Making Mischief: Two Radical New Plays

The Earthworks by Tom Morton-Smith, Myth by Matt Hartley and Kirsty Housley

Tom Morton-Smith, Matt Hartley, Kirsty Housley

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781786822178
• eBook ISBN: 9781786822185
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

The Making Mischief Festival features work from some of today's most exciting playwrights who are challenging and questioning our society. The Festival runs from 24 May to 17 June from The Other Place Studio Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon. THE EARTHWORKS: "The universe doesn't care if we know how it works." On the eve of the activation of the Large Hadron Collider, two strangers – a journalist and a scientist – share their experiences of loss and hope in a funny but deeply touching one-act play. MYTH: "I can only see wrong choices. Things that will make everything worse." In one wine-fuelled evening, two couples debate their materialistic lifestyle. As their dinner party descends into chaos, their friendship and their lives are irreparably changed. A play about those things we don't want to see or say.

MYTH

Characters

SARAH – mid to late thirties

GEORGE – late twenties

LAURA – mid to late thirties

TOM – late thirties, early forties

About the play

Myth is a play in which the real narrative emerges from the actors, not the characters they are playing. During the action we meet four actors playing the parts of: Sarah, George, Laura, and Tom, but really this story belongs to the actor playing Sarah. We see the world more and more from her POV, as the play progresses and their constructed world begins to fall apart. Throughout the action the actors will face challenges that are sometimes part of the scene itself, sometimes part of the performance of the scene, and sometimes part of the outside world at large, which begins to interfere more and more with the action. But only the actor playing Sarah really acknowledges the noises, oil, and objects that interfere with the action. As the obstacles escalate the actor playing Sarah becomes more and more visible as she finds it harder and harder to keep the fiction going and stay in role. The actors playing Tom, Laura and George are aware of Sarah’s odd behavior but oblivious to the cause. It’s not that they can’t physically see what’s happening; they just choose not to really look at it. Aside from assisting the actor playing Sarah with her forgotten cues and doing what they can to keep the narrative running, they will continue as normal. No matter what happens, Sarah’s colleagues carry on as though nothing was wrong. They must keep the performance going.

No delegations have been made in this copy of the script to indicate when the performers come out of character and speak the lines simply as themselves. Likewise, we have not specified when the lines relate to the situation within the ‘play’ and when they refer to the wider situation that unfolds around the action. These decisions are for you to make.

This text is a copy of the original production’s staging, within it various physical elements are referenced i.e oil soaked birds – each company can choose to replicate these elements or introduce their own at these points in the script.

The set for Myth should clearly be a set. Whilst attempting to replicate a stylish Victorian terrace home, we as an audience are aware that we are in a theatre.

A1.

GEORGE and SARAH’s living room/kitchen. East London. They have only been here two weeks, and this is evidenced by several boxes that have yet to be unpacked. A couple of Ikea bags spill their contents out onto the floor. Waitrose bags sit on the kitchen counters, partially unpacked. Despite the mess, it is clear that in time it will be a very chic and stylish home.

GEORGE is rooting around in the packing boxes, clearly looking for something and failing to find it. SARAH enters, flustered. She has a shopping bag with her.

SARAH: Sorry sorry sorry, I know I’m late!! It’s taken me literally forever to get home.

GEORGE: They’ll be here in fifteen minutes.

SARAH: I know I know. I said, I’m sorry.

GEORGE: What happened?

SARAH: Err, what happened is that we moved so far out of town that by the time I get home at night it’s practically time to turn around and go back to work.

GEORGE continues to rummage, finally finding some plates and unpacking them onto the kitchen counter.

GEORGE: Right.

SARAH: Seriously, you can make that noise but you don’t have to do my journey. It’s complete fucking chaos out there. And as if it isn’t bad enough on a normal day, tonight the tube just decides to stop dead /

GEORGE: Uh huh.

SARAH: /right in the middle of the tunnel. It just stopped there /

GEORGE: Uh huh.

SARAH: / for ages. Literally the worst journey ever. Are you even listening to me?

GEORGE: Yes. Yup. Definitely. Did you get the wine?

SARAH: I didn’t have enough time to get to Waitrose so I had to go to the shop on the corner, which only stocks Echo Falls.

GEORGE: Oh well.

SARAH: Oh well? That is n...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• About The RSC
• Production History
• The Earthworks
• Myth