Wasted

Kae Tempest, Kate Tempest

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781350094925
• eBook ISBN: 9781350094932
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Three old friends in their mid-twenties. One remarkable day. For Ted, Danny and Charlotte, it's time to seize control. Make a difference. Change things. This is it.

A day trip through the parks and raves and cafes of South London, where life is what you make it. The rapid-fire words of Kate Tempest paint a picture of lives less ordinary in an unforgiving world, soundtracked by an exhilarating score.

A play about love, life and losing your mind, Wasted heralded the dramatic career of one of the UK's most exciting performance poets, Kate Tempest. It was originally produced by Paines Plough and is published here as a Methuen Drama Student Edition alongside commentary and notes by Katie Beswick, lecturer in Drama at the University of Exeter.

The ancillary material is geared at students and includes:

- an introduction outlining the play's plot, character, themes context and performance history
- the full text of the play
- a chronology of the playwright's life and work
- extensive textual notes

Wasted

Wasted premiered at Latitude Festival on 15 July 2011 and the cast was as follows:

Ted	Alexander Cobb
Danny	Ashley George
Charlotte	Lizzy Watts

The play toured in 2012 to twenty-six venues. The role of Ted was played by Cary Crankson and the role of Danny by Bradley Taylor.

Direction James Grieve

Design Cai Dyfan

Lighting Design Angela Anson Sound Design Tom Gibbons Music Kwake Bass

Film Design Mathy Tremewan and Fran Broadhurst

A blank line of speech indicates a character does not have the words.

These stage directions are open for interpretation.

Dark stage. Sounds of London play out the speakers. Drunks singing. Sirens. Market men. Television hosts heard through living room windows. Traffic. People laughing. School kids screaming. All field recordings, actual London sounds. Projections of London play on the screen. Lights come up gently, like sunrise, revealing each character one at a time.

Ted is at a shitty little desk, really small, with a massive phone on it and a chunky old computer monitor and loads of files. He looks like he feels sick. He is smiling politely. To either side of him are cardboard cut-outs of middle-aged women with immaculate hair, something about them is hideous. They have oversized heads. They are blown up, monstrous versions of work colleagues. The sounds now are of phones ringing, call centre type voices, not clearly saying anything, but polite, sickly tones, pretending to be helpful, also women talking about celebrity couples, their next door neighbours. Mindless gossip. Teddy stares straight ahead.

Charlotte is in the staff room. Sounds of boiling kettles, laughing teachers, inaudible bullshit conversation. The tones are sarcastic, tired. People show off and compete for the upper hand. The conversations are dominated by exaggerated bellowing, the arsehole teacher slagging off the kids to make themselves feel better. Bells ringing. Photocopier sounds. Charlotte stands between two cardboard cut-outs of teachers with massive eyebrows, ears, lips, a woman in drab clothes – ill fitting leggings type – and a balding man in glasses and liverspots. Charlotte is smiling along, but looks

like she might faint, or cry, or something. She looks completely alone, despite all the noise.

Danny is sitting on a dingy sofa, in front of a coffee table. Power ballads playing from a cheesy radio station. Magic FM.¹ Bullshit conversation, sound of loud, exaggerated sniffing, people doing lines. To either side of him are two cardboard cut-outs of 25-year-old London men, they are both wearing very similar jeans and

t-shirts. They are bulky. Their heads are monstrous, especially their nostrils and mouths. Also two women, laughing hysterically, massive eyelashes, lips, perfect hair. Over-exaggerated laughing. Inaudible

retelling of teenage memories. Empty cans of lager and bottles of strange spirits – weird things like chocolate liqueur and Babycham.² Anything goes at this time of the morning. The voices in the room are talking over each other, singing along to the power ballads,

laughing. Danny looks sick, like the other two have looked, confused, but he’s smiling and nodding along. Cutting up a line for himself.

The sound swells to uncomfortably loud, maybe some white noise, and then cuts out. These three, as well as being the characters, are also the Chorus . When they are speaking the Chorus lines, they are all and none of the characters. Any of them can speak any of the Chorus lines. They should speak to the audience. They shouldn’t be afraid of smiling at the audience, or looking at them dead in the eye. They should speak in their own accents, and be aware of the meter beneath the words, in the way that you are aware of a beat when you dance to a song. These are not the characters yet (even though they are) they are also everyone that’s ever felt how the characters feel.

Chorus One

One If we’re being honest with you,

Three Actually honest, not just apparently honest.

One Then we have to tell you, we don’t have a clue what any of you are doing here.

Two We’re not really sure what any of us are doing here.

Three Thing is,

Two We wish we had some kind of incredible truth to express.

One We wish we knew the deeper meaning.

Three But we don’t.

Two We don’t have nothing to tell you that you don’t already know, and we thought it was worth acknowledging that.

Three Fuck it, while we’re speaking plainly, let’s get it all out in the open.

One We’re not used to this kind of environment.

Two We’re the people that feel awkward in theatres,

One The people that don’t laugh at the bits where everyone else laughs.

Two The people that never know what to say afterwards when everyone else is expressing their opinions.

Three We don’t want to stand here in front of you and pretend we can’t see you.

One We can see you.

Three You look lovely. And we’re glad you’re here.

One We are.

Two We don’t want to show you something impressive that makes you feel clever.

One No.

Three We just want to show you something honest,

One Something ours.

Two And we’ll be happy if it makes you feel anything at all.

One No big deal, but

Three At the same time,

One Everything we ever knew.

Two What this is, is home.

One Deserted playgrounds, tramps singing on the street, bleeding gums outside the pub, takeaways and car exhausts and bodies till you can’t see bodies.

Three Working shit jobs

Two And trying to care about things you don’t care about

Three And saving up to buy things you hate yourself for wanting.

All Home.

Two A city where nothing much happens except everything.

Three Where ev...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• Chronology and Significant Historical Events
• Context: History, Society, Politics
• Form and Genre
• Themes
• First Production
• Further Exploration
• Notes
• Wasted
• Imprint