Lucy Light and Tumble Tuck

Sarah Milton

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781350087224
• eBook ISBN: 9781350087248
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: British Drama

Do you get to design your boobs? Is it like Build-A-Bear? Meet Lucy and Jess; two best friends who obsess over boys, booze and their boobs. But when her mother dies of breast cancer, Lucy is forced to make a decision that will change her body forever. A story that spans ten years, Lucy Light is a powerful duologue between two women that offers a nostalgic look at our relationship with our bodies, the hereditary nature of cancer, and the strength of female friendships. My front crawl is a bit f***ing feminine Tumble Tuck is a funny, brutal and honest one person piece about body image, mental health and relationships, that seeks to examine what it means to be successful in a world where medals matter. In these two complementary new plays, Sarah Milton offers up two strong female led narratives with dynamic, complex characters. This edition was published to coincide with the London production of Lucy Light at The Vault Festival 2019.

Lucy Light

For my home girls

Characters

Lucy, spans fifteen to twenty-six, a strong woman, self-aware, wiser than her years.

Jess, spans fifteen to twenty-five, all talk, co-dependent without knowing it, passionate, a new soul.

This play can be performed with no set. This is at the director’s discretion.

The play is set in Scarborough but this can be changed to any northern England seaside town. References to locations can be changed to suit.

When text appears in bold, it is to be directed to the audience.

Its run time is one hour.

House lights slowly come down as we are lulled into the world. We’re near Scarborough beach. Seagull’s caw, and you can smell the salt. Lights up on fifteen-year-old Lucy, centre stage.

L My name’s Lucy. I’m fifteen years old, I’ve just finished my GCSEs, my best friend is called Jess, I really like Ryvita and my mum’s got cancer. I can do the entire routine to the Cha, Cha Slide, I can say my alphabet backwards (If the actor can, she demonstrates this.), I know the train times to York from Scarborough by heart, and I can tell you how chemotherapy works. Intravenous chemotherapy means you have the cancer-fighting drug put directly into your vein via injection or drip. In Mum’s case she has a drip. The drug circulates your blood stream and finds the cells that are just about to split into two, and therefore become cancer, because cancer is mutated cells, and kills them before it happens. Your cells don’t divide or multiply when you’re a grown up really, they only do so when they need to repair damage in your body. In cancer, the cells multiply like crazy to the point where they make a mass or as we know it, a tumour. Because of the rate cancer cells can and do divide . . . chemotherapy is the best bet at stopping them. The reason your hair falls out during chemo is because hair cells are always growing, so dividing, and chemo can’t work out what cells you want to keep dividing, and what cells you want to kill so it just kills all dividing cells. So that’s why Mum doesn’t have eyebrows anymore. Or leg hair. Or arm hair. Or eye lashes. Everyone forgets you also lose your eyelashes.

Cancer means she struggles to get out of the bath sometimes. Cancer means she doesn’t pick me up from school anymore and cancer means she’s always sleeping.

Jess and I have been best friends for five years. We love Atomic Kitten, cheap wine and the beach. We both want to be able to drive, pass all our GCSEs, legally buy alcohol and have bigger boobs. C cup please. At least a C cup?

This is Scarborough, Yorkshire. Jess is fifteen and Lucy is fifteen. They have known each other for six years. It is 2004.

They have just finished their final GCSE exam. It is late June. Warm. They have socks down their bras, and they’re in school uniform.

‘The Tide Is High’ by Atomic Kitten plays on the stereo (the only prescriptive song in the play) and they perform a perfect lip sync routine to it. They ad lib encouragement to each other and to the audience through their performance. This is clearly not the first time they’ve done it. At the end of the song, Jess puts the stereo on repeat and the song plays under the following scene. They are getting ready for the end of year party.

L I never have to do Geography again!

JYour tit’s falling out, Luce.

L I don’t know how long this feeling will last for, but for a moment, just for this moment –

JDid I see Gary talking to you after our exam?

Beat.

JDid I? She’s sweating. See, on her top lip.

L He said hello. Yeah.

JYou’re actually talking now then, rather than just eating his face off?

L Don’t.

JIs he coming to Dave’s tonight?

J/LGod I/Jess want/s to snog Dave.

L Yeah I think so.

JHas he called your house yet? Does he call you?

L I asked him not to.

JWhat are you going to wear tonight because I’m stuck. I’m going to need a jumper if the fire doesn’t hold out but I definitely wanted to emphasise the whole (Indicates chest.) situation we have here.

L You have nice boobs, Jess. You curve in ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• The Production Exchange
• The Eve Appeal
• Lucy Light
• Tumble Tuck
• eCopyright