Papatango Plays

Three Prize-Winning Plays

Nkenna Akunna, Tajinder Singh Hayer, Tom Powell

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2021
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781788504768
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Three urgent and compelling plays, joint winners of the 2021 New Writing Prize awarded by acclaimed theatre company Papatango, in partnership with English Touring Theatre.

Some Of Us Exist In The Future  by Nkenna Akunna

Fresh off the plane from the UK, Chiamaka is new to Brooklyn and its extremes. She's new to queer dating, to the realities of being an immigrant. Most of all, she's new to the voices of the gods… Utterly original, wryly funny and always gripping, Some Of Us Exist In The Future follows one woman's search for a place to belong in a world that's not all it seems.

Ghost Stories from an Old Country by Tajinder Singh Hayer

Amar's older brother Dalvir has always told a good ghost story – properly unsettling, dark tales that send a chill right through Amar's soul. But now Dalvir's almost a ghost himself, cloistered and secretive. Amar desperately wants his brother back, but can he unravel Dalvir's stories to reconnect with the only family he has left? Ghost Stories from an Old Country is a riveting and poignant exploration of the ties that bind us, threaded through with captivating fables.

The Silence and The Noise by Tom Powell

Every teenager knows what it's like to be stuck between things: childhood and maturity, innocence and experience, hope for the future and uncertainty about what it might bring. But Daize is torn between even greater challenges: her love for her vulnerable mother and her dangerous friendship with Ant. An outsider with knockout trainers, Ant has just appeared on her doorstep, bringing with him a whole world of trouble. The Silence and The Noise beautifully captures the story of two young people on the edge.

All three plays were produced and premiered by Papatango and English Touring Theatre in 2021 as audio plays, presented to audiences via specially designed audio stations that toured UK theatres.

'Remarkable unearthers of new talent' Evening Standard on Papatango

'Astonishingly brilliant… one of the best debut plays I have ever seen' BBC Radio 4's Saturday Review on Shook by Samuel Bailey, winner of the 2019 Papatango New Writing Prize

SOME OF US EXIST IN THE FUTURE

Nkenna Akunna

Characters

CHIAMAKA, Black, femme, British

BLACK MASC, Black, masc

DAD, 60s, Nigerian accent

NEIGHBOUR, Black

YOU, Black

ISATA, Black, femme, North American

COE, White, not a man, North American

Location

Brooklyn, New York. Lenapehoking soil.

Notes

Speech in parenthesis is speech we shouldn’t hear. But we do. Speech in bold is spoken/projected from somewhere in space. Lines without full stops should sound unfinished

Cultural accents should not be approximated, and so parts should be cast with input of someone who has intimate or first-hand knowledge or experience of these accents.

1.

A space in darkness.

A TV switches on. A sigh-cough, the unconscious or habitual kind. The welcome tone of a video-on-demand streaming service plays. A sharp inhale at the shock of its loudness.

Scrolling through. Shows and films. Shows and films. A deep inhale, the sound of a spliff burning. Scrolling pauses, spluttering coughs.

Button click. The opening scene of a show or film. A jingle.

Speech coming from inside the TV should sound different than from the rest of the room.

BLACK MASC. A beautiful daaay to be a Bla(ck–)

Button click, fast-forward.

on my own land

Button click, fast-forward.

Free! Yessir!

Free. You hear me?

But do you hear me, though?

YOU. I hear you, though.

CHIAMAKA. Hmm.

BLACK MASC. Everybody hears me, though. Everything can hear me if they really want to.

YOU. Because you free.

BLACK MASC. You too, baby!

YOU. Uh huh.

BLACK MASC. For real for true.

YOU. I know it. I know it, I know it.

BLACK MASC. What the crystal ball say today, baby? What we getting on today?

YOU. We kissing the sky

BLACK MASC. Uh huh

YOU. Crumbling time

BLACK MASC. That’s right

YOU. Making it right
Bussin’ a whine

BLACK MASC. Buss a whine buss a whine for the girl made flesh

Bussa whine buss a whine

YOU. Ay!

BLACK MASC. Girl made flesh!

YOU. Girl in the city!
Human girl.

BLACK MASC. Home away from home, girl.

YOU. Uh huh.

CHIAMAKA (quietly). Uh-uh.

BLACK MASC. Beautiful day.

The jingle plays.

She can’t hear me, though.

YOU. She can. She just don’t know it yet.
Listen.

Sound disconnects.

(Whispers.) I think she went under…

Pause.

(Nervous.) I’m not nervous.You nervous?

BLACK MASC (nervous). Why would I be nervous?

YOU. Exactly.

BLACK MASC. No need to be nervous.

YOU. No need.

It’s late.

After dark, while the world is asleep.

So she’s open.

She’ll do it.

Pause.

BLACK MASC. What if

YOU. It’s a beautiful day, right?

BLACK MASC (impatient). I don’t know what a day is! Never felt that! I just be sayin’ shit. Hoping she’ll hear. Hoping she’ll feel us.

TV show stops.

Something like being underwater, though we are not.

Something like falling through a tunnel, though we are not.

YOU (inhales in recognition). You feel her?

BLACK MASC. Course I do.

YOU. Then you’ve felt time.

CHIAMAKA takes in a sudden, grasping kind of breath.

BLACK MASC. She’s slipping away.

YOU. She’ll come back. You know she’ll come back.

BLACK MASC. Yeah, yeah for sure.

The TV show returns, and in it, someone is knocking on a door.

CHIAMAKA, disconnected and confused, returns to herself.

CHIAMAKA. I’m in the middle of something when I forget what I’m doing.

What I came here for

When I’ll be leaving.

I forget where here is, how I even got here.

I listen for something that might seem familiar.

Something that might remind me of reality before I’m caught outside of it.

Faint haunting of steel pans.

Life outside these walls. Walls.

I’m somewhere on the inside.

I’m in a building.

The knocking continues.

I can feel heat

so I have skin

so I must be in a body.

But the body I’m in is around me.

floating

in circles and squares dots of light and blinking waves

I’m a body.

Some body.

This body that’s mine

i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• Some Of Us Exist In The Future
• Ghosts from an Old Country
• The Silence and The Noise
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information