CARYL CHURCHILL
Plays: Five
introduced by the author
Seven Jewish Children
Love and Information
Ding Dong the Wicked
Here We Go
Escaped Alone
Pigs and Dogs
War and Peace Gaza Piece
Tickets are Now On Sale
Beautiful Eyes
NICK HERN BOOKS
London
www.nickhernbooks.co.uk
Contents
Introduction
Seven Jewish Children
Love and Information
Ding Dong the Wicked
Here We Go
Escaped Alone
Pigs and Dogs
War and Peace Gaza Piece
Tickets are Now On Sale
Beautiful Eyes
About the Author
Copyright and Performing Rights Information
Introduction
Some of these plays were written quickly, triggered by specific events, others not. Love and Information has the longest background, starting as a few scenes in the 90s which I abandoned, and rediscovered fifteen years later. I kept a few of the original scenes – ‘Virtual’ is one – and this time saw what I wanted to do and wrote the rest. By contrast, I wrote Seven Jewish Children in January 2009 at the time of Israel’s bombing of Gaza in which over 1000 people were killed. Dominic Cooke at the Royal Court responded at once and it was on stage in early February and online soon after.
The three other very short plays were written in response to being asked. In 2014 Jonathan Chadwick of Az Theatre, which has a relationship with Theatre for Everybody in Gaza, wanted contributions to an evening launching a cooperative project based on Tolstoy’s War and Peace. He suggested looking at a short section of the novel, and I had also read accounts by one of his colleagues in Gaza of family life there. War and Peace Gaza Piece came from that. The following year Cressida Brown of Offstage Theatre produced a show of short plays, Walking the Tightrope: the tension between art and politics. I’d been concerned for some time about the complicated issue of sponsorship, and the implications for the arts of being used as part of an advertising campaign to boost the image of a product. Fossil-fuel firms are particularly keen to look attractive, and I knew about the spectacular disruptions by the activist group ‘BP or Not BP’ at the RSC and the British Museum. In 2017, the week of Trump’s inauguration, Cressida put on a show called Top Trumps and my piece for that was Beautiful Eyes.
Pigs and Dogs was less immediately topical, but it did come from news of a surge in action against homosexuality in Uganda, where the death penalty was proposed though later withdrawn, and from reading the book Boy-Wives and Female Husbands, a collection of material edited by Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe showing how varied and fluid sexuality was in many African tribes before European Christian missionaries imposed rigidity and intolerance. Many former colonies have taken those laws and values on board and come to regard them as their own, seeing recent Western acceptance of homosexuality as a colonial imposition and, ironically, welcoming American missionaries who condemn it.
The other plays, like Love and Information, have less clear origins, though Ding Dong the Wicked suddenly became possible when I had the idea of making two families on separate sides in a war use exactly the same words. I think I’ve been accurate down to the ‘and’s and ‘the’s, not that anyone seeing or reading the play would know. I can’t think of anything to tell about Here We Go, except an old person having said to me how boring it became that trivial things like getting washed and dressed now took up so much time. There was more to it than that of course, as there was more to Escaped Alone than once seeing some women in a back yard through an open gate in a fence.
C.C.
SEVEN JEWISH CHILDREN
a play for Gaza
Seven Jewish Children was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre Downstairs, London, on 6 February 2009. The cast was as follows:
Ben Caplin
Jack Chissick
David Horovitch
Daisy Lewis
Ruth Posner
Samuel Roukin
Jennie Stoller
Susannah Wise
Alexis Zegerman
Director
Dominic Cooke
Lighting Designer
Jack Williams
Sound Designer
Alexander Caplan
The play can be read or performed anywhere, by any number of people. Anyone who wishes to do it should contact the author’s agent (see details on page iv), who will license performances free of charge provided that no admission fee is charged and that a collection is taken at each performance for Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), www.map-uk.org
Note
No children appear in the play. The speakers are adults, the parents and if you like other relations of the children. The lines can be shared out in any way you like among those characters. The characters are different in each small scene as the time and child are different. They may be played by any number of actors.
The play starts during a nineteenth-century Russian pogrom and ends during the bombing of Gaza in 2009.
1.
Tell her it’s a game
Tell her it’s serious
But don’t frighten her
Don’t tell her they’ll kill her
Tell her it’s important to be quiet
Tell her she’ll have cake if she’s good
Tell her to curl up as if she’s in bed
But not to sing.
Tell her not to come out
Tell her not to come out even if she hears shouting
Don’t frighten her
Tell her not to come out even if she hears nothing for a long time
Tell her we’ll come and find her
Tell her we’ll be here all the time.
Tell her something about the men
Tell her they’re bad in the game
Tell her it’s a story
Tell her they’ll go away
Tell her she can make them go away if she keeps still
By magic
But not to sing.
2.
Tell her this is a photograph of her grandmother, her uncles and me
Tell her her uncles died
Don’t tell her they were killed
Tell her they were killed
Don’t frighten her.
Tell her her grandmother was clever
Don’t tell her what they did
Tell her she was brave
Tell her she taught me how to make cakes
Don’t tell her what they did
Tell her something
Tell her more when she’s older.
Tell her there were people who hated Jews
Don’t tell her
Tell her it’s over now
Tell her there are still people who hate Jews
Tell her there are people who love Jews
Don’t tell her to think Jews or not Jews
Tell her more when she’s older
Tell her how many when she’s older
Tell her it was before she was born and she’s not in danger
Don’t tell her there’s any question of danger.
Tell her we love her
Tell her dead or alive her family all love her
Tell her her grandmother would be proud of her.
3.
Don’t tell her we’re going for ever
Tell her she can write to her friends, tell her her friends can maybe come and visit
Tell her it’s sunny there
Tell her we’re going home
Tell her it’s the land God gave us
Don’t tell her religion
Tell he
r her great great great great lots of greats grandad lived there
Don’t tell her he was driven out
Tell her, of course tell her, tell her everyone was driven out and the country is waiting for us to come home
Don’t tell her she doesn’t belong here
Tell her of course she likes it here but she’ll like it there even more.
Tell her it’s an adventure
Tell her no one will tease her
Tell her she’ll have new friends
Tell her she can take her toys
Don’t tell her she can take all her toys
Tell her she’s a special girl
Tell her about Jerusalem.
4.
Don’t tell her who they are
Tell her something
Tell her they’re Bedouin, they travel about
Tell her about camels in the desert and dates
Tell her they live in tents
Tell her this wasn’t their home
Don’t tell her home, not home, tell her they’re going away
Don’t tell her they don’t like her
Tell her to be careful.
Don’t tell her who used to live in this house
No but don’t tell her her great great grandfather used to live in this house
No but don’t tell her Arabs used to sleep in her bedroom.
Tell her not to be rude to them
Tell her not to be frightened
Tell her they’re good people and they work for us.
Don’t tell her she can’t play with the children
Don’t tell her she can have them in the house.
Tell her they have plenty of friends and family
Tell her for miles and miles all round they have lands of their own
Tell her again this is our promised land.
Don’t tell her they said it was a land without people
Don’t tell her I wouldn’t have come if I’d known.
Tell her maybe we can share.
Don’t tell her that.
5.
Tell her we won
Tell her her brother’s a hero
Tell her how big their armies are
Tell her we turned them back
Tell her we’re fighters
Tell her we’ve got new land.
6.
Don’t tell her
Don’t tell her the trouble about the swimming pool
Tell her it’s our water, we have the right
Tell her it’s not the water for their fields
Don’t tell her anything about water.
Don’t tell her about the bulldozer
Don’t tell her not to look at the bulldozer
Don’t tell her it was knocking the house down
Tell her it’s a building site
Don’t tell her anything about bulldozers.
Don’t tell her about the queues at the checkpoint
Tell her we’ll be there in no time
Don’t tell her anything she doesn’t ask
Don’t tell her the boy was shot
Don’t tell her anything.
Tell her we’re making new farms in the desert
Don’t tell her about the olive trees
Tell her we’re building new towns in the wilderness.
Don’t tell her they throw stones
Tell her they’re not much good against tanks
Don’t tell her that.
Don’t tell her they set off bombs in cafés
Tell her, tell her they set off bombs in cafés
Tell her to be careful
Don’t frighten her.
Tell her we need the wall to keep us safe
Tell her they want to drive us into the sea
Tell her they don’t
Tell her they want to drive us into the sea.
Tell her we kill far more of them
Don’t tell her that
Tell her that
Tell her we’re stronger
Tell her we’re entitled
Tell her they don’t understand anything except violence
Tell her we want peace
Tell her we’re going swimming.
7.
Tell her she can’t watch the news
Tell her she can watch cartoons
Tell her she can stay up late and watch Friends.
Tell her they’re attacking with rockets
Don’t frighten her
Tell her only a few of us have been killed
Tell her the army has come to our defence
Don’t tell her her cousin refused to serve in the army.
Don’t tell her how many of them have been killed
Tell her the Hamas fighters have been killed
Tell her they’re terrorists
Tell her they’re filth
Don’t
Don’t tell her about the family of dead girls
Tell her you can’t believe what you see on television
Tell her we killed the babies by mistake
Don’t tell her anything about the army
Tell her, tell her about the army, tell her to be proud of the army. Tell her about the family of dead girls, tell her their names why not, tell her the whole world knows why shouldn’t she know? tell her there’s dead babies, did she see babies? tell her she’s got nothing to be ashamed of. Tell her they did it to themselves. Tell her they want their children killed to make people sorry for them, tell her I’m not sorry for them, tell her not to be sorry for them, tell her we’re the ones to be sorry for, tell her they can’t talk suffering to us. Tell her we’re the iron fist now, tell her it’s the fog of war, tell her we won’t stop killing them till we’re safe, tell her I laughed when I saw the dead policemen, tell her they’re animals living in rubble now, tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out, the world would hate us is the only thing, tell her I don’t care if the world hates us, tell her we’re better haters, tell her we’re chosen people, tell her I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel? tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her.
Don’t tell her that.
Tell her we love her.
Don’t frighten her.
LOVE AND INFORMATION
Love and Information was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre Downstairs, London, on 6 September 2012. The cast was as follows:
Nikki Amuka-Bird
Linda Bassett
Scarlett Brookes
Amanda Drew
Susan Engel
Laura Elphinstone
John Heffernan
Joshua James
Paul Jesson
Billy Matthews
Justin Salinger
Amit Shah
Rhashan Stone
Nell Williams
Josh Williams
Sarah Woodward
Director
James Macdonald
Set Designer
Miriam Buether
Costume Designer
Laura Hopkins
Lighting Designer
Peter Mumford
Sound Designer
Christopher Shutt
Note
The sections should be played in the order given but the scenes can be played in any order within each section.
There are random scenes, see at the end, which can happen any time. They need not be included, except Depression, which is an essential part of the play.
The characters are different in every scene. The only possible exception to this are the random Depression scenes, which could be the same two people, or the same depressed person with different others. In Piano, the singer can be a man – just change the name. I’m indicating with numbers the speakers in Piano because there’s been confusion in some productions about what’s happening.
Caryl Churchill gratefully acknowledges that the LAB scene is based on material from The Making of Memory by Steven Rose, published by Bantam in 1992, revised edition published by Viking in 2003.
1
SECRET
Please please tell me
no
please because I’ll never
don’t ask don’t ask
I’ll never tell
no
no matter what
it’s not
I’d die before I told
it’s not you telling, even if you didn’t
I wouldn’t
it’s you knowing it’s too awful I can’t
but tell me
no
because if you don’t there’s this secret between us
stop it
if there’s this secret we’re not
please
we’re not close any more we can’t ever
but nobody knows everything about
yes but a big secret like this
it’s not such a big
then tell me
will you stop
it’s big because you won’t tell me
no I won’t.
Is it something you’ve
don’t start guessing
or something you want to
please
or you’ve seen or heard or know or
please
and if it’s something you’ve done is it a crime or a sin or just embarrassing because whichever
no I don’t want you to know.
All right.
All right I’ll tell you
you don’t have to
I’ll tell you
yes tell me because I’ll never
it’s not that
tell me because I’ll always
all right I’m telling you.
Tells in a whisper.
No
yes
no
I warned you
but that’s
yes
oh no that’s
yes
how could you
I did.
Now what? now what? now what?
CENSUS
Why do they need to know all this stuff?
They’re doing research. It guides their policy. They use it to help people.
They use it to sell us things we don’t want.
Plays 5 Page 1
