27

Abi Morgan

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781849431774
• eBook ISBN: 9781849433747
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Dr Richard Garfield has given Ursula a difficult choice. She is the Mother Superior in waiting of a convent that has been given the opportunity to take part in his revolutionary scientific study. This American study would require that the nuns donate their brains after death to potentially unlock the mysteries of Alzheimer's and dementia. Ursula must weigh up the value of preserving her faith, versus embracing science.The study is agreed and Richard and his team come to the convent every year to test the nuns who are willing to take part. This union will change their lives forever. For Ursula, with the impending pressure of taking over the ailing convent, the study brings more challenges than she could ever have imagined and rocks her faith and her hitherto cloistered existence to its core. Drawing on research contained within the book and study Aging with Grace, 27 is an extraordinary examination of a lifestyle in decline, but it could hold the key to the issues of our times – our ageing population and the decline of our minds.

Act Two

A library.

A long table. Chairs. A low wide bowl of pomegranates on the table.

HELEN sits working, talking into a Dictaphone, reading from a pile of documents in front of her –

It is winter, three years on. 2009.

HELEN: (Reading/into Dictaphone.) I was born in Greenock. Though my da was a Corkman. Eleven words. Punctuated on the fifth and the eleventh word – End. Note to self predominately monosyllabic bar the colloquial noun ‘da’. I was one of six. Two boys and four girls, a seventh, Michael died in childbirth. Five. Five. Two. Punctuation – Comma. Two. Punctuation – Comma. Five. Punctuation – Full stop.

HELEN takes notes throughout, talking into a Dictaphone –

MIRIAM: Am I in the way?

HELEN smiles, flicks off her Dictaphone.

HELEN: No.

MIRIAM: Don’t be shy to say.

HELEN: Really Miriam. It’s fine.

MIRIAM nods. HELEN resumes working, turning the Dictaphone back on.

(Reading/into Dictaphone.) I was one of six. Two boys and four girls, a seventh, Michael died in childbirth.

SAM enters, sinking on seeing MIRIAM.

MIRIAM: Sam, now you promised me…

HELEN smiles, amused –

SAM: Rats! Found.

MIRIAM holds up the lamp.

SAM: I swear you save these jobs up for me.

SAM goes in search of a socket, plugging them in. Nothing.

MIRIAM: Yes I do. I think it’s the plug.

MIRIAM hands him a screwdriver.

And can you try and mend my desk lamp after, please. It’s on then it’s off, as if one is under visitation from a poltergeist.

HELEN smiles, resumes working.

HELEN: (Reading/into Dictaphone.) Five. Five. Two. Punctuation – Comma. Two. Punctuation – Comma. Five. Punctuation – Full stop.

HELEN hesitates, aware of MIRIAM hovering close by. She flicks off the Dictaphone, works on.

MIRIAM: It’s a foreign language.

HELEN: It’s pretty impenetrable.

MIRIAM: Though linguistics has always been a passion.

MIRIAM peers over HELEN’s shoulder, reading.

HELEN: Please. I give a scoring every ten or so words based on grammatical complexity –

MIRIAM: I see, yes.

HELEN: Richness of vocabulary,

MIRIAM: Fascinating.

HELEN: Density of ideas and positive or negative emotion –

MIRIAM: Searching for the embedded clauses.

HELEN watching MIRIAM, absorbed in reading.

HELEN: Exactly. The verb phrase infinitive complexes, incidents of repetition and anaphora…

MIRIAM: Anaphora.

HELEN: Reading them is like striking gold. Whole lives, so perfectly notated, really. It never fails to humble me.

MIRIAM: Yes, words do last, yet what they say is not always the same. For example Anaphora, a rhetorical device, rhetoric. A referential pattern in linguistics… Yes… Then there is Anaphora…part of the divine liturgy in Eastern Christianity.

MIRIAM watches HELEN working. MIRIAM looks over her shoulder again reading.

And what one writes as a young woman one perceives as something so entirely different I find…with time…with age.

MIRIAM moves across the room.

HELEN: It’s quite a library you have down there.

MIRIAM: We’re very lucky. We’ve built it up over the years.

HELEN: A real legacy.

MIRIAM: (Beat.) That’s something then.

HELEN: I’ve been trying to teach Audrey. It’s laborious I know but if she knows the phrases when she types them up then it will make life a lot easier, for her. It’s all useful experience for her resume.

MIRIAM looks at her bemused.

For when she works outside?

MIRIAM: Is Audrey leaving?

HELEN: I don’t…know…I just meant.

MIRIAM: She arrived here in quite a state. She’d not had a bath in two months. A bed maybe longer. She’ll leave when she wants to.

HELEN: And if she stays?

MIRIAM peers at a book on the shelf.

MIRIAM: Playboy of the Western World. What a play!

MIRIAM takes it out of the shelf, considers, smiling to herself.

JM Synge. Have you ever seen it?

HELEN: No.

MIRIAM: Neither have I. But we’ve read it. Time and time again. Before we had a television.

HELEN clocks MIRIAM’s cardigan, the label visible at the base of her neck as she walks away.

Ursula and I.

MIRIAM smiles, looks over HELEN’s shoulder.

Such dedication.

MIRIAM smiles, makes to go –

HELEN: You have your cardigan on inside out?

MIRIAM: Hmm.

MIRIAM feels for a label, laughs –

Oh yes, so I do –

MIRIAM points a finger at SAM before she exits.

MIRIAM: I will be back.

MIRIAM exits. SAM looks to HELEN.

SAM: A catalogue of little jobs every...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Characters
• Act One
• Act Two
• Act Three
• Act Four
• Act Five