Seven new “shorts” were given script-in-hand performances at the November 2002 meeting. The final line-up was:

The plays were directed by Paul Dunstan and performed by actors from the Harrogate Dramatic Society.

Kill, a monologue by Helen Shay, focuses on a woman’s fear of growing old.

Helen’s character is a secretary or, as she calls herself, a “word-processor” - a notion which allows her to play with language as she reflects on her fading prettiness, her relationship with her father, her lack of freedom and her unusual hobby of falconry.

This ambitious piece interweaves descriptive passages about birds of prey with the mundane reality of the woman’s working life, always at the beck and call of her boss and the intrusive telephone.

Some of the themes in Kill, particularly the father/daughter relationship, perhaps deserve to be developed more fully. Helen Shay writes, “I came away feeling that my piece needed a good edit making it shorter. This was a first draft and was determined by the Aspects of Fear brief. I had to play up the fact that she is afraid of growing old and ultimately of death. However I think she started to tell me that she was about more. I’m beginning to wonder whether she contributed to her father’s death by neglecting him towards the end of his life.

“I certainly benefited from hearing the reading and I think the second draft will be much stronger as a result. I hope we do more of this sort of thing. I think a discussion at the end would be a great idea. I wanted to ask other writers about their pieces and could only do so briefly in the bar afterwards.”

The Lonely Lion is a powerful piece which works on several levels at once. A small girl reveals her loneliness and fear through the story she is writing entitled The Lonely Lion. Off stage we hear her parents’ voices raised in an argument which turns more and more ugly until it ends in a violent beating, just as the little girl fears it might.

By placing the child alone on stage, Jean Binnie invites us into her world. We experience the off stage violence from her perspective and at the same time create our own meaning for the story which is unfolding out of sight. The action begins at exactly the right moment dramatically as the girl’s father returns home drunk to be confronted by his wife. In The Lonely Lion Jean Binnie demonstrates how painful issues can be dealt with even in very short pieces of drama.

Nemesis by Heather Stroud was another ambitious piece for a showcase of “shorts”. Framed by current issues including airport security, the threat of terrorism and the conflict in the Middle East, the focus of Nemesis is Danika and her seven year old step-son, Ahbed.

Danika is interviewed at the airport after an explosive device is found in her luggage, stitched inside Ahbed’s teddy bear. During the course of the interview she begins to question her relationship with her husband and wonders how well she really knows him.

The interview scenes work particularly well and the outcome is quite chilling as the child reveals that he placed the device inside the teddy himself.

This is a huge story for a short play to tackle. It would be interesting to see whether the piece could be re-worked with fewer characters to retain the strong focus of the interview room.

Heather says that she is already re-writing Nemesis following feedback and advice from a number of people who have a detailed understanding of the political situation which frames the play.

In Tunnel Clare Druce cleverly plays with the idea of fear being “all in the mind”. A young woman enters a train compartment in which the only other passenger is a man. The play is mostly a monologue for the young woman in which humour is nicely mixed with tension. When the train stops in a tunnel and the lights go out, the woman’s imagination runs away with her and we begin to believe, as she does, that the man may be a real threat to her. When, finally, the lights come on and the man speaks for the first time, we realise how easily we’ve been drawn in – and how easily misled.

Tony Gaughan adopts a non-naturalistic style for his absorbing play, The Last Resort, in which a couple find themselves on holiday in a different hotel from the one they thought they had booked. The husband is delighted and tries to make the most of the unexpected luxury, the excellent service and the food, which he finds delicious but his wife can’t stomach. The fact that the hotel is called ‘Los Limbos’ gives us an early clue that things are not quite what they seem.

The characterisation is excellent and the surreal humour gives the audience a sense of unease, particularly through the presence of an oily holiday rep. who seems to have lost more teeth each time he appears.

The anxiety is real as the woman declines both physically and mentally and it seems that the couple are trapped in a kind of Holiday Hell. Her apparent illness deceives us, just as the couple are deceived, and we realise we have been watching a thoughtful and compelling reflection on death - and what the view might be like from “the other side”.

Tony Gaughan writes, “I enjoyed the showcase and benefited afterwards from other members’ advice – notable Jean Binnie and Helen Brandom. I also had the opportunity to speak to Alex Chisholm and as her about a stage play I’d sent in. She said, ‘Remind me about it.’ I found this more difficult than writing the play.”

Tony also comments, “Kevin Waters’ piece was very impressive… Helen Shay’s reminded me of Bennett’s Office Suite… Heather Stroud’s was really strong… Jean Binnie’s crystal sharp… Peter Johnson’s so funny… and Clare Druce cleverly demolished stereotypical thinking. As for discussion around the pieces – great idea. The only problem is there wouldn’t be time to do as many.”

A late substitution (due to the fact that one of the Harrogate actors had to drop out) meant that I read Kevin Waters’ atmospheric Still Waters myself. Kevin says he originally wrote the piece as a story for radio rather than as a piece of drama, but this “ghost” story with a difference fulfilled the Aspects of Fear brief so perfectly that it definitely deserved its place in the showcase.

For the purposes of performance I asked Kevin’s permission to “tweak” the piece into the present tense and he generously agreed to this.

Still Waters focuses on a woman who desperately needs to “lay the ghost” of a recurring nightmare based on an incident in childhood in which she very nearly drowned and was rescued by a girl only a few years older than herself. Her rescuer was never identified and the incident has haunted her ever since. The Bradford mill setting is evocative and well observed, owing much, says Kevin, to his own childhood experiences.

As the performer of the piece it’s difficult for me to review Still Waters objectively. What I do know is that the audience was riveted by this well-crafted story.

Kevin writes, “I’m naturally very pleased with the response to Still Waters”. He very much appreciated the large number of encouraging and constructive comments people made about the piece but is unsure about having a discussion at the end of a showcase. As an audience member he says, “the pieces can tend to bleed into each other” when performed by the same group of actors on a limited set. However, “I would enjoy listening to after-performance discussion and constructive criticism – though not necessarily of my own work. In me God created a rhino with a gossamer hide.”

The final performance of the showcase was Rabbits by Peter Johnson rather than Fear as previously advertised.

If Fear is half as good as Rabbits it will be well worth watching.

Despite the fact that they are not superstitious, the central couple in this very funny play seem to have experienced more than their fair share of bizarre accidents and deaths following the victims’ failure to observe an everyday superstitious ritual.

Peter’s snappy dialogue is a delight to listen to and laugh at – and clearly a pleasure to perform. Rabbits contrasted well with the atmosphere of the previous piece and were perfectly placed as the final performance in the showcase.

Many thanks to Liz Ryan for the photos. Pressure of time has meant that only a handful of writers were approached for their comments. If the rest of you would like to add your comments on the experience of being “showcased”, please send them to me for inclusion in the next issue of Newscript.

Caroline Small

Thank You!

Our heartfelt thanks and appreciation go to director Paul Dunstan and the actors from Harrogate Dramatic Society for making the showcase such a success.

The actors who gave their time and skills so generously were:

Lawrence Conyers
Alan Harwood
Katie Hutcheson
Sylvia Iveson
Judy Methven
Lucy Pattison