you’d have to go somewhere with rocks
LENA
gannets are big and white
MRS J
like a gull
LENA
bigger
SALLY
not like an albatross
VI
albatross round your neck
LENA
fly for years and years and never land.
VI
Birds can be frightening
SALLY
birds?
VI
if they swoop down
MRS J
no that’s bats, they get in your hair
SALLY
they don’t really
LENA
I was told as a child
SALLY
bats are worse because they zigzag
VI
‘bat bat come under my hat, I’ll give you a slice of bacon’
LENA
what’s that?
VI
I don’t know, I just know it
LENA
you’d hardly want it under your hat if you don’t even like birds.
SALLY
Elsie chases birds
LENA
Elsie the dog?
VI
Elsie the dog’s been dead five years
SALLY
Elsie the baby.
LENA
Dinner with Kevin and Mary
SALLY
did you get an impression
LENA
very cheerful, delicious lamb
SALLY
enjoy cooking sometimes
MRS J
Frank likes a lamb chop
LENA
I do love a kitchen
SALLY
my grandmother’s kitchen
LENA
mine’s more of a cupboard
SALLY
mine needs a coat of paint
LENA
would Rosie do it?
SALLY
do it myself, just need to make time
MRS J
I can’t go up a ladder
LENA
that same dark orange or maybe
VI I can’t love a kitchen, I can’t love a kitchen any more, if you’ve killed someone in a kitchen you’re not going to love that kitchen, I lost that flat, even the kitchen where I am now reminds me of that kitchen, completely different colour, the cooker’s on the other wall, and the window, but maybe it’s the smell of food cooking, it’s meat does it, cooking meat, the blood if it’s rare, we don’t often have meat, when you’ve cut somebody and seen the blood you don’t feel the same, when he fell down you think oh good oh good and then you think that’s a mistake, take that back, the horror happens then, keep that out, the horror is the whole thing is never the same, he’s never a person alive somewhere any more, never the same with my son is the worst thing never forgive me how do you talk to a twelve year old when you’ve killed his father you can’t explain everything the whole marriage what it’s been like you don’t want to make him hate his father you do want to make him hate his father but it wouldn’t be right you don’t want him to think you’re someone who would try to make him hate his father, he was twelve, he’d visit me, it’s hard to talk to a teenager if you’re not seeing him all the time you need to be saying things like tidy your room have you done your homework do you want to watch a movie, I thought he’d be completely grown up but I got time off you have to do good behaviour, six years he was eighteen he was grown up he was living by himself he’d moved up north he’s got a life I’m glad he’s got a life, he’s got a new partner again he phones sometimes, at least he phones, that’s the worst thing even worse than the blood and the thrashing about and what went wrong that’s a horror but the horror goes on not seeing him he’s got a life, it comes over me sometimes in the kitchen or in the night if I wake up sometimes if it’s hot that’s worse I can’t breathe properly it all comes back in the night, but you get up in the morning and that’s better put the kettle on but it’s always there not there in the kitchen it’s always there.
LENA
Maisie’s a good cook
VI
I’m lucky with Maisie
SALLY
all those nieces
VI
I’m lucky with all those
LENA
Maisie bakes
VI
yes but not crazy baking
LENA
a nice sponge
VI
she’d do a birthday cake for her sisters.
SALLY
Rosie’s going to China
VI
Rosie?
LENA
holiday or?
SALLY
university
VI
will she learn Mandarin?
LENA
always wanted to go to Japan
SALLY
get to Tesco first
VI
that’s nasty
SALLY
no
VI
yes
SALLY
joke
VI
ha
LENA
I thought it was funny.
MRS J
Terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage terrible rage
VI
Why did the chicken not cross the road?
SALLY
why did the chicken not cross the road?
VI
a car was coming
SALLY
that’s just silly.
LENA
The sun’s gone
VI
this time of day
SALLY
this time of year the shadow comes up earlier
LENA
still it’s nice
VI
always nice to be here
MRS J
I like it here
SALLY
afternoons like this.
MRS J
And then I said thanks for the tea and I went home.
End.
PIGS AND DOGS
Pigs and Dogs was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre Downstairs, London, on 20 July 2016. The cast was as follows:
Fisayo Akinade
Sharon D Clarke
Alex Hassell
Director
Dominic Cooke
Lighting Designer
Jack Williams
Sound Designer
David McSeveney
Note
Three actors, any gender or race but not all the same. Each can play any character, regardless of the character’s race or gender.
A dash – means a new speaker.
The play is substantially based on material from Boy-Wives and Female Husbands by Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe.
–
Somebody says
–
President of Gambia
–
We will fight these vermins
the way we fight malaria-bearing mosquitoes.
–
Somebody says
–
President Mugabe
–
If dogs and pigs don’t do it
why must human beings?
–
Somebody posts
–
You western-backed goats.
They forced us into slavery and killed millions.
Now they want to downplay the sinfulness of homo.
It shall not work.
–
Somebody says
–
Zuma, South Africa
–
When I was growing up an ungqingili
would not have stood before me.
&n
bsp; I would knock him out.
–
Uganda.
Anti Homosexuality Act 2014.
Death penalty.
Later amended
to life imprisonment.
–
I know I shouldn’t have sent him to that
white school.
–
Somebody says
–
Ethics Minister in Uganda
–
If I kissed a man
I think I should die, I could not exist.
It is inhuman.
Just imagine
Eating your own faeces.
–
Newspaper says
–
Two hundred top homosexuals.
–
Names, pictures.
–
Hang them.
–
Museveni says
–
President of Uganda
–
Ugandan independence in the face of
western pressure.
–
Mugabe says
–
President of Zimbabwe
–
We have our own culture.
–
Somebody says
–
in America
–
member of a rap group
–
There is no word in any African language
that describes homosexual.
–
But
–
sagoda never marry and wear skirts
–
ashtime dress like women and do women’s work
–
mumenke is a man-woman
–
wasagu is a lesbian
–
yan daudu
–
umukonotsi
–
m’zili
–
tongo
–
kitesha
–
chibadi
–
ovashangi
–
wobo
–
If I had been a man
I could have taken a wife and begat children.
If I had been a woman
I could have taken a husband and borne children.
But I am neither. I am wobo.
–
Somebody says
–
American intellectual
–
Homosexuality
is not always a conceptual category.
–
Hausa, yan daudu
–
Yes, I’m yan daudu, we dress like women,
we sing and dance and serve the fried chicken.
We can still get married and give a girl children.
You don’t have to love her to give a girl children.
–
Hausa
–
Kwazo means work and that’s male.
Baja means goods and that’s female.
–
Two men can be kwazo and baja.
–
An old woman can be kwazo and her
young husband is the baja
because she has the power.
–
Two women together is kifi
when the two have equal power.
Two men together can be kifi
if they both have equal power.
–
It’s play, wasa, play.
–
You want someone and it’s iskanci,
–
craziness.
–
Somebody says
–
Evans-Pritchard, anthropologist, last century
–
My informant Kuagbiaru says
–
this is how it used to be with the Zande.
–
The boy’s my wife.
I asked for his hand with five spears
the same way you ask for a maiden.
That man who had sex with him must pay
me compensation.
Soon he’ll choose his own boy-wife like all
the warriors,
I’ll find another one.
When a prince dies his boys are killed so no one
else can have them.
–
A king of the Maale in Ethiopia
–
a long time ago
–
the king could say
–
Because I’m king I’m the most male man.
Everyone below me is less and less
and least male of all is the ashtime.
The night before a ritual I must abstain
from women.
I’m happy with my ashtime.
–
Nzinga of Ndongo
–
seventeenth century
–
succeeded her brother.
–
I am the king, I dress as a man.
I have a harem of men dressed as women.
I raised an army to fight the Portuguese
and kept Ndongo free for forty years.
–
Mujaji the first
queen of the Lovedu
–
this is Lesotho, nineteenth century
–
I have a harem
they are all young women.
I am helped to rule
by mothers of the kingdom.
There are many queens
among Bantu people.
–
Women in Dahomey
–
eighteenth century
–
soldiers.
–
We never get married, we live like men.
Prostitutes are kept for us like for the men.
–
We marched against the Attahpahms as if they
were men
but we found them women
and defeated them.
–
We are no longer women.
We are men.
–
The Fon in Dahomey
–
When we stop being small
we’re kept from the girls
so we turn to each other.
–
Most of us grow up to take women for wives.
–
But we’ve stayed together
all our lives.
–
And a woman in Ghana
–
This is not so long ago
–
We girls had each other,
now we’re married.
We buy big beds
and still meet each other.
–
Again in Ghana
–
Man or woman,
if you have a heavy soul
you desire a woman.
Man or woman,
if you have a light soul
you desire a man.
–
Somebody says
–
Nuer in Ethiopia
–
Men here don’t have sex with men.
It’s different with that man because he’s a woman.
It was decided by a prophet of Denge
and now she can take a husband like a woman.
–
In Lesotho
a woman says
Plays 5 Page 11
