Hannah and Hanna in Dreamland

John Retallack

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781786826435
• eBook ISBN: 9781786826428
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

…..A Story of Friendship, Migration and Karaoke….
Summer 1999. Margate's beaches are packed with day-trippers…. and its hotels filled with Kosovan asylum seekers – including Hanna (Celia Meiras), a survivor of Europe's most recent genocide. Hannah (Lisa Payne) is from Margate and bored with life in the rundown seaside town - hanging out with her boyfriend Bull and his prejudiced mates. The only things the two sixteen year olds have in common are their names and their love of singing along to their favourite pop songs…. Sixteen years later, Hanna returns to Margate - this time in search of a Syrian girl she befriended in Kosovo and who may have succeeded in getting across the Channel. The Calais 'Jungle' is close and attempts by its residents to reach England fill the local media. Hanna hopes her young friend will be welcome in Margate, but although the town has changed, alongside the coffee bars and vintage shops, there is still an undercurrent of hostility towards the migrants and refugees who are so desperate to enter the UK. Just as in 1999, when Hanna's arrival turned Hannah's life upside down, so her return takes
the friends on a journey which Hannah from Margate would not have thought possible.
Hannah and Hanna in Dreamland builds on John Retallack's award winning earlier play, Hannah and Hanna, which has been performed extensively both nationally and internationally.

Part 1

Part 1 takes place in Margate and Kosovo,
summer 1999 to spring 2000.

1999/2000

Summer 1999
NATO brings destruction of Kosovo to a halt
and Serbian leaders to justice.

Autumn 1999
1000 Kosovan refugees transported to Margate –
they are put up in unoccupied holiday accommadation.

Dover Express leader column
‘We are left with the backdraft of a nation’s human
sewage and no cash to wash it down the drain.’

Spring 2000
National Front march in Margate protesting
against immigration.

Summer 2000
Margate rated the cheapest places to buy a house
in the South East.

PROLOGUE/Autumn 2018

Hannah and Hanna enter, each in a coat.

They are both in their mid-thirties.

Hannah and Hanna

We met in 1999.

We were both sixteen years old.

Hannah and Hanna remove their coats.

1

Hannah is English, brassily made up, with her hair up. Hanna, Kosovan, is plainly dressed and wears no make-up. Each has photographs that they show the audience in turn during the following.

Hannah

That’s Margate from my window.

Hanna

That’s Pristina, from the window of my old house.

Pristina is the capital city of Kosovo.

Hannah

That’s me on the beach.

You can’t see me because it’s packed.

Hanna

That’s me in a truck on its way from Kosovo to Dover.

You can’t see me because I am hiding in the truck.

Hannah

That’s the block of flats I live in with my Nan.

Hanna

That’s the window of the room which I share with my mother and my brother in the Hotel Bellevue in Margate.

Hannah

That’s my brother Joe.

He’s twenty-two and already a policeman.

Ugly, ain’t he?

Hanna

This is my mother.

She sits all day looking at the sea from our window.

Hannah

And that’s my bloke; everyone calls him Bullfrog –

Well, Bull to his face.

Hanna

And this is my brother Albin.

He walks around all day with the other young Kosovan guys.

They have nothing to do.

Handsome, isn’t he?

Hannah

My name is Hannah.

I’m sixteen.

I’ve lived in Margate all my life.

Margate – what a town!

I hate it!

Hanna

My name is Hanna.

I’m sixteen.

I’ve lived in Margate for three days.

Margate – what a town!

I love it!

Hannah

Summer of ninety-nine.

July was crap.

August is scorching hot.

Hanna

This is my new home.

I fear nothing.

Hannah

The beaches are full of bodies.

So are the hotels, four or five to a room.

Hanna

Only thing I fear is leaving Margate.

Going home.

Hannah

But it’s not like the old days.

The people on the beaches ain’t the same as the people in the hotels.

Hanna

Three months of hiding in the mountains.

Three days in a lorry to England.

It is so nice to sleep in a bed....

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Performance history of Hannah and Hanna
• Thanks
• The Marlowe
• Cast
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Epilogue/Autumn 2018