Out of Water

Zoe Cooper

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781350129481
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre Playwriting

And we are watching the huge grey waves crashing and this is the moment when I say I have to tell you something. Claire and her wife Kit have moved from the confines of London to the wide open coasts of South Shields.
To be nearer family, to be nearer the sea, to put down roots. To have a baby. Claire's new job at the local school is a step up, and she wants to make a real difference, but she soon discovers that she has as much to learn from her students as they have from her. A tender new play about gender, wild swimming, and how we define who we are.

Act Three

One

Fish It’s always the same.

Every night.

She is the same swollen salmon swimming upstream and she is leaping over rocks and swimming past a big tree which has long leaves which are drooping down into the water. And she is pushing right through the tangle of them, darting beyond the shadow of an enormous great bird which dips down, its enormous great mouth gaping and she is darting and close, so close now.

When she remembers that she is not a salmon swollen and ready for spawning. That she is in fact lying in bed in South Shields.

Claire wakes up, gasping for air.

Fish So this is what is happening through all of this. Every night. And every morning when Miss is having to wake up and remember.

A school bell.

Two

Claire It is Monday morning.

Fish It is ten twenty-two on a Monday morning:

Claire And I have been summoned.

Fish/Head ‘Ahem.’

Miss received the piece of paper summoning her to the Head’s office in first period and she was ushered through by the office staff as soon as she got here.

Claire And Judy did not smile her normal hello as she ushered me into her inner sanctum and asked me to shut the door behind myself. And now she is just . . . (staring).

,

Fish/Head ‘Ahem ahem.’

,

‘In your interview we discussed buy-in.’

Claire ‘Buy-in? Sorry –’

Fish/Head ‘The process by which you proposed you were going to go about gaining buy-in for your scheme.’

,

‘Getting everyone on board and –’

Claire ‘Oh. Yes. I see. Buy-in. Sorry . . .’

Fish/Head ‘Because as you yourself said in that interview, gaining this buy-in. Getting everyone on board and everyone feeling that they have ownership of what is, after all, a very innovative scheme is crucial.’

,

‘It is crucial, isn’t it?’

Claire ‘. . . Yes, of course . . .’

Fish/Head ‘And in that interview you proposed that you would gain this buy-in through a referral system. Whereby the students you would be working with would be drawn from our large pool of Pupil Premium students. And you proposed that the students on your scheme would be pre-selected from that pool by myself and by the other members of the Senior Leadership Team –’

Claire ‘Yes, exactly, yourself and the existing SLT . . .’

Fish/Head ‘And then working from that list of pre-selected students you proposed that you would then make contact with each student individually to ascertain what they were interested in studying . . .’

Claire ‘I . . . yes . . .’

Fish/Head ‘And you proposed that you would then match up these pre-selected students with Subject Specialist Mentors who would be classroom teachers, who would also have been pre-selected by myself and the other members of SLT on the basis of their subject specialism.’

,

Claire: ‘Well, yes. Yes . . . absolutely and that was the . . .’

Fish/Head ‘Ah . . .’

Claire ‘That was the plan, but I did want to mention –’

Fish/Head ‘Ah, I see . . .’

Claire ‘I did want to mention to you that I have also identified a couple of other students who I feel could really benefit from the scheme.’

Fish/Head ‘Indeed.’

,

‘And I have heard that you have identified and are indeed already working with at least one student who was not on that referral list. And I have gathered that you have not passed this student on to a Subject Specialist Mentor and instead have undertaken to work with this student in a series of one-on-one sessions. Which is obviously something that you have not run past me and so in fact is unauthorised.’

Claire And so the point of this part of the story is that after the party on the beach on Saturday I have been summoned to the Head’s office unexpectedly on the Monday. And I am being interrogated. I feel like I am being interrogated by the Head about myself. My approach and also about myself. And this is why I . . .

Fish And this is why in this part Miss does feel like she does have to justify why she has allowed me join the scheme and why she has been working with me on her own and not passed me on to a Subject Specialist Mentor and she does this by . . . Because she has done quite a few, as it turns out, unauthorised sessions with me. And she has found out quite a lot in those unauthorised sessions using those techniques like we said, which included active listening. And so in this part she tells the Head all this. Everything that I have told her. About my birth mother, the details of various placements I have had with various foster families. Why they never worked out. And quite a few other things too.

,

So she does tell the Head all that. Filling the silence with stories about my life. Which are my stories. But which are not important to this story. The telling of this story about Miss. And then she says:

Claire ‘And also, because I have reason to believe that they are being bullied. I have witnessed them being verbally bullied and I did see a bruise on their arm which they did tell me a story about how they got it, but which I do believe was in fact a result of physical bullying which they are experiencing because they are exploring their gender.’

Fish/Head ‘Yes, and I do know the girl and I have heard about these bruises / before . . .’

Claire ‘Actually they go by / they –’

Fish/Head ‘Oh yes, my apologies, my mistake “they”. But as I was saying these bruises were reported and investigated. And what was found. Because it might seem to you like she is being bullied. Because of her. This gender stuff. But some children get into fights. And some children do deliberately provoke physical confrontations. And in this way some children, through their own actions, they get bruises.’

Claire ‘Oh well . . . that ...