Education, Education, Education
Page 5
TOBIAS. Probably.
Pause.
The way you spoke to me earlier was very hurtful.
EMILY. I know.
TOBIAS. I know you didn’t mean it but your words really upset me.
EMILY. I’m sorry.
TOBIAS. That’s okay. I forgive you.
EMILY. Really?
TOBIAS. Yes.
EMILY. But I’ve been a complete bitch.
TOBIAS. Yes, a little.
EMILY. I don’t care. I’m going to be expelled, I won’t get any qualifications, I’ll end up stuck in this stupid place with these stupid people for the rest of my life.
TOBIAS. So jump.
EMILY. What?
TOBIAS. If you really believe that then jump. If you’re imagining the rest of your life from now and it doesn’t seem worth it, jump.
EMILY. You’re not supposed to be saying that.
TOBIAS. Do it. You won’t have to deal with the consequences of what you’ve done. You won’t have to face Miss Belltop-Doyle, Mr Mills, your parents. You won’t have to deal with the embarrassment when you move to another school.
EMILY. Stop it.
TOBIAS. Or you can come down with me. And you can take responsibility for your actions. You can tell Miss Belltop-Doyle that you’re sorry. You can face the music and you can fucking dance to it.
EMILY. I’d rather forget it.
TOBIAS. That wouldn’t be very sensible. You might do it all over again.
Pause.
EMILY. I don’t want to be an adult. It sounds horrible.
TOBIAS. Yes. It is sometimes. But it can also be pretty cool. You can drink beer with your friends. You can teach yourself to cry at things you couldn’t allow yourself to before. You can learn to talk to your parents as equals. You can take all of this energy and work out how to actually do something. Maybe you’ll move to China. Maybe you’ll live by the sea. Maybe you’ll be a train driver, maybe you’ll work with computers, maybe you’ll be a politician. Maybe one day you’ll pick up a mandolin and discover you really like playing the mandolin then just spend the rest of your life playing the mandolin. Who knows? It’s quite exciting.
EMILY. I won’t be a politician.
TOBIAS. Why?
EMILY. It’s just never going to happen.
TOBIAS. Fine. I like you, Emily. I feel that when you’re an adult maybe we could be friends.
EMILY. Could I come visit you in Germany?
TOBIAS. Sure.
EMILY. Cool.
Pause.
TOBIAS. Can I tell you something?
EMILY. What?
TOBIAS. I’m jealous of you.
EMILY. Don’t lie.
TOBIAS. I mean it. You’re young, you’re intelligent, you’re attractive. You have a strong sense of yourself, a very keen sense of right and wrong. Even if today goes as badly as it could possibly go, you’ll wake up tomorrow and you’ll still have all of that.
EMILY. You think I’m attractive?
TOBIAS. Yes.
EMILY. Are you flirting with me?
TOBIAS. No. It was just a statement.
EMILY. It sounds like you’re flirting with me.
TOBIAS. No offence but you’re fifteen and I like men.
SUE bursts through the door dressed up in a bloodstained Geri Halliwell Union Jack dress.
SUE. Emily? Emily! TOBIAS – not you too!
TOBIAS. Sue?
EMILY. Miss. I’m so sorry.
SUE. It’s okay. It’s just a scratch. What are you doing up here? I’ve been so worried.
EMILY. Why are you being nice to me, miss?
SUE. Because it’s my job, Emily, whether you hurt me or not, it’s my job.
EMILY. Why are you dressed like that??!
SUE. I’m Geri! For the assembly!
EMILY. I’ve ruined your assembly. Look…
SUE. Wow, look how small everybody looks from up here… like little Borrowers.
SUE adjusts her blood-soaked wig and shouts down to the people below.
HELLO, EVERYONE! Excuse me, can you listen to me please. Hello? Listen up, guys. Excuse me. SHUT UP EVERYONE AND LISTEN TO ME.
SUE gets everyone’s attention.
Parents, governors, teachers, and of course our wonderful students whose achievements we have proudly come together to celebrate this afternoon. Welcome!
SUE looks at her planned speech. A bell tolls. She decides it isn’t relevant any more. She screws it up and throws it away.
I was going to talk about how special you all are. But today I came face to face with legend, and I didn’t understand at first because with every fibre of my being I think that each and every one of you is special. But we are no more special than anyone else. And we are just as special as everyone else. It doesn’t matter whether you are any better academically, or faster at running, or have stronger muscles, or are more articulate, or wear a cleaner jumper. Specialness is pretend.
We need to realise that we make the myths. Us. We set the targets, the league tables, give out the certificates, we make the rules. And we can change them. You are not defined by your ability to come out on top. There are no swords to be pulling out of these rocks any more.
What makes us special is our ability to care for one another, to work together and support each other, because that is the only thing that is real. And that together, things can only get b–
SUE slips from the roof and falls.
KING ARTHUR enters and picks SUE up. He carries her slowly away.
TOBIAS. Sue!
EMILY. Miss!
18.
TOBIAS. Sue fell four floors from the old building. Past science, English, maths, history. The students and parents saw her fall and held their breath. The teachers saw her too. And as she fell, all the floors, all the subjects – they blurred into one.
What Sue didn’t know as she fell was that below her was an inflatable bouncy castle. She smashed into the plastic at eighty-five miles an hour and was knocked immediately unconscious.
Sue lay still in Kamelot Kastle for three minutes. Which may not sound like a long time, but it really does feel like it when you are afraid. And the people were. It was really scary to see her lying there so limp and pathetic, all colour left her cheeks and for a moment I was convinced she was a dead person. I called her Zombie Spice to lighten the mood.
It didn’t go down so well. Sue was taken to hospital, the parents were sent home. And the teachers…
LOUISE enters the staffroom followed by TIM, followed by PAUL, followed by HUGH. They don’t look at each other. They are weary and tired. After some time.
LOUISE. Pub?
TIM. Yeah.
HUGH. First round’s on me.
The TEACHERS leave.
TOBIAS. They forgot to take me to the pub. That did hurt a little.
And so ended my first day at Wordsworth Comp. I have to admit it is not what I was expecting. But I have learnt to roll with the punches.
In the coming years the school will receive an enormous amount of money and will be completely renovated. It will become a sports specialist, then a science specialist, then languages. In ten years’ time, it will become an academy. Two years after that the funding will start to falter, and after years and years of struggling with fewer and fewer resources, the school will close.
SUE enters wheeling a bloody chair, wig and boots in her hand, and sits centre stage. She is in the hospital.
They’ll try to rebuild here: office buildings, skate parks, clubs. But the funding will always fall through. And the grass will creep through the bricks once more.
19.
TIM and TOM BRENNAN enter.
TIM. Tom? Tom Brennan?
TOM BRENNAN. Oh, hello, sir.
TIM. Your Tamagotchi.
TOM BRENNAN. Oh yeah.
TIM. But I need to tell you something. I killed it.
TOM BRENNAN. Oh.
TIM. I know how hard this must be for you. It was one hundred and forty years old. One hu
ndred and forty Tama years. That must have been a lot of effort. You must have worked very hard.
TOM BRENNAN. Yeah.
TIM. All that time feeding it and growing it. Caring for it. And I killed it just like that… I’m sorry.
TOM BRENNAN. It’s okay. I shouldn’t have brought it into school.
TIM. That’s true. Well, here you go.
TIM passes the Tamagotchi over to TOM BRENNAN.
TOM BRENNAN. Thanks, sir…
Pause.
You know there’s a button on the back. If you’ve got a compass or something you can just reset it. You can start again.
TIM. That’s great.
TOM BRENNAN. Sir, are you okay?
TIM. Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks, Tom.
20.
EMILY enters and approaches SUE. SUE starts to cry and EMILY comforts her.
TOBIAS. That evening Emily will visit Sue in hospital. On Monday she will be expelled.
She will move to Meadowfields School seven miles down the road and sit her GCSEs there. She will continue to grow and change and struggle. She’ll go to York University and pay a thousand pounds a year for the privilege. She’ll come and visit me in Berlin. I’ll take her to the Reichstag. She’ll ask so many questions. What’s that for? What’s the point in that? What does that do? It’ll be so annoying.
Okay, well, I think that’s all I have to say now. Thank you so much for having me. I’ve had a really nice time. Auf Wiedersehen.
TOBIAS leaves. EMILY takes her headphones off. Presses play. ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ by D: Ream plays. EMILY places the headphones over SUE’s ears. The music starts to fill the room as the rest of the cast enter in their school jumpers. They dance angrily, aggressively, hopefully, they keep dancing, they keep dancing until the music crescendos and, with a flash, we cut to black.
The End.
THE WARDROBE ENSEMBLE
The Wardrobe Ensemble is a Bristol-based group of theatre artists working together to make and tour high-quality new plays that dissect the twenty-first-century experience. Dedicated to finding the place where the intellectual and the emotional collide, we explore the big ideas of our time through intimate human stories and bold imagery. We are interested in the narratives we tell ourselves to make sense of the world.
The Wardrobe Ensemble formed in 2011 out of the pilot year for Made in Bristol, Bristol Old Vic Young Company’s graduate scheme for theatre companies. This was a one-year residency, where in exchange for leading and assisting workshops with the Young Company, we received training from various theatre practitioners and were given the space and time to make a show, RIOT, which we premiered in the Bristol Old Vic studio. We took RIOT to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2011 and have been making work together ever since.
Our ensemble practice and politics inform the work we make and the stories we tell. Every company member has an equal voice in the artistic direction of the company and this ethos is reflected in the rehearsal room. We work as a democratic devising ensemble wherein every member contributes to the research, writing, structuring and performing of a show, creating a unique shared theatrical language and aesthetic from show to show. We create our work in dialogue with each other and then continue that conversation with our audience.
The company consists of nine core members, one producer and a constantly growing community of associate artists. We have made four shows exploring recent modern history, RIOT, 33, 1972: The Future of Sex and Education, Education, Education, and seven shows for families and young audiences: The Star Seekers, The Time Seekers, Eliza and the Wild Swans, Edgar and the Land of Lost, Eloise and the Curse of the Golden Whisk, Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain and The Forever Machine. We have toured our work nationally and internationally to venues including the National Theatre, Almeida Theatre, Exeter Northcott, Salisbury Playhouse, Theatre Royal Plymouth and Northern Stage. We have won two Stage Awards and a Fringe First. We are Complicite Associates and Associate Artists of The Wardrobe Theatre, Bike Shed Theatre and Shoreditch Town Hall.
www.thewardrobeensemble.com
A Nick Hern Book
Education, Education, Education first published in Great Britain in 2017 as a paperback original by Nick Hern Books Limited, The Glasshouse, 49a Goldhawk Road, London W12 8QP, in association with The Wardrobe Ensemble
This ebook first published in 2017
Education, Education, Education copyright © 2017 The Wardrobe Ensemble
The Wardrobe Ensemble have asserted their moral right to be identified as the authors of this work
Cover image: © The Wardrobe Ensemble
Designed and typeset by Nick Hern Books, London
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84842 726 6 (print edition)
ISBN 978 1 78001 987 1 (ebook edition)
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