Lippy

Bush Moukarzel, Mark O'Halloran, Dead Centre

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781783191635
• eBook ISBN: 9781783196623
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Winner of a Scotsman Fringe First Award 2014 In 2000 in Leixlip, co. Kildare, an aunt and 3 sisters boarded themselves into their home and entered into a suicide pact that lasted 40 days. We weren't there. We don't know what they said. This is not their story. Winner of the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Production (2013), and inspired by a real-life event involving the suicide pact of four women in a small town outside Dublin, Lippy is a play about authorship and the role of the writer.

PART ONE

The audience enter to a stage being set up for a Post-Show Q&A. There are three people setting up the space: Interviewer, Adam the Technician and Front of House. They are plugging in the projector, arranging chairs etc. They are sitting in front of a large white screen which is covering the front of the stage. In front of the screen is a table, 3 chairs, microphones. Interviewer sits in one chair. To one side, at a table, is Adam the Technician. His table is covered in wires, laptops, a sound mixer etc.

There is music playing and the atmosphere is fairly casual. Interviewer and Adam are clearly waiting for 2 other people to arrive. Once the audience have all entered, and it has become apparent that the show needs to get started, Front of House enters and whispers in Interviewer’s ear. They kill the music and he starts speaking:

Interviewer. Hello everyone. Thanks for staying behind. You don’t always get many people for these post-show talks, so it’s great that so many of you have stuck around.

I should introduce myself: my name’s Bush Moukarzel. I didn’t work on this show, but I’ve worked with the company before, and they asked me to step in and ‘do’ this Q&A. So I threw on a suit and said ‘yes’. We’re just waiting on a couple of cast members who’ve very kindly agreed to talk about how they made the show. I think they’re in the dressing room getting changed. So we’ll just wait for them…

He does so. For a little while. Until it gets embarrassing.

(Aside to Front of House.) …could you just pop your head into the dressing room and gauge how long they might be…? (To audience.) Obviously we don’t want to rush them if they’ve just come off stage: you know, actors after a show are in a very particular state, they can be quite fragile –

Adam the Technician. You know in France, there’s a law about actors who’ve just come off stage; if they commit a murder or whatever within half an hour of the show ending, it’s legally regarded as manslaughter, not murder. They’re legally still ‘in character’. So they can’t be done for it.

Pause.

Interviewer. Yeah. Sorry, that’s – that’s Adam, he’s going to be running – we’ve got a few little tech things, a few bits of video to show you.

Front of House returns and reports to Interviewer, who seems relieved.

(To audience.) Well I can tell you that Daniel Reardon is definitely on his way so we’ll wait for him. And I think Allin Kempthorne is joining us as well, so…

I’m sure you’re all dying –

A horrible feedback noise as his microphone is turned up too high. Adam is sorry, Interviewer returns to what he was saying.

I’m sure you’re all dying to ask questions. But I’ll kick things off and see how we get on… Oh, here they are. Ladies and gentlemen, Daniel Reardon and Allin Kempthorne!

Applause and music as Lip Reader enters with a bottle of water and takes a seat. His demeanour suggests he has just stepped off stage from a show. Allin does not appear.

Well, I think we’ll just start. Allin can join us when he’s ready.

So Dan, firstly let me just say: wow. It’s actually the second time I’ve seen the show. And I’m still not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.

It’s such an inventive piece of work, and so ambitious. I mean, the way the roof becomes the floor like that – let alone how you got a horse in here! I’ve never seen this space used in that way. I thought to myself, ‘I’m nearly in heaven.’ But most importantly, it was very moving.

Lip Reader. Thank you.

Interviewer. (Distracted.) Er… You actually still have a bit of…

Lip Reader. (Realises he has some make-up on his face from the show.) Make-up? There’s so much of the darn stuff to get off.

Front of House brings on a pack of wipes and hands them to Lip Reader

Lip reader. Oh, thank you.

Interviewer. So, Dan, to kick things off, perhaps you could tell us a little bit about how you first got involved in this project?

Lip reader. Oooh, now. Can I actually remember? (He has to think back several months, perhaps a year.) Ah yes, that was it, I was contacted by Ben, the director. He was at the time researching a completely different show, based on this case out in Leixlip – it was a tragic incident involving four women, a suicide pact; I’d worked on the case as a lip reader, so Ben was put in touch with me and we had a bit of a chat… That show fell by the wayside, as so many projects tend to. But we stayed in touch. And he’d become very interested in lip reading. We kept talking about one day making a show about that. Ben became very interested in that as a way in.

Interviewer. Actually, I worked with Ben on his last project Souvenir, so I have some impression of his method.

Lip reader. Yes. Well, he used a very different approach on this one so I’m told: I didn’t get to see Souvenir –

Interviewer. (A little disappointed.) That’s ok.

An unexpected sound is heard from Adam the Technician’s laptop.

Adam the Technician. Sorry. Just sending an email.

Interviewer. (Resuming order.) Perhaps you could talk a little about how you arrived at some of what we saw tonight?

Lip Reader. Well, we started with nothing.

Interviewer. Nothing will come of nothing!

Lip Reader. Yes. Very good. I just mean that it was very open-ended. It’s amazing how many things that ended up in the show actually came from the stuff we watched and discussed. Everything in the show, really.

Interviewer. For example?

Lip Reader. Well, that thing with all the paper –

Interviewer. Seemed like a nightmare to do!

Lip Reader. It really was! But that had its basis from one day, one of the actresses was emptying her handbag, and all her receipts spilled out. And it ends in the idea, as you saw, that we are defined by our documents, that our lives are lists, sort of shopping receipts –

Interviewer. We had paper in Souvenir. So…

Lip reader. (Beat.) Ok.

Interviewer. I think it was my idea.

Pause.

Lip Reader. (The slightest of acknowledgements of Interviewer’s tone. Barely anything at all.) Right. Well, we just watched a great deal of YouTube, DVDs, that sort of thing. Looked at lip reading in the movies and popular culture; there’s a great deal of material out there.

Interviewer. I think we have a few of the clips that you looked at, actually. (To audience.) Dan was good enough to share some of the material with us, and as I mentioned we’ve a few clips lined up. A sort of ‘behind the curtains’ kind of thing. Adam are you – ?

Adam the Technician. Yep.

Lip reader. Will the first one be – ? (As the clip is cued). Yes, it’s a great little clip from the Martin Scorcese film Casino. We see two gangsters here using a few techniques to stop their lips being read by the cops.

A sequence from Casino plays on the screen behind them. The characters are being lip-read and are therefore covering their mouths with their hands.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhxYZWVSU...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Part One
• Part Two