the practice, the traditions, the social perspective.
Courtney
Yeah. You missed the point. As you know you did.
Hugh
So all universal
endeavours over centuries to achieve –
Courtney
‘Greatness’
Hugh
I was going to say – enlightenment – all endeavours through art,
culture, religion - are all consigned to the fires.
Courtney
Drive anyone to drink - or drugs.
Hugh
(Short pause)
And I couldn’t agree
more.
Yet this maybe the
last.
(Drinks)
Final warning.
Courtney
That’s what the
doctor said?
Hugh
The pancreas has gone.
One more drink, and I’ll be dead within three days (Drinks)
Oh, another doctor
said more or less the same thing three years ago.
Courtney
Something –
valedictory, going on.
Hugh
You wouldn’t want to
end it?
Courtney
In the middle of
something aren’t we? A work in creation.
Hugh
An object of art am
I? And when I’m dead?
Courtney
(Smiles)
You didn’t think you
was immortal did you?
Hugh
I once thought art
might be.
(Drinks)
Courtney
Way you’re drinking.
(Reaction to him)
What? It’s only a
small habit mine.
(Pause)
So you reckon this (the
artwork) is worthy of ‘accolades’?
Hugh
God, you are
addicted.
Courtney
Yeah – all right.
Hugh
No – the glittering
prizes - celebrity!
Courtney
You’re the one can’t
live without something you’ve done in the top ten TV ratings.
Hugh
After tonight, I’m
finished, Courtney.
Some days – a moment
strikes – a split second’s insight – you know exactly what you have to do (Drinks)
Courtney
Maybe you’ve just been
overdoing it.
What do you want? A
long white ride along the blood-tracks, make a night of it?
Hugh
Courtney, I do not want you cutting yourself ever again.
Courtney
(Short pause)
Not what you said last
night.
Kind of bleeding too
easy these days anyway.
Are you really sick?
I think I’m sick.
Hugh
I am sick and tired.
(Rises) And so finally.
Courtney
(Stopping him on
his way out)
One more glittering
award ceremony, eh?
Hugh
(Looks back):
The last. (Walks out)
Courtney
What do I have to
do!
(Jack, (30ish, smartish media), having entered, watches her -
walking up and down in pain)
Jack
You can live without
him!
Courtney
(Stops. Looks,
holding herself as in pain)
No, Jack.
Can’t.
(Darkness)
2.
(Applause sounds.
Tuesday 8.45 pm
Light Hugh at an Awards podium, drink
alongside.
Somewhat drunk.
But handling it well)
Hugh
Ladies and
gentlemen. Welcome. Welcome to tonight’s award presentation, which acknowledges
achievement of the highest order in the world of contemporary art.
But I sometimes
wonder what drives the desire to give awards – I mean is there anyone in the
world today who has not had their five minutes of fame? Give an OBE to a
lollipop lady or a postman; a double first for dissertations on Reggie Kray and
Kathy Kirby.
And does the award
really matter at all - so long as an audience is able to feed its craving to
applaud such giving – for some self-celebration perhaps?
Is art today merely
a prompt for applause – any work an icon enabling rituals and ceremonies to
which we may all be addicted? Are we indeed all caught in some mass addictive
belief system – all addicts – all addicted?
(Drinks)
As well I might be .
. .
(Continues . . .)
Angelus
'One of the most intelligent plays of the year.' (London Evening Standard)
A theatre script from award winning writer, Tony Craze, who
has been described as ‘a voice of honest compassion and insight into the area
where dreams turn into anger, despair and ferocious frustration.’ (Bloomsbury
Theatre Guide)
Angelus tells the story of Mick, Ruth and Mala and their
conflicting and devious attempts to move out of a life ground down by
conditioning and poverty. In this explosive three-hander, the spectre of a
Jimmy Porter figure is resurrected in Mick, bully boy, drug dealer and sinner
seeking redemption through the mysteriously appearing figure of Ruth, whom he
sees as both a Madonna like creature and as the embodiment of his aspirations
to a new life in the USA; Mala simply believes she’s unwell – very unwell . . .
The Hit & Are You Anywhere?
Author’s note
The
texts here were written for forum presentation: following any
performance an audience is invited to give feedback and to rewrite
choices made by characters in performance; then to act out those new
choices for themselves on the floor in place of the original actor.
The
initial performance/presentation is less important in the overall
process than the rerun and all that audience participants gain
through witness of this replay.
Usually
forum presentations are made to constituent audiences – here
working with Outside Edge Theatre to those in early stages of
recovery from substance misuse, with presentations made in prisons,
treatment and rehab centers across the UK.
Often
forum presentations are devised from scratch. The Hit, though
not devised, was nonetheless a product of weeklong workshops with
both those in recovery and with survivors of domestic abuse
(sometimes one and the same).
Forum
work is intended to provoke and to challenge and maybe seen to be
‘less sub-textual’ than regular theatre performance. This is
deliberate; it is part of the craft; likewise there can be no happy
endings in forum work: it is for audiences to point to and to play
out positive resolutions in their own lives.
Does
it work? After one showing of The Hit a regular theatre
director friend emerged railing against what she saw as evident
manipulations in the text. She went back for the second session and
was then quite bowled over by the potential for changes she saw among
those participating in the furious debate that followed. After
another presentation in a Liverpool rehab I was informed 16 men had
immediately signed up for counseling to counter domestic abuse . . .
Are
you anywhere? takes a far broader perspective on addiction. It
began as an enquiry into why all prohibition and treatment strategies
have failed over the centuries – what is it really that drives us
to our addictions? Confronting this, might we not be better
positioned to quit our addictions forever?
The
development of the piece (into promenade) far exceeded the normal
restraints of forum work (50 minutes max, no set, no lighting no
props – nothing but authentic character interaction). Are you
anywhere? remains a text awaiting full realistation yet speaks
powerfully of our drives to addiction.
I
am indebted to Outside Edge Theatre, with whom these pieces were
developed, and to all those encountered in workshops throughout
prisons, rehab and recovery centers.
A Wake for Miss Montreal
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A Wake for Miss Montreal chronicles the lives of four lifelong friends who find comfort in the remembrance of all things past, pleasurable and profane. An elegiac memory piece about sexual desire seen through a gauze of old age and grief. Youth has slipped through the fingers – more galling is that it didn’t take with it those youthful urges: bodies still smell of sex and desire is ever tangible - both locked in a tight synaesthesia with the reds of summer flowers and the waning light of an autumn evening.
‘Proves thoughtful and thought provoking – an enthralling evening.’
(Time Out Critics Choice, London)
The critically acclaimed
Passion, included here in the first of the series, Theatre Scripts # 1, tells a rare story of
love from a Palestinian refugee camp, between a young woman and an older
Western journalist. Opposite worlds, two perspectives, a generation
apart. Passion rooted in love set against the passion of different
politics. Can Bill re-ignite his passion and cross the divide or will
Hanna’s passion for a New Jerusalem see her sacrifice their love?
‘An
honorable and engrossing work exploring the gulf between Western
liberalism and burning Palestinian rage.’ (Guardian, London)
Other scripts selected from a dozen premiers produced across the UK forthcoming soon - see full listing here
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