When the dust has settled, a man returns to pick up the pieces of his shattered childhood.
Can he start again?
Or are some things just too broken?
This full length stage play has undergone a research and development period. Plans for its future are TBC!
Script Excerpt:
Marc.
My stories aren’t really amusing.
Jim.
We won’t be shocked. Go on, tell us about one.
Marc.
Erm… Alright. I wrote one called “The Future”.
Judith.
I like the title.
Marc.
Yeah. Erm… It begins with a guy burying two bodies in his back
garden. The body of a woman and a baby. The story is told from his
perspective, in flashback. He’s trying to piece together how he got to
be in the position of burying these people. The structure is quite loose
as it’s told through his memories and not necessarily the truth. He
remembers the woman to be beautiful and in love with him. Through his
memories we realise the couple had very little money and he was
desperately unhappy at work. He wasn’t popular and clearly wanted to
escape his life. He then remembers how happy he was when the woman
became pregnant. With the child he saw a better future. He saw the child
doing all the things he wanted to do. Having the successes that had
eluded him in his life. He kept checking up on the pregnant woman,
making sure the baby she was carrying came to no harm. His future lay
with that child and he would stop at nothing to make sure that the child
was all right. As the story progresses his memory becomes closer to the
truth of the situation. We realise that the woman was not his lover,
but a hostage. The woman was never in love with him, she was a woman he
kidnapped and all he did was impose his own feelings on her. She was
kept locked in a room with no chance of escape. He was using her as a
vessel to carry his child. He was in love with her, but more importantly
he was in love with the baby she was carrying. That’s where his future
happiness lay. Then one day he came back to check on her and he saw her
lying still. She wasn’t breathing, she’d turned blue. He panicked. He
didn’t know what to do. He then thought that maybe the baby was still
alive. If he could get it out of her, maybe it would be able to breath.
He needed to cut her open. He ran to the kitchen, he grabbed a carving
knife. He ran to the room where her lifeless body lay. He put a hand on
her chest and pushed the blade into her stomach. It was then that the
force of his hand upon her chest pushed air through her wind pipe,
releasing the lump of bread that was trapped there. She’d obviously
choked on some food he’d left for her. She then sat up with a huge gasp
of breath. She could breathe again. She looked at him, she looked at the
knife in her stomach. She lay back down again. He looked at the blood
pouring from her. He saw her breathing slow down, he saw the light in
her eyes die. He realised it was more important than ever to take his
baby out of her. He slit her open and took out his child. He then
realised that when he stuck the knife in the woman, he’d also stuck it
in the head of the baby. He’d killed them both. That’s where the story
ends.
There is a moment of silence.
Jim.
Yes. That sounds really erm… Really fascinating.
Mary.
Very dark.
Jim.
Yes. Very dark.