Deborah Bruce - Joanne

JOANNE

five monologues

Deborah Bruce

Theresa Ikoko

Laura Lomas

Chino Odimba

Ursula Rani Sarma

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Joanne was first performed at Latitude Festival on 19 July 2015, with Tanya Moodie performing all five monologues. It transferred to Soho Theatre, London, on 13 October 2015.

Introduction

We commissioned Joanne in early 2015 to be performed at Latitude Festival. At that time, the run-up to the General Election was underway and there was media saturation of rhetoric around cuts, cuts, cuts. We were offering additional and emergency support services at Clean Break (including emergency housing clinics and food-bank vouchers) in order to compensate for pressure on almost all the essential external services that are used by women attending our theatre-education programme. In addition, the backdrop to these pressures was reduced access to legal aid and a probation service undergoing privatisation. I began to see the women employees who are the faces of our public services as the front line of a very brittle army, kept fighting through good will and human endurance. Inspired by this, I wanted to create a piece of theatre that looks at the fallout of this continuing unsustainable system to look at the pressure on the front line and where it actually implodes. Joanne is the invisible fall out. Through the pressures on public services, the person that arguably needs these resources the most, gets lost and in some way disappears.

Joanne is a young woman, who shares her story with the women we work with day in day out at Clean Break and in womens prisons. The challenge of the production was to create something that purposefully excluded Joannes voice whilst also ensuring that this was a virtue and not a loss. We worked with Clean Breaks Student Support Team to create a timeline for our Jo Bloggs. It was important that there were multiple times in her young trajectory that Joanne could have been helped with the right intervention, and that this womans pathway to prison and beyond was one that could have been diverted. I then worked with our five commissioned writers to explore the central twenty-four hours that the play focuses on and to consider the women that Joanne comes into contact with. Our writers Deborah, Theresa, Laura, Ursula and Chino then went and spoke to women who work in their chosen characters professions. It was important that each writer had an autonomous voice in the process whilst also trying to ensure the five pieces hung together and became fuller as a whole.

Having Deborah, Theresa, Ursula, Laura and Chino working on this project was a real thrill for the company. Not only are they each writers that Clean Break admires hugely, it was also wonderful to gain so many different insights into a single arena and event. Part of the aim of the project was to explore the diversity of lives and pressures on service-led womens employment. Inviting Tanya Moodie to join this cohort of stellar female artists seemed a natural progression. She has extended each of these voices with her wonderful collaborative spirit and great talent and hopefully left Joannes absence very present for you at a time when she urgently needs to be visible.

Risn McBrinn, October 2015
Director, Joanne
Head of Artistic Programme, Clean Break

STELLA

Chino Odimba

Character

STELLA, a woman in her late forties

Setting

An office

Note on the Text

An ellipsis ( ) indicates a trailing-off or pause at the end of dialogue

A forward slash (/) indicates an overlap in speech

STELLAis leaning against a table.

The table is full of boxes and plants and bits.

STELLA is holding a paper party cup.

Wine in the office eh? Thats a treat. I mean it is five-thirty and well I dont have to worry about getting the sack do I?

(Short beat.)

Im not really in to speeches but if itll shut you up here goes

(STELLA hitches herself onto the table.)

This is how they do it in the films isnt it? I mean I could ave been a film star. You should have seen me at eighteen. Legs up to here.

(STELLA giggles.
STELLA strikes a pose.)

Anyway I really want to say thanks so much for being the best people to work with. Well most of you eh! My project funding has run out and Im out on my ear but

(STELLA walks the length of the table.)

I mean dont get me wrong. If it wasnt for this job. If it wasnt for them believing in me. Anyway you know what I mean. Not many options to put my (Gestures quotation marks with her fingers.) experience to good use if you know what I mean. Not many options at that time anyway

The job. What can I say about the job? No uniform. No company car. No team-building day once in a while. I mean in all the years Ive been here

And well all those years do you think they mean anything? Like Debenhams bonus points for all the stuff

It has to right?

I mean we dont take the job for peace and quiet do we? The good life. I mean we choose to do the job right? We choose it dont we? To feel this well / to feeling

So (Raising her empty glass in the air.)

(STELLA drops her raised arm.)

Heres to feeling something.

(Short beat.
STELLA steps down off the table.
STELLA takes a big mouthful from her wine glass.)

I mean you feel it dont you? You feel that calling? I know

Well I know I have some personal feelings about it. I mean Ive seen it from both sides havent I? That bloody three hundred and sixty degrees that theyre always going on about.

I felt it this morning anyway. I bloody felt it. This morning usual thing you know wake up, get Mum up and Im just getting her breakfast of porridge and / And if she doesnt get her porridge / Dont ask! So off it goes. My mobile on the kitchen table

(Short beat.)

I answer it. Elayne calling. (Pointing.) Yeah you Elayne. To check Im still doing the last one today. That I hadnt forgotten. That it was in my diary. I say

Of course I remembered.

Its about consistency

And consistency is important

Didnt I? I would never abandon one of mine. Not mine. I mean who would? Who would do that? Leave her there alone. Never. Not me. Ill be there I say. Didnt I? How could I forget? My last one? No way.

(Short beat.)

All this wouldnt be worth it if we werent there for each other. Her waiting there thats what its about. Not me and my tomorrow

I mean tomorrow is another day and tomorrow wont be like this will it? Today and tomorrow are as far apart as winter and summer. And before tomorrow well

Theres today. So I say

Just as long as I can still get my hair done!

(STELLA laughs out loud.)

Seriously though that new salon has squeezed me in last minute and I want my hair to look nice for tonight.

Tonights the night! Last chance to see your faces. Last chance to be part of this

I dont know what Im trying to say but its about getting the job done isnt it? And shes alright. This one. You know what I mean? Something about her makes me hope that shell make it somehow. Thats all I can do now. Hope.