Book Read Free

The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Irish Plays

Page 2

by Thomas Conway


  The performance text is a combination of improvisation from the actors, written testimony from interviewees in Rialto and Dolphin’s Barn, Dublin 8, Rachel Keogh’s autobiography Dying to Survive (Gill & Macmillan, 2007) and authored texts by Grace Dyas. The interviews and the texts authored by Grace Dyas are the sole texts detailed here.

  HEROIN was performed by Barry O’Connor, Lauren Larkin and Ryan O’Conor (first production, performances 1 – 3), Conor Madden (work-in-progress and first production, performances 4 – 9), Ger Kelly (work-in-progress, second through fifth productions), Dylan Brophy (aged 12) and Ross Kenny (aged 11).

  Stage Designer

  Doireann Coady

  Lighting Designer

  Eoin Winning

  Costume Designer

  Emma Fraser

  Producer

  Sarah Murphy

  Sound Designer

  Frank Sweeney

  Researcher and Producer

  Shane Byrne

  Assistant Director

  Dylan Haskins

  Assistant Designer

  Emma Fraser

  Assistant Lighting Designer

  Eoghan Carrick

  Production Manager

  Helen Collins

  Stage Manager

  Emma Fraser

  Assitant Stage Manager

  Niamh Denyer

  Sound Operator

  Gavin Hennessy

  Stage Manager

  Gemma Collins

  Production Assistant

  Shirley Somers

  Dublin Fringe Festival, 8–17 September 2010, Smock Alley Theatre

  axis, Ballymun, 24–26 March 2011

  Dublin Theatre Festival (as part of ReViewed), 4–9 October 2011, Smock Alley Theatre

  Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival, Groningen, The Netherlands 16-19 August 2012

  Draíocht, Blanchardstown, 10 & 11 October 2012

  Winner of Spirit of the Fringe Award 2010.

  Author’s Note

  The following is a selection of the written texts in the play HEROIN that was made collaboratively in 2010. The action of the play proper in our version of HEROIN moves from the 1960s to the present day while a living space is constructed on stage live. Because the performance is largely unscripted, that is, it follows a rigid rules structure that the actors improvise within – or what happens is set but how it happens is not – I have elected not to include stage directions. Because the performers do not play ‘characters’ but rather ‘personae’ or ‘versions of themselves’, I have omitted character names. I would invite anyone wishing to stage this piece to use these texts, along with their own rigorous research process, to create their own narrative using these texts as a framework. I would advise that anyone wishing to stage it should also read Rachel Keogh’s book Dying to Survive and seek her permission if they wish to include it. Ultimately, for a million metaphysical paradoxical reasons, it would be impossible for anyone to stage the version of HEROIN that I ‘wrote’. However, I invite you to use these texts to make your own. I would also refer readers to an essay that I wrote for Irish Theatre Magazine, as it provides the necessary context for how this work was produced collaboratively, which I think will be of interest to the reader… The essay can be found at: http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Features/Current/This-is-about-everything-that-ever-happened

  SECTION ONE. THE NINETEEN SIXTIES SECTION. THAT IS WHAT THIS SECTION IS CALLED, OKAY?

  – This is a story about heroin.

  – We’re moving now

  We’re moving

  Hope comes

  Hope goes

  Swings and roundabouts

  Post boxes are being painted from red to green

  We’re building boxes on boxes to cut the landscape

  We’re seeing progress loom over our heads

  We’re living in mansions

  We’ve got our own doors

  We’ve got our bathrooms

  We have mansions

  With balconies too high to see our children

  Sean Lemass is helping us play catch up

  We’re moving now

  We’re going

  Foley St. has fallen down

  We’re up and out

  We’re on

  We’re gone

  We’re getting televisions to watch troubles

  We’re cleaning out our lungs

  We’re coming home to roll spliffs

  We’re getting paid

  We’re contributing something

  We’re staying here

  We’re coughing and dying of consumption

  We’re turned on

  We’re rejecting our parents

  We’re not concerned with material goods

  We’re making our children lambs of god

  We’re cleansing their souls with leather straps

  We’re sending our daughters to breathe in steam

  We’re drinking too much

  We’re leaving them at it

  SECTION TWO. THE NINETEEN SEVENTIES. THE SECTION THAT DETAILS THE EVENTS OF THE NINETEEN SEVENTIES.

  – This is a story about Joey.

  – Joey started drinking at eleven and smoking hash at fourteen. He came from a big family. They were the first in their block to get a television.

  He thinks his dad might have stolen it, but he’s not sure. He says he did poorly in school due to behavioural problems and poor concentration. His mother called a priest to the house when he was caught stealing to pay for drink and clothes. For a short time he served as an altar boy.

  When he was caught stealing again, he was sent away.

  When he came home, he started taking painkillers; palphine, diphenol. He took heroin first in 1978, when it was beginning to creep in. He vomited for hours after his first smoke. People he hung around with offered him some, a well-known Dublin criminal family –

  – Who?

  – He would have tried anything at the time. He didn’t even know what it was, and didn’t get much out of it either, at first. He started injecting almost immediately. He knew he had a problem before he went to prison again.

  – This is a story about me

  My da drinks

  My ma smokes

  I don’t get on with them

  Stay outside

  My ma is a saint

  My da is a cunt though

  I’m never there

  Close your eyes

  Lean forward

  Every muscle in your body

  Can you feel it?

  My ma has a new fella

  Don’t like him much

  Can you feel that?

  My da is a cunt

  He’s a fucking cunt

  Can you feel that?

  And I’ll never be like him

  Haven’t seen me ma in weeks

  My da props up the bar

  Lean forward

  Close your eyes

  My ma is gone out with her friends

  They did their best but we hadn’t a hope

  My da lost his job

  When all the factories closed down

  Started drinking

  Me ma is grand really

  They really did do their best but we hadn’t really a hope

  My ma is dead

  She died this morning

  She’s gone

  And she’s never coming back

  He’s just always fucking nagging me

  And I just

  It gets very

  Ah for fuck’s sake

  See you

  See you

  You can smile all you want

  That’s all I’m saying

  Fucking stand-up comedian

  That’s all I’m saying

  Fuck him

  Fuck him from a fucking height

  That’s fucking hilarious

  Easy

  Easy

  Stay fucking easy

  Alright

  Okay

  Alright

  You
’re gonna pay for that

  Alright deadly

  Cheers

  Yeah grand

  Are you actually serious?

  I’m gonna bite your face off

  I’ll rip your fucking head off

  Go for it

  You prick

  Do you think I won’t?

  I’ll rip your fucking head off

  Keep it up now

  Keep it up

  Keep it the fuck up

  Keep it up now

  Go for it

  I dare you

  See what happens

  – We’re changing now

  We’re getting corrupt

  We can’t remember who we’re voting for

  We’re hearing about streets worth killing for

  Somewhere we’ve never been

  Poppies are growing

  Millions of red poppies

  Leaders are changing

  Moving and starting to sell in a place we’ve never heard of

  An oil crisis ripples and sends us somewhere else

  We’re changing to the decimal

  We’re swapping our skirts for trousers

  We’re leaving or staying to do nothing

  Our factories are closing down

  We’re signing on

  We’re up and out

  Our mansions are falling down

  Our lifts are broken

  Our children are playing with broken glass

  We’re being ignored

  We’re second-class citizens

  We’re having more children to get bigger rooms

  Streets worth killing for cloud the agenda

  So they tell us it’s not happening

  Hope falls

  Swings and roundabouts

  There’s a war on

  That means we can’t rob banks

  There’s a crisis that means

  We can’t get jobs

  We forget what we can do

  We have nothing

  We feel like less

  Some of us take it

  Some of us don’t

  Some of us can’t

  Some of us won’t

  Our mothers are crushing benzo’s against their teeth Our fathers are drinking Guinness and talking about the British

  We’re living in ruins of mansions

  We’ve got nowhere to go and nothing to do

  We’re stealing pills from our mothers to calm our nerves

  We’re climbing over our neighbours on the stairs

  We’re fine though

  Because none of this is happening

  They’re telling us it’s not happening

  SECTION THREE. OR SOMETHING. THE EIGHTIES. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS IN THE EIGHTIES.

  – She’s after having a baby now

  A little girl

  I think it’s with her ma

  I got pulled out of the bed by the ankle

  Pushed out to the landing

  Punched in the stomach

  Fell down the stairs

  When we got broken into we didn’t get a new window for a few weeks

  And we got a letter yeah

  A letter off the corpo

  Saying that we were being fined

  For breaking our tenancy agreement

  Can you believe that?

  I met a fella, I suppose that was how I got into it

  More often than not,

  It’s always a fella

  This place is not on a map

  It’s not on a map of Dublin

  I can’t get anything on tick now and that’s a fucking problem

  No labour till Wednesday

  What the fuck

  What the fuck

  I guarantee you

  No I guarantee it

  If this was happening in Rathgar

  They’d do something about it pretty quick

  Walked up with a knife

  Give me your bag love

  Ran away

  Scored

  Every day the sickness gets worse

  You start off being careful

  But eventually you don’t care

  It’s just like

  You need that ya know

  You need that

  And if you can’t get it you’ll do fucking anything

  I knocked at the door and a young wan answered

  Told her that her da left something for me upstairs

  Walked upstairs and looked around

  Came back at the weekend

  Took it all

  During the 1980s anyone from the south inner city who had a video player got it robbed

  It was tragic

  Started going over once a week and bringing the boxes back on cargo ships

  It was fucking easy

  It felt like they weren’t even trying to stop us

  Nobody touches you when you have the virus

  And you know you feel very alone

  I came back from the disco and kneeled down at the statue of the Virgin Mary

  It started lashing raining

  And I prayed till the morning

  Little fuckers

  Little fucking fucks

  If it isn’t nailed down they have it away

  Fuckers

  You go in with a shopping bag

  Take the whole arm of jumpers

  Into the bag

  You walk out

  Once you don’t look like you’re on drugs nobody notices

  We call the police but nobody comes

  Taxis won’t pull in under the arch

  My mother cried when I said I was moving in here

  My da bought me a bottle of brown phi and locked me in my room for weeks

  Nobody talks to you when you’re sick

  They know you’re sick

  You can’t even buy milk in shops

  You only talk to other people who take drugs

  And you make friends with people who take drugs

  And that’s just it

  Open your handbag and offer out the Valium

  Sure we’re all brothers and sisters in Holy God’s family

  I went to my doctor and he told me all he could do was tell me to stay off the gear

  He said I should go to my priest

  Hands go around your waist and it makes you breathe in Get your fucking hands off me

  Close your eyes

  Maggots and mould and rot

  Feel the sick coming up and falling out my mouth

  He never fucking stops

  Smack in the jaw

  Taste blood

  Slam the door behind me

  Put your hands over your ears and say lalalalala

  Smack in the jaw

  Taste blood

  Slam the door behind me

  – They even took our new curtains and my mother made them for us as a wedding present

  Come on to the pub son

  I’ll buy you a few pints

  Stay off that fucking dirty stuff

  Hands go around your waist and it makes you breathe in

  Get your fucking hands off me

  Close your eyes

  Maggots and mould and rot

  Feel the sick coming up and falling out my mouth

  He never fucking stops

  – I remember just thinking

  How can I live here?

  I came up the stairs and I just saw runners

  His brand new Nike runners hanging there

  In the air

  I went and got me ma

  We take their names at the entrance to the blocks. If they’ve no business here we ask them to move on.

  We know each other. They’re our own. They’re one of us. And they’re laughing at the drug watch.

  Are we doing the right thing here? We think we are. But are we doing the right thing here, really?

  Can we talk about this here? Is it okay, to talk about this here, like this?

  He wants help and he can’t get it

  And God kn
ows when he’ll ask again

  I do leave the place crying

  Things have got worse

  They’re only going to get worse

  They’re not getting any better

  This could have been a good place

  It could have been brilliant here

  A great place to rear a family

  And now

  And now

  – We’re unstable

  Walls are falling

  We’re reshuffling and stopping and starting

  We’re under pressure

  We’re making words for things we didn’t have words for before

  We’re making rules about something new

  People are refusing to eat

  For streets we’ve never walked on

  We’re in debt

  We’re spending nothing

  Our mansions are turning into ghettoes

  It’s too hot in our towers

  We’re serving time until we’re moved on

  We’re wheeling our prams for hours

  We’ve started to lie about where we’re from

  We’re colder than we’ve ever been

  We’re seeing faces change

  We’re having our windows broken

  We’re watching our tellies being stolen

  We’re spreading new diseases

  We’re waking up to spacemen

  We’re holding up the shop van

  We’re robbing chemists

  We’re swallowing cough syrup

  We’re being found in forests

  We’re dancing in our casuals

  We’re walking home at sunrise

  And hiding our eyes

  We’re finding veins

  We’re scoring

  We’re borrowing

  We’re dyin’ sick

  We’re freezing cold when we wake up

  We puncture our skin to make ourselves warm

  Swings and roundabouts

  We’re coming together to say no to drugs

  We’re shooting to kill

  We’re taking names

  We’re organizing

  We’re meeting and talking

  We’re marching on houses

  We’re beating not treating

  We’re moving their furniture out one by one

  We’re talking to gun bearers

  We’re kicking each other to death

  Our names are in the newspapers

  We’re moving the quiet ones out to the suburbs

  We’re keeping the bad with the bad

  We’re praying to Holy God to remove heroin from us

  We’re looking at the sweat on Jesus’s brow

  We’re doing ‘The Stations of the Cross’

 

‹ Prev