by Adam Brace
Anne-Marie I support you but forty thousand pounds for dancing and poems, when women lie wounded and dying
Stef And only when people give a shit will anything happen, Anne-Marie – that’s political will. And obviously this festival is bullshit! I mean fucking obviously, you think I don’t know that? But when it goes ahead, more things follow – more funding, more partners, more coverage and we build, we build like Chinese fucking industrialists, so that nobody dares mention UmBongo again when they hear that country’s name – they mention resilience and brutality, and Leopold and PlayStations, and moral debt and I’m fucking sorry Anne-Marie, just let me put that money through
Anne-Marie I will let you put it through but I will spend it how I like.
Stef But it’s my money.
Nounou Either it is your money or it’s not.
Anne-Marie Once the money is ours, I cannot in good conscience spend it that way. My board will not allow it.
Stef You send it to Congo through your channels – how much gets skimmed off in bribes?
Anne-Marie You don’t trust Congolese. Of course. We cannot help ourselves.
Stef How much goes to police, militia, businessmen, officials. You’d be lucky if ten grand made it.
Anne-Marie My channels are corrupt! And your channels are so clean! British tax havens, multinationals, Parliament building paid for / by empire.
Stef Guns, Anne-Marie, that’s what you’d be buying, more guns for Congo
Anne-Marie Guns made where? No guns made in Congo. Who holds the most arms fairs in the world? I think you can guess.
Stef Victor, you can process it!
Victor No. My organisation is not in my name. I don’t exist here.
Stef No, both of you, listen to me. This is happening. Okay? This money is going through
Anne-Marie The angel. Who can never understand.
Stef Anne-Marie! Just do this one thing for me. After everything I’ve done for you. You just tell your board it has to be spent this way. I will write down what you should say, you just read it out!
Anne-Marie has left.
Stef wrestles the phone away from Tony and smashes it on the floor.
Nounou and Victor have left too.
Stef is alone. She looks around for Oudry. He is gone.
TWENTY
RESIGNATION
The band play.
Stef is alone with her tablet.
There is no Oudry to read her message. She reads it herself. Or uses a microphone if such a convention has been used for Oudry?
Stef Dear Huw.
There is to be no CongoVoice festival.
Due to a combination of NGO money, politics, diaspora relations.
And me.
My apols and thanks for your support both personal and professional.
It made it all the more marked when it wasn’t there. Please also consider this a resignation note.
Yours, Stephanie Cartwright.
Elsewhere – probably as the above is taking place:
Victor is accosted by Immigration Police. He hands them his wallet, resigned.
They handcuff him and lead him away.
Possibly, we see Luis.
Free. Unbothered. Going through his tax receipts with Maurice, who is writing the details down.
TWENTY-ONE
WE ARE
Stef’s flat. Stef is in old clothes. Tony stands on the threshold.
Stef That was you pressing it like a fucking panic button
Tony Your downstairs neighbour buzzed me in.
Stef Oh really, what are they like?
Tony In the last two weeks I’ve probably called you a hundred times. Are you alright?
Stef Yup. What are you doing here?
Tony Thought I’d come and see you on the day we were supposed to have a festival.
Stef What a horrible fucking thing to do. Come in.
Tony enters the flat.
Tony You know, people actually thought you were abroad.
Stef Imaginative.
Tony What is so bad exactly? So you tried to organise a / festival
Stef Failed to / organise
Tony You tried and failed to organise a festival. Worse things happen.
Stef Yes, in the Congo. That was the point of the festival.
Tony What about next year?
Stef You’re sweating.
Tony I’ve just had karate.
Stef Karate you’re doing now, of course because it’s 1985
Tony Because of the thing.
Stef Oh.
Yeah.
How’s your karate chop?
Tony We’ve not covered that yet.
Stef What have you covered?
Tony If I got into a street fight right now, I would be able to bow at them and then do up my belt correctly.
Stef laughs.
Come for a walk.
Stef Where?
Tony I want to take you to see something.
He looks at a box of Stef’s unpacked effects from her old office.
That’s your sickbag frame. What did you do with it?
Stef I unframed it.
Tony Why?
Stef I needed to puke so I thought I’d use it for what it was meant for.
Tony Why did you need to puke?
Stef Because I drank too much guilt.
Tony What did you really do with it?
Stef Why do you care?
Tony Can I have it?
Stef You want my sick bag?
Tony If you haven’t burned it.
Stef It’s in the bin, probably at the bottom of the bin. Be my guest and dig it out.
Tony Yeah, okay.
He gets down on one knee and puts his whole arm in the bin.
Stef There’s a better way of doing that.
Tony Probably.
He pulls the sick bag from the bin. It has sauce and coffee grits on it.
He dusts them off. He reads it to himself. He seems like he might read it out.
That’s how you felt flying out of Congo?
Stef Yes.
Tony And how would you ever have found this guy, this father with the head wound?
Stef He’d be registered as an internally displaced person in a camp somewhere.
Tony And. So. Why him?
Stef I don’t know. I.
I didn’t look at him.
Tony folds up the bag and puts it in his pocket.
Tony I want you to come with me now.
Stef I’m not going anywhere with you, your arm’s covered in shit.
Tony Put a coat on, you can come like that.
Stef Not till you tell me what for
Tony Because we booked a band and we’re going to see them play.
Stef Don’t be fucking weird, Tony. And insensitive.
Tony I’m serious.
Stef They’re not playing?
Tony We booked the space, I booked the band and they’re playing tonight.
Stef Why?
Tony Because we booked them.
Stef And you’ve not advertised.
Tony It’s a closed thing.
Stef You’re making this poor band perform to no public? What a waste of their time
Tony Their idea.
Stef Was it fuck
Tony They want to say they have done the gig.
Stef Can’t they just lie?
Tony I don’t think they want to.
Stef No, it’s pathetic and it’ll depress me even more.
Tony Gets you out the house.
Stef It’s a stupid idea.
Tony So it’s a stupid idea
Stef And a pointless one.
Tony And a pointless one, yes okay.
Stef The only point was to raise awareness. How much awareness will this raise?
Tony This will raise no awareness. And it’s a stupid and pointless idea. But they are still playing.
Stef And
no one is going.
Tony We are, Stephanie.
We are going.
So put your fucking coat on.
Stef
She begins to put her coat on
TWENTY-TWO
LOOK AT THE WOUND
A stage in North London. The band strike up. They are dressed differently.
They begin to perform as Rumba-stious – downbeat Western indie song in an upbeat rumba style: ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ by The Smiths.
The band play. The music is too loud to hear anyone speak, possibly the loudest of the show.
Stef and Tony are standing watching the band.
Anne-Marie enters. Stef and Anne-Marie look at each other.
Anne-Marie nods at her. In acknowledgement. It is not angry. It is not affectionate.
Stef gestures to Anne-Marie’s eye. There is no patch. Anne-Marie gestures she can see.
Anne-Marie gestures that she’s left something outside.
She returns with Suzanne.
They greet Suzanne. They all watch the band.
Suzanne and Anne-Marie sway together.
A camp in South Kivu, DRC. A month later.
A crowd of poor Congolese men. Stef and a translator approach them.
The translator speaks to the group of men. They usher one forward.
It is Oudry. He is wearing a hat.
Stef speaks to Oudry through the translator, making sure to look directly at him.
The translator gestures to Oudry’s head. Oudry speaks through the translator.
Stef produces some money. And pays Oudry.
Oudry lifts his hat, bows slightly and displays his wound for her to see.
Stef looks at the wound. She looks as hard and as long as she can before Oudry puts his hat back on and calmly walks away.
End of play.
About the Author
Adam Brace was born in London in 1980. His first fulllength play, Stovepipe, had an eight-week London run in collaboration with the National Theatre. It was shortlisted for the George Devine Award, named Best Political Theatre of the year by Time Out, nominated for a WhatsOnStage award and listed in the Sunday Times Best Twenty Theatre Events of the Decade. They Drink it in the Congo is his second full-length play. Shorter plays include Midnight Your Time, a one-woman show for Diana Quick. His first script for film, Best, won the 2013 Sundance London Short Film contest and was officially selected for Sundance Festival 2014 in Utah. Adam is Associate Dramaturg at Nuffield Theatre, Southampton, and is a regular director and script editor for live comedy.
By the Same Author
STOVEPIPE
Copyright
First published in 2016
by Faber and Faber Ltd
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This ebook edition first published in 2016
All rights reserved
© Adam Brace, 2016
The right of Adam Brace to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All persons, events and organisations in this play are entirely fictitious.
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ISBN 978–0–571–33495–7
