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Somebody Up There Likes Us - In a country of much water but little fertile land and the other of abundant crops but limited water, two border guards diligently guard the frontier between them. With no common language, they maintain a fragile peace punctuated by aggressive gestures and threats until one day an unidentified aircraft, drops a small wooden box by parachute; inside is a bottle that contains a very strange liquid. Somebody Up There was improvised with the author and a professional French theatre company for schools, with the aim of bridging cultural gaps.
. . . Le Petoman - Based loosely on the biography 'Le Petomane' by Frank Caradec and Jean Nohain, this is a two-act serious play with lots of comedic bits, rather than a comedy with serious bits. Le Petomane was aka Joseph Pujol, a real-life French baker who at the end of 19th century – as the British began displaying 'The Elephant Man' in London - hit upon the idea of turning passing wind into an art form, or a very ribald entertainment if nothing else, packing the Moulin Rouge out for years, proof positive that sophistication and crudity make strange bed-fellows! This (at-times-imagined) story conjectures wildly at the economic, social, physical; spiritual, political and familial pressures that Le Petomane might have undergone in his eventual rise to superstardom and has some fun with it without compromising his memory too much. We are wrong to think we are any more advanced than our ancestors from one hundred years ago for finding such subjects hilarious and almost respectable because a hundred years from now how will we be judged for finding entertainment from the humiliation of others through reality television? Or is it all hot air? . . . Pressure - For Schools: Released after ten months for good behaviour on a two-year sentence for drug dealing, 'Pressure' is a study of Jake after his release and a look at how pressure from outside forces and from former friends continues to tempt him back to the same path that caused his downfall. Intended as a follow-up to 'My Brother Jake', it carries through certain references to the original but stands alone. It relies on an inner world of action rather than speech and silences in which outside interruptions create a menacing mood of the unknown. The pressure to cope with that menace is a challenge for the audience. It is designed for teenage audiences or schools exploring drugs issues. . . . Space Station - On a dark and lonely hill outside of town, two strangers meet for very different reasons: one has gone to set up a telescope to try and spot re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere of a decommissioned Russian space station and the other has gone to distract the former for as long as possible while his fellow villain burgles his house. Chance plays a part when the sole surviving bolt from the space station lands nearby. First public reading: October 2010, Paris. First public performance: February, 2012, Inverness, Scotland, by The Florians. . . . Like Riding A Bike (a feature-length screenplay) - Set in the North East of England, a fatherless boy of 9, David Lovatt, disturbed by deja-vu and dreams by night of screeching seagulls, bright but bullied at school (and unable to ride a bike) lives in a matchbox council house on a run-down estate near Durham City, with Mum, Lisa, who struggles with low-paid jobs whilst hiding a secret: a hit-and-run accident years before in which Lisa’s unpunished ex, Scotty, killed a female pedestrian. Lisa and her son have been running away from Scotty ever since. But Why? |