Jordan - The Unreturning

Having directed all twelve Ignition performances it has been incredible to develop this play with Anna Jordan and various teams of Ignition graduates. We told stories, worked physically, made scenes and eventually landed on a simple idea. What does it mean to return to your home after a life-changing experience? To return home and for your world to feel a little different. Maybe you have changed, or maybe the place you are returning to no longer recognises you. War was something we talked about a lot, and with the centenary of World War One very present in our thoughts we started to develop stories about how that experience can have a profound effect on the people involved. That is how we find ourselves where we are now.

Three young men returning to their hometown of Scarborough in different periods in time: 1918, 2013 and 2026. Anna Jordan has built a complex and poetic play with interwoven stories that imagines three very different reasons to return home. All driven by conflict. The exciting task has been to find a way for all three stories to exist at the same time in the same space. To be together but worlds apart. Neil BettlesThanks Thomas Scurr Ben Newton Tim Briggs Karan Gill Sam Newton Gareth Morgan James Tobin Gary Duncan Dan Parr Ryan Hutton Victor Oshin David Hemsted Chris Urch Camilla Young Scott Chaloff Phone Credit for Refugees Charity A.J.For Chris Urch
whose support never ends
and whose personality never fizzlesCharacters NAT FRANKIE GEORGE OFFICER ARMY BUDDY ONE ARMY BUDDY TWO ARMY BUDDY THREE ELIAS TRAFFICKER KIM ALDO ROSE REBEL MUM (FRANKIES) DOCTOR MOTHER (GEORGES) FATHER (GEORGES) TONY RYAN LUKE KET FINN DR COHEN TIBBS CHORUS (PLURAL) Note on Play Chorus should be played by various members of the company.

We should slip seamlessly between scenes with pace. / indicates an overlap. indicates a trailing-off or a searching for words, but rarely a slowing down. This ebook was created before the end of rehearsals and so may differ slightly from the play as performed.PrologueLonging NAT. I want to return to my home. I want to find myself there.

I want to meet myself coming back! And Ill say to myself what kept you, dickhead? I want to greet the landscape! Disappear into it I wont just look But Ill touch. Bury whole limbs in the sand Lean into the wind Feel the spray on my face Salt on my tongue Nourish my heart. I want to tear across the Valley Bridge Heart thumping in my chest I want to go everywhere we went on our boards With my brother The VRcades The firefight simulators at Luna Park All will reopen just to greet me. I want to scan our front door again Hear that familiar beep and clunk I want to find the ghosts Im looking for Need to find them flesh and bone But if I cant? Ill lie on the floor of every room in Our House. Face down. Soak up our history from the carpet.

Feed on the past. And when my heart is full? I want to leap off the headland in all my clothes. Enter the water with a violent crash No Fear! And then Silence. I allow myself to sink. Watch the bubbles that come from me rise to the light Ill make my peace with the sea Childhood fears And fraught journeys of adulthood Erased as the North Bay envelopes me In the dark and the calm alone I am Home. FRANKIE.

I want to return to my home. I want a heros welcome. I want fanfares, and parades, and brass bands and the back room of The Lion? Luke and Ket and Ryan and banners, and balloons and sausage rolls and Jgerbombs and Golden Balls Frankie is coming home! I want to lose myself in the face of my mum. And my sister. Does that sound gay? I want to speak to my nan for like a whole hour maybe more! Greet the Front Door like an old friend. Rest my forehead on the cold brick of the garage wall lie under the skylight on my mums bed and watch clouds I wanna answer the landline! Run my fingers through the shag pile Stick my head in the fridge! I want to go out.

I want to go out out. Drink and dance and shout for no reason start in the spoons and end up in Vivaz lines of coke in the back of an Astra in a pub car park. Feel invincible (Chants.) SCAR-BA-DOS! I want to sing in the streets And shag lamp posts And puke in the gutter (His tone changes.) And they will never know (Beat.) None of them will ever know what I I want to run on the sand with my dick out. Salt in my nostrils. Wind in my hair. ROAR into them: I OWN THE COAST. ROAR into them: I OWN THE COAST.

Let them dissolve me. Reduce me to mist and foam. Let them take me back with them into the dark forever A shadow A creak in the floorboard Of Home. GEORGE. I want to return to my home. I want to drink tea.

Hear the clink of the china and the glug of the pour. Tea with my kin. Hot. From a pot. I want my mother to read my leaves and tell me Theres nothing to fear, dear George! Just clear flat roads ahead. I want to see Rose.

I want to walk along the front with Rose. I want to hear her voice. Make her laugh. Give her what she wants. A little version of herself to fall in love with! A little version of me Well take the cliff lift down to the bay Catch a show at The Spa Take a rowboat out to sea I want to run along the sand like a kid tearing through back-of-his-hand streets. For no reason but to feel the wind on my cheeks.

The sting of salt. I want to be part of something I understand Good English voices, plump round faces Not dark hollows for eyes and open wounds for mouths I want roast beef. I want to wake in the night shouting for Rose and find shes there. My wife by candlelight. I want to smell her carbolic lavender smell. I want to hide in her petticoats.

I want to rip them. NO. I want to protect her. Ill gather her up in my arms and hold her in my hands like this, see, my little bird and squeeze her and squeeze her until her little bones break. Tear off her wings. No! NO! PLEASE! Beat.

He gathers himself. I want to be with her need to be with her shes Home. ACT ONELeavingFocus: FRANKIE. CHORUS should be more than one voice. CHORUS. Frankie sits on the bed. Sheets stripped, kit neatly folded by his side. Sarge in the doorway Cant look him in the eye.