Chaos

Laura Lomas

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781788503549
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama

'If the world is chaos, then it means there's no order, and if there's no order, then it basically means that anything is possible'

A girl is locked in a room. A boy brings another boy flowers. A girl has tied herself to a railing. A boy doesn't know who he is. A girl worries about impending catastrophe. A woman jumps in front of a train. A boy's heart falls out his chest. A butterfly has a broken wing.

Laura Lomas's play Chaos is a symphony of dislocated and interconnected scenes. A series of characters search for meaning in a complicated and unstable world. Bouncing through physics, the cosmos, love and violence, they find order in the disorder of each other.

Written specifically for young people, the play formed part of the 2019 National Theatre Connections Festival and was premiered by youth theatres across the UK. It offers opportunities for a large, flexible cast of any size or mix of genders, and can incorporate chorus work, movement and music.

PART ONE

Train

–		So it’s Saturday and I’m stood on this train platform and it’s busy, everyone is like packed, like jammed in, you know an it’s early, like twenty to nine or something, and I’m on my way to work. The air feels still, almost wet somehow and I wouldn’t normally even be on this platform, cus normally, my mum, she gives me a lift but since, she and my dad, since they like… split, I’ve been getting the train when I stay at my dad’s and so I’m standing there on this platform, and I can feel all these bodies…
		All these bodies, and it’s like they’re too close, somehow, too much, cus I can feel them, it’s like we’re one organism, one thing, moving, breathing, we’re that tight and I look to my left, and out the corner of my eye, I can see this
		boy
		my age, maybe, or maybe younger, and he’s bouncing this ball
		this small, like tiny ball, he’s stood at the back of the platform, listening to music on his headphones, not really concentrating, and I look at the clock and it says 8.42, and I know that the train is coming, cus although I can’t see it, I get that feeling in my legs like v...