The performance text is a combination of improvisation from the actors, written testimony from interviewees in Rialto and Dolphin’s Barn, Dublin 8, Rachel Keogh’s autobiography Dying to Survive (Gill & Macmillan, 2007) and authored texts by Grace Dyas. The interviews and the texts authored by Grace Dyas are the sole texts detailed here.
HEROIN was performed by Barry O’Connor, Lauren Larkin and Ryan O’Conor (first production, performances 1 – 3), Conor Madden (work-in-progress and first production, performances 4 – 9), Ger Kelly (work-in-progress, second through fifth productions), Dylan Brophy (aged 12) and Ross Kenny (aged 11).
Stage Designer
Doireann Coady
Lighting Designer
Eoin Winning
Costume Designer
Emma Fraser
Producer
Sarah Murphy
Sound Designer
Frank Sweeney
Researcher and Producer
Shane Byrne
Assistant Director
Dylan Haskins
Assistant Designer
Emma Fraser
Assistant Lighting Designer
Eoghan Carrick
Production Manager
Helen Collins
Stage Manager
Emma Fraser
Assitant Stage Manager
Niamh Denyer
Sound Operator
Gavin Hennessy
Stage Manager
Gemma Collins
Production Assistant
Shirley Somers
Dublin Fringe Festival, 8–17 September 2010, Smock Alley Theatre
axis, Ballymun, 24–26 March 2011
Dublin Theatre Festival (as part of ReViewed), 4–9 October 2011, Smock Alley Theatre
Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival, Groningen, The Netherlands 16-19 August 2012
Draíocht, Blanchardstown, 10 & 11 October 2012
Winner of Spirit of the Fringe Award 2010.
Author’s Note
The following is a selection of the written texts in the play HEROIN that was made collaboratively in 2010. The action of the play proper in our version of HEROIN moves from the 1960s to the present day while a living space is constructed on stage live. Because the performance is largely unscripted, that is, it follows a rigid rules structure that the actors improvise within – or what happens is set but how it happens is not – I have elected not to include stage directions. Because the performers do not play ‘characters’ but rather ‘personae’ or ‘versions of themselves’, I have omitted character names. I would invite anyone wishing to stage this piece to use these texts, along with their own rigorous research process, to create their own narrative using these texts as a framework. I would advise that anyone wishing to stage it should also read Rachel Keogh’s book Dying to Survive and seek her permission if they wish to include it. Ultimately, for a million metaphysical paradoxical reasons, it would be impossible for anyone to stage the version of HEROIN that I ‘wrote’. However, I invite you to use these texts to make your own. I would also refer readers to an essay that I wrote for Irish Theatre Magazine, as it provides the necessary context for how this work was produced collaboratively, which I think will be of interest to the reader… The essay can be found at: http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Features/Current/This-is-about-everything-that-ever-happened
SECTION ONE. THE NINETEEN SIXTIES SECTION. THAT IS WHAT THIS SECTION IS CALLED, OKAY?
– This is a story about heroin.
– We’re moving now
We’re moving
Hope comes
Hope goes
Swings and roundabouts
Post boxes are being painted from red to green
We’re building boxes on boxes to cut the landscape
We’re seeing progress loom over our heads
We’re living in mansions
We’ve got our own doors
We’ve got our bathrooms
We have mansions
With balconies too high to see our children
Sean Lemass is helping us play catch up
We’re moving now
We’re going
Foley St. has fallen down
We’re up and out
We’re on
We’re gone
We’re getting televisions to watch troubles
We’re cleaning out our lungs
We’re coming home to roll spliffs
We’re getting paid
We’re contributing something
We’re staying here
We’re coughing and dying of consumption
We’re turned on
We’re rejecting our parents
We’re not concerned with material goods
We’re making our children lambs of god
We’re cleansing their souls with leather straps
We’re sending our daughters to breathe in steam
We’re drinking too much
We’re leaving them at it
SECTION TWO. THE NINETEEN SEVENTIES. THE SECTION THAT DETAILS THE EVENTS OF THE NINETEEN SEVENTIES.
– This is a story about Joey.
– Joey started drinking at eleven and smoking hash at fourteen. He came from a big family. They were the first in their block to get a television.
He thinks his dad might have stolen it, but he’s not sure. He says he did poorly in school due to behavioural problems and poor concentration. His mother called a priest to the house when he was caught stealing to pay for drink and clothes. For a short time he served as an altar boy.
When he was caught stealing again, he was sent away.
When he came home, he started taking painkillers; palphine, diphenol. He took heroin first in 1978, when it was beginning to creep in. He vomited for hours after his first smoke. People he hung around with offered him some, a well-known Dublin criminal family –
– Who?
– He would have tried anything at the time. He didn’t even know what it was, and didn’t get much out of it either, at first. He started injecting almost immediately. He knew he had a problem before he went to prison again.
– This is a story about me
My da drinks
My ma smokes
I don’t get on with them
Stay outside
My ma is a saint
My da is a cunt though
I’m never there
Close your eyes
Lean forward
Every muscle in your body
Can you feel it?
My ma has a new fella
Don’t like him much
Can you feel that?
My da is a cunt
He’s a fucking cunt
Can you feel that?
And I’ll never be like him
Haven’t seen me ma in weeks
My da props up the bar
Lean forward
Close your eyes
My ma is gone out with her friends
They did their best but we hadn’t a hope
My da lost his job
When all the factories closed down
Started drinking
Me ma is grand really
They really did do their best but we hadn’t really a hope
My ma is dead
She died this morning
She’s gone
And she’s never coming back
He’s just always fucking nagging me
And I just
It gets very
Ah for fuck’s sake
See you
See you
You can smile all you want
That’s all I’m saying
Fucking stand-up comedian
That’s all I’m saying
Fuck him
Fuck him from a fucking height
That’s fucking hilarious
Easy
Easy
Stay fucking easy
Alright
Okay
Alright
You
’re gonna pay for that
Alright deadly
Cheers
Yeah grand
Are you actually serious?
I’m gonna bite your face off
I’ll rip your fucking head off
Go for it
You prick
Do you think I won’t?
I’ll rip your fucking head off
Keep it up now
Keep it up
Keep it the fuck up
Keep it up now
Go for it
I dare you
See what happens
– We’re changing now
We’re getting corrupt
We can’t remember who we’re voting for
We’re hearing about streets worth killing for
Somewhere we’ve never been
Poppies are growing
Millions of red poppies
Leaders are changing
Moving and starting to sell in a place we’ve never heard of
An oil crisis ripples and sends us somewhere else
We’re changing to the decimal
We’re swapping our skirts for trousers
We’re leaving or staying to do nothing
Our factories are closing down
We’re signing on
We’re up and out
Our mansions are falling down
Our lifts are broken
Our children are playing with broken glass
We’re being ignored
We’re second-class citizens
We’re having more children to get bigger rooms
Streets worth killing for cloud the agenda
So they tell us it’s not happening
Hope falls
Swings and roundabouts
There’s a war on
That means we can’t rob banks
There’s a crisis that means
We can’t get jobs
We forget what we can do
We have nothing
We feel like less
Some of us take it
Some of us don’t
Some of us can’t
Some of us won’t
Our mothers are crushing benzo’s against their teeth Our fathers are drinking Guinness and talking about the British
We’re living in ruins of mansions
We’ve got nowhere to go and nothing to do
We’re stealing pills from our mothers to calm our nerves
We’re climbing over our neighbours on the stairs
We’re fine though
Because none of this is happening
They’re telling us it’s not happening
SECTION THREE. OR SOMETHING. THE EIGHTIES. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS IN THE EIGHTIES.
– She’s after having a baby now
A little girl
I think it’s with her ma
I got pulled out of the bed by the ankle
Pushed out to the landing
Punched in the stomach
Fell down the stairs
When we got broken into we didn’t get a new window for a few weeks
And we got a letter yeah
A letter off the corpo
Saying that we were being fined
For breaking our tenancy agreement
Can you believe that?
I met a fella, I suppose that was how I got into it
More often than not,
It’s always a fella
This place is not on a map
It’s not on a map of Dublin
I can’t get anything on tick now and that’s a fucking problem
No labour till Wednesday
What the fuck
What the fuck
I guarantee you
No I guarantee it
If this was happening in Rathgar
They’d do something about it pretty quick
Walked up with a knife
Give me your bag love
Ran away
Scored
Every day the sickness gets worse
You start off being careful
But eventually you don’t care
It’s just like
You need that ya know
You need that
And if you can’t get it you’ll do fucking anything
I knocked at the door and a young wan answered
Told her that her da left something for me upstairs
Walked upstairs and looked around
Came back at the weekend
Took it all
During the 1980s anyone from the south inner city who had a video player got it robbed
It was tragic
Started going over once a week and bringing the boxes back on cargo ships
It was fucking easy
It felt like they weren’t even trying to stop us
Nobody touches you when you have the virus
And you know you feel very alone
I came back from the disco and kneeled down at the statue of the Virgin Mary
It started lashing raining
And I prayed till the morning
Little fuckers
Little fucking fucks
If it isn’t nailed down they have it away
Fuckers
You go in with a shopping bag
Take the whole arm of jumpers
Into the bag
You walk out
Once you don’t look like you’re on drugs nobody notices
We call the police but nobody comes
Taxis won’t pull in under the arch
My mother cried when I said I was moving in here
My da bought me a bottle of brown phi and locked me in my room for weeks
Nobody talks to you when you’re sick
They know you’re sick
You can’t even buy milk in shops
You only talk to other people who take drugs
And you make friends with people who take drugs
And that’s just it
Open your handbag and offer out the Valium
Sure we’re all brothers and sisters in Holy God’s family
I went to my doctor and he told me all he could do was tell me to stay off the gear
He said I should go to my priest
Hands go around your waist and it makes you breathe in Get your fucking hands off me
Close your eyes
Maggots and mould and rot
Feel the sick coming up and falling out my mouth
He never fucking stops
Smack in the jaw
Taste blood
Slam the door behind me
Put your hands over your ears and say lalalalala
Smack in the jaw
Taste blood
Slam the door behind me
– They even took our new curtains and my mother made them for us as a wedding present
Come on to the pub son
I’ll buy you a few pints
Stay off that fucking dirty stuff
Hands go around your waist and it makes you breathe in
Get your fucking hands off me
Close your eyes
Maggots and mould and rot
Feel the sick coming up and falling out my mouth
He never fucking stops
– I remember just thinking
How can I live here?
I came up the stairs and I just saw runners
His brand new Nike runners hanging there
In the air
I went and got me ma
We take their names at the entrance to the blocks. If they’ve no business here we ask them to move on.
We know each other. They’re our own. They’re one of us. And they’re laughing at the drug watch.
Are we doing the right thing here? We think we are. But are we doing the right thing here, really?
Can we talk about this here? Is it okay, to talk about this here, like this?
He wants help and he can’t get it
And God kn
ows when he’ll ask again
I do leave the place crying
Things have got worse
They’re only going to get worse
They’re not getting any better
This could have been a good place
It could have been brilliant here
A great place to rear a family
And now
And now
– We’re unstable
Walls are falling
We’re reshuffling and stopping and starting
We’re under pressure
We’re making words for things we didn’t have words for before
We’re making rules about something new
People are refusing to eat
For streets we’ve never walked on
We’re in debt
We’re spending nothing
Our mansions are turning into ghettoes
It’s too hot in our towers
We’re serving time until we’re moved on
We’re wheeling our prams for hours
We’ve started to lie about where we’re from
We’re colder than we’ve ever been
We’re seeing faces change
We’re having our windows broken
We’re watching our tellies being stolen
We’re spreading new diseases
We’re waking up to spacemen
We’re holding up the shop van
We’re robbing chemists
We’re swallowing cough syrup
We’re being found in forests
We’re dancing in our casuals
We’re walking home at sunrise
And hiding our eyes
We’re finding veins
We’re scoring
We’re borrowing
We’re dyin’ sick
We’re freezing cold when we wake up
We puncture our skin to make ourselves warm
Swings and roundabouts
We’re coming together to say no to drugs
We’re shooting to kill
We’re taking names
We’re organizing
We’re meeting and talking
We’re marching on houses
We’re beating not treating
We’re moving their furniture out one by one
We’re talking to gun bearers
We’re kicking each other to death
Our names are in the newspapers
We’re moving the quiet ones out to the suburbs
We’re keeping the bad with the bad
We’re praying to Holy God to remove heroin from us
We’re looking at the sweat on Jesus’s brow
We’re doing ‘The Stations of the Cross’
The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Irish Plays Page 2
