Point Blank

'Nothing to Declare', 'Operation Wonderland', and 'Roses and Morphine'

Liz Tomlin

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781841501697
• eBook ISBN: 9781841509860
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

Point Blank Theatre

OPERATION WONDERLAND

By Liz Tomlin and Steve Jackson

JED	- Stewart Lodge
KAY (Blue Fairy)	- Jenny Ayres
Director	- Liz Tomlin
Additional Direction	- Steve Jackson
Designer	- Richard Lowden
Lighting Designer	- Al Orange
Sound Designer	- David Mitchell
Stage Manager	- James Gilbreath

First performed at Rotherham Arts Centre, 7 February 2004.

Short-listed for the Critics’ Circle most promising new playwright award 2004.

* Plate caption: Stewart Lodge in Operation Wonderland. Photo: James Gilbreath.

SCENE ONE

(Tannoy announcements advertising the joys of the Wonderland Theme Park ring out from a speaker with its wires hanging cut.¹ Lights up on two industrial bins on a forecourt in front of a locked steel shutter. Red and orange bin bags full of rubbish are piled high. One has split and rubbish is spilt over the stage. JED, in his forties, tired and worn, enters in a Wonderland cleaner’s uniform. He spots a blue fairy doll with its head off among the rubbish and puts it back together again. He looks up at the sky and speaks to the doll.)

JED:	It hasn’t fallen yet. (Pause.) The shooting star. It hasn’t shot. (Pause.) It’s the best place to see it from, down here. Away from all the neon. Away from all the noise. Please don’t broadcast it.

(KAY, dressed in the costume of Wonderland’s Blue Fairy, enters, shocks him.)

KAY:	I won’t say a word.
JED:	How did you find this place?
KAY:	Your face hurts out there. After a while. Not just your face. (Pause.) I wanted to find somewhere I could take a breath. Let my face find its own expression. Do you know what I mean?
JED:	So you found backstage.
KAY:	I just kept walking. Away from all the magic into the darkness and the silence.

(Listens.) You can’t even hear the tannoy from here.

JED:	I disconnect the wires on my unit.
KAY:	How do you know how to do that?
JED:	You’d be surprised what you pick up. The red star rubbish is full of things like that. Scribbled on the back of free maps and popcorn cartons. Every day you pick up something new, before they collect them for forensic. (Pause.) I used to be able to get Marlborough cigarettes from the amber bags. Quite regularly. And other non-Wonderland brands they’d confiscated.
KAY:	But how do you get away with it?
JED:	Where you’re standing now you’re still just about in range of the perimeter monitors. Their field of vision has a cut-off point a step or two back. And the public boundary monitors pick you up on the other side of the shutter.
KAY:	But if I move here …
JED:	You move into my space.
KAY:	And you are -
JED:	Jed.
KAY:	I’m the Blue Fairy. (Smiles.) But you can call me Kay. And no one can see us?
JED:	Not a soul.
KAY:	Or hear what we say?
JED:	Or hear what we say.
KAY:	There’s something about the way you find yourself moving through Wonderland.Always as if someone is
JED:	watching you.
KAY:	As if everything you’re about to say
JED:	before you’ve even thought it
KAY:	Has already been
JED:	scripted
KAY:	by somebody else.
JED:	As if the scene has been
KAY:	set and the camera is running
JED:	and you’re walking in the footsteps
KAY:	and the costume
JED:	of a character who’s needed for something
KAY:	they’re not fully aware of.
JED:	As if the world we’re living in is not real at all, at least not
KAY:	our reality.
JED:	As if you’re just a walk-on part in
KAY/JED:	something you don’t fully understand.

(Pause.)

KAY:

Oh, look! (They both look at the sky.) You know what they say, don’t you? (Pause.) That every shooting star is the teardrop of a hero. That on the other side of our darkness is a hidden universe of blinding light where the souls of heroes shine. But the earth’s atmosphere is so dark and so evil that it blocks out the light completely. Only a very brave action can shoot a bullet through the darkness, and in the hole it makes we can see the sparkle of the world beyond. If there were only enough brave actions we could shoot the darkness to pieces, and the world would be flooded with light again.

JED:

They’re made out of comet dust which vaporizes on entering the earth’s atmosphere. Just a trail of debris that the comet discards as it blazes through at 158,000 miles per hour. Just a trail of debris that the earth gets caught up in. (Pause.) I like your explanation better.

(Pause.)

KAY:	You wear your best face out there. Wear it and wear it until it’s all worn out. Nothing left to change into when you come off duty. Happiness has become something that hurts. Something you can’t bear the thought of. Something you need to escape. (Pause.) But what’s there left to escape to?
JED:	An older brand of happiness.
KAY:	Find much of that do you? (Pause.) No...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Caution
• Point Blank
• Acknowledgements
• Telling Stories: The Point Blank Trilogy
• Point Blank Theatre Nothing to Declare
• Point Blank Theatre Operation Wonderland
• Point Blank Theatre Roses and Morphine
• Fantasy and Delusion: The Dramaturgy of Point Blank's Nothing to Declare
• Tracing the Footprints of Critical Thought: Point Blank's Work as Cultural Analysis