my eBay’s have come!! Having my early Christmas Joy moment frfr raaaahhh 🤩🤩🤩!!
In order (from left to right) :
“The Wardrobe” by Sam Holcroft
“Period Parrrty” by Gayathiri Kamalakanthan
“Dear Young Monster” by Peter Machale
I deffo can’t wait to read each play text/script, especially since all 3 deal with queer themes and feature queer characters (both “Period Parrrty” and “Dear Young Monster” feature a non-binary and trans character respectively as the main character in each respective play, whilst “The Wardrobe” (which is basically an anthology of sorts where different scenes take place in different historical periods and feature different characters throughout, and in the play it has one recurring object throughout all the time periods, which is the titular wardrobe) features a queer character in the last ever scene, which takes place in modern day)
(also my drama club is doing a production of the play “The Wardrobe”, but only a 9-scene version due to time reasons and stuff, and the original play text is 12 scenes, so it will be interesting to read it in the original 12-scene form)
As I really want to further my reading interests, I thought getting some play texts would be cool and stuff. Also stage plays are pretty cool too and reading them in play text form will be very interesting fr!!
You are invited to celebrate the marriage of Leyla and Joel. Dress code in place. Time of the exchange of the vows set. Entertainment will begin shortly after.
That's the official version for this gathering. For the Ministry. And Motherland.
What's really happening is: this performance is stage without the licence from the Ministry and players commend your courage and will to participate. The risks are great. Welcome.
A mechanic writing a play - a mirror of his reality. A director of the Ministry of Culture who claims to be a patron of the arts, a benefactor. As long as the art is aligned with what the Ministry says happened. As long as it's art and not the depiction of the real world, because "a mirror is not a painting!". A young woman caught between two men. A celebrated playwright to guide the young mind.
Because no one really wants to face the reality or rather relive it for what it is (was) - especially not the ruling regime when the truth is not exactly compatible with the doctrine. Theatre is supposed to be this profound spectacle lifting spirits. It does not raise doubts in the official version of history.
The thing with truth and art? It always finds its way to the surface. Bruised and battered? Maybe. But eventually comes to light...
'A Mirror' is such a careful web, each thread reveals something different, each delivers a gut punch - with finesse and precision, I may add. Layer, after layer, digging deeper - each character searching for... well, something.
Artist versus censor. Truths and recollections of events excluding each other. And somewhere between: valuable lessons on how to write a play. How to build characters, arcs, differences between writing comedy and tragedy, character's choices and challenges, what could influence character's change. All excellent points to explore by a playwright. The very same points being picked apart by censors so the play fits the image of a great motherland.
Very Shakespearean (but careful! these books are banned!) - a play within a play exposing truths of a rotten system ('Hamlet'). The tragedy is imminent, the audience knows how the story ends and yet one hopes that this time it will be different, that it will defy the odds, gods and all the chaos between (like one would hope for star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet). A quote from 'Macbeth', completely unmatched with the situation only adds to the drama.
The tension grows and grows throughout the play, until it becomes this heavy knot weighing you down.
It starts small: a little red light at the back of your head as you laugh, a part of the collective ('wedding guests'). It changes hue slightly later: it becomes a chip on your shoulder, but you're still laughing. What danger? The fourth wall doesn't exist. The boundaries are a blur. So it creeps up on you when the grand finale unravels and your heart beats a little too fast. The laughter? A bit forced by then, covering the unease.
Palms sweating as the tragedy peaks right before your eyes. The sense of urgency never leaves you and is fed by the players through 2-hour "ceremony".
Company led by excellent Jonny Lee Miller is playing on the audience's emotions like it's a Stradivarius. Tanya's Mei and Michael's Adem battle their own demons, the reality, lose and find themselves, they shine and burn bright within the tragedy presented onstage.
Sam Holcroft's 'A Mirror' is a whirwind of twists and turns, raising questions about morality, ideals and whether it's better to live on your knees or die on your feet. And how far can one go to silence rebellious voices.
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'A Mirror' by Sam Holcroft. Directed by Jeremy Herrin.
Cast includes: Jonny Lee Miller, Tanya Reynolds, Michael Ward, Aaron Neil, Geoffrey Streatfeild, Miriam Wakeling
Performed in Almeida Theatre London (August- September 2023)
The likes of Goldman Sachs and PepsiCo have paid £22,000 to hear Nick Clegg’s thoughts on the EU. So it was something of a coup for the London European Forum – a joint initiative from the European societies of UCL, LSE and KCL – when it got to hear them for free. Last March, the former Deputy Prime Minister took questions from Dr Nick Wright and the audience on everything from the Liberal Democrats’ experiences in coalition to the then-looming referendum, offering an eloquent (if by that point somewhat familiar) defence of the European Union.
Perhaps most enlightening were his asides, offhand jokes and moments of self-deprecation. When Clegg was asked, for instance, at what point in government he realised quite how badly the election would go, he started to laugh: “Quite early on…” It seems to be an inevitability, he reflected, that the smaller party in a coalition suffers, pointing to similar routs for the Labour Party in Ireland and D66 in the Netherlands. “And I probably hoped that we would buck that tradition, but we didn’t.”
What did he think of David Cameron, at the time still Prime Minister, before his premature self-defenestration? “I think he’s an effective politician.” Joking about offending the one Conservative in the audience, Clegg connected this political effectiveness with a lack of ideological baggage, a belief in power but not much else. And joking aside, he blamed the very prospect of a referendum on that Tory self-interest: “This is all about the tensions within the Conservative Party and nothing else… Referenda are only ever held when the governing party can’t make up its own mind, and it asks the rest of us to make their minds for them.” If anything, a prescient statement about the infighting which characterised the Conservatives before the referendum and which is crippling the party now.
He was, however, positive about David Cameron’s renegotiation effort. It would have been impossible to change the structure of the EU unilaterally, he reminded us, describing the deal instead as a series of “more incremental and largely worthwhile changes” that attempted to clear up some longstanding irritants – issues such as deportation and marriage visas. And for the former MEP, the most important change was the new mechanism whereby a single non-Eurozone country could have forced a debate over problematic Eurozone laws.
This was not, however, the most important change for most of the British public. As Clegg himself recognised (in another aside), limiting access to benefits was “obviously the most politically resonant change”. This euphemistic admission hinted at the gulf between him and much of the country; between our European Society and the communities across Britain estranged from Brussels; between pro-EU 18-34 year olds and anti-EU over 55s. At one point, Clegg lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Here’s the great secret: a lot of our fellow citizens don’t give a damn [about the EU], they really don’t.” Our lecture theatre was unusual in caring about the issue, he suggested, with millions caring more about the NHS, or crime, or getting their children on the property ladder.
Maybe. But while only 20% of the British public saw the EU as one of the most important issues facing Britain according to the Ipsos MORI Issues Index, 44% prioritised immigration – an issue which became inextricably associated with the European Union. Indeed, the out campaign successfully managed to associate the EU (by way of immigration) with long queues in A&E and soaring house prices, all the issues which Clegg correctly identified as being high up on the public’s list of priorities.
Long queues in A&E and a lack of social housing have far more to do with austerity than immigration. It is one of the ironies of Clegg’s legacy that, for all of his pro-immigration rhetoric, his coalition let immigrants and the EU be the convenient scapegoat for a failing public sector. Governments have long benefitted from this narrative, channelling anger as it does away from public service cuts. But by failing to combat this narrative for so long, it gained a momentum all of its own, one that proved to be unstoppable.
Clegg returned to his coalition partners time and time again. He couldn’t help but sound frustrated – frustrated that he was relying on the government to make an effective case, rather than being a part of that government. If there was a current underlying all of his answers, it was this frustration, this sense that the Liberal Democrats could have steadied the ship. He sounded helpless when he described the possibility of his children “growing up in a country which is drifting somewhat friendlessly, somewhere south of Greenland”. And for all his eloquence and passion, he probably was helpless, the Q&A at times feeling like a career retrospective from someone whose role had long been played out.
At one point he imagined whether, even with a vote to stay in, “some of these Brexiteers… would be like those soldiers on Pacific islands who are fighting the war 30 years after the war finished.” Instead, with the vote to Leave, it’s his party which is left channelling Imperial Japan’s ragtag army, as the only mainstream party which refuses to accept the legitimacy of the referendum. Fighting against Brexit and posed to vote against Article 50, they are the lone holdouts on an island drifting, friendlessly, somewhere south of Greenland.
