Bystanders

Adrian Jackson

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781786826527
• eBook ISBN: 9781786829993
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Poverty in Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

I was murdered once. True stories (and wild speculations) about the lives and deaths of homeless people, uncovered by the UK's leading homelessness theatre company Cardboard Citizens. A Jamaican boxer known as The Entertainer, a Spanish stag party celebrating with human calligraphy, a woman who said it with flowers, a Pole not called Sam, Russian tourists, a Greek called Pericles. And death.

SCENE 1 – FALSE

The four actors are seated, with very visible headphones. They are behind desks, with microphones,. The lights come up, they start speaking, in that very particular way that actors do when listening to their text on headphones.

VERNON VANRIEL: My father worked at Gestetners in Broad Lane, Tottenham, along with lit-er-ally thousands of others from when he came over in the 48s sort of thing,

AARON JONES: If you are wondering about the mask, it’s simple, I’ve had death threats, the lot, no one wants to hear my side.

DJANGO: His name sounds like ‘Badly cared for’ in French – I have a French friend.

AARON JONES: I might have to move, its gone fucking ballistic.

VERNON VANRIEL: He was a tailor by trade, but he worked mainly for Gestetners, so did my mum.

A: First up, we want to make it clear it wasn’t our idea.

DJANGO: I like all the languages, I like to listen to how people speak, though I don’t know what everything means.

A: No-one remembers who first thought of it

VERNON VANRIEL: I am categorical that there was witchcraft involved – why else would all these things have happened?

CHARLIE ROWLEY: Babes.

DAWN STURGESS: Yeah?

CHARLIE ROWLEY: I love you.

Somewhere during these last speeches actor 1 has stood up and taken off headphones, from which can be heard the sound of music, 2 notices and does same, and they go over and take off 3 and 4’s headphones, mid-speech. From their headphones can also be heard music.

SCENE 2 – START

An introduction by 1, annoyingly cross-cut by interruptions and additions from 2, 3 and 4 who were probably not supposed to speak at all.

1: Good evening.

2: Good morning.

1: Good morning. That was a false start.

3: Apologies.

1: There is a technique which is used in a lot of cutting edge theatre these days called ‘verbatim’.

2: Verbatim theatre.

1: Yes. You get people’s testimony –

4: Real people.

1: You get real people’s testimony –

2: As opposed to unreal people – or fictional people.

3: It’s not Game of Thrones.

1: (Breath.) This testimony is often culled from long hours of sensitive interviewing. And it is then woven into a text and performed to an audience, in the very way it was originally spoken.

2: Complete with all the hesitations and the ums and ers

1: As I said, in the way it was originally spoken.

3: Often the actors have headphones, so they don’t have to learn the lines –

1: Sometimes the actors have headphones, through which the original recordings are played, so that they will be absolutely accurate in their delivery.

2: They just say the words after they hear the voice in their ears

1: The intention is to guarantee ‘authenticity’.

4: It’s very very interesting.

2: It is.

Silence

1: But we can’t do it.

2: We got the headphones but –

1: We can’t do it.

3: We can’t do it.

Beat.

1: Unfortunately, we have not been able to interview many of the subjects of the play which we are about to perform.

2: For a variety of reasons.

1: We could not speak to any of these people but one. We only spoke directly to Vernon.

3: Tell them why we couldn’t speak to them.

1: Some of them wouldn’t speak to us, though we asked, and some of them couldn’t speak to us, and it wasn’t worth asking.

2: And some of them we didn’t want to speak to, because why bother talking to people like that?

4: And some of them are dead.

3: We only spoke to Vernon.

1: And Vernon was happy to speak to us.

2: And we were happy to speak to him, because he is a nice guy.

Recorded voice of Vernon Vanriel: “I suppose I’m just a nice guy.”

1: Vernon Vanriel did speak to us. And we have his every word and we use many of them. But even in his case, we have had to make some stuff up.

2: Guess some stuff.

1: Because he couldn’t remember everything.

4: They say if you can remember the sixties…

1: Here is a series of speculations. Informed guesses. Nonverbatim theatre.

2: We looked up the opposite of verbatim, and the choices include ‘imprecise’ –

3: ‘Inexact’ –

2: ‘Divergent’ –

4: ‘Paraphrased’ –

2: Or ‘non-verbatim’. Obviously.

3: A transcriber who does non-verbatim transcription, capturing the meaning rather than the exact words, is apparently said to be doing ‘intelligent’ transcription.

3: So maybe we have invented a new genre, which we could justifiably call ‘Intelligent Theatre’.

2: With verbatim bits.

1: So, welcome to an evening of ‘Intelligent Theatre’.

2: With verbatim bits.

4: We will sometimes need your help.

2: With verbatim bits

1: Actually, with one notable exception, most of the words attributed to our central subjects are their words, culled from court reports, from social media and newspaper articles, and all the stories are true.

3: Start again.

Beat.

Actors 4 and 1 place a number of homeless begging signs around the spa...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• SCENE 1 – FALSE
• SCENE 2 – START