Slade - BU21

Stuart Slade

BU21

NICK HERN BOOKS
London
www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

BU21 was first performed at Theatre503, London, in association with Kuleshov, on 15 March 2016. It transferred to the Trafalgar Studios, London, on 11 January 2017 (previews from 4 January). The cast was as follows:

This play is dedicated, with love,
to Mellie Naydenova-Slade,
lifelong plane-crash aficionado and inspiration for this story.

Characters

ALEX , twenty-four
ANA , twenty-five
CLIVE , nineteen
FLOSS , twenty-one
GRAHAM , twenty-nine
IZZY , twenty-two

In performance, actors real names should replace these character names wherever possible.

Note

Where Ana mentions the year in Scene One, this should be updated as appropriate. It should correspond to the July immediately after the date of performance.

This ebook was created before the end of rehearsals and so may differ slightly from the play as performed.

Prologue

IZZY comes on to the stage alone.

IZZY. So I okay

So you know how on the news these days theres just this endless stream of horrendous shit going down, like every single night? Suicide bombs, mass shootings, genocides, drone strikes, school massacres its like the end of the world or something.

And it feels sort of voyeuristic to watch it, but sort of disrespectful to switch it off.

And youre sitting there and part of you feels really heartbroken for the people caught up in that days headline and youre kind of like Could I even cope if that stuff happened to me? Or would I just ( Gestures fall to pieces. )

But then youre all like, Nah, thats totally never going to happen to me right? Thats a somebody-else thing, not a me thing.

Because you cant literally conceive of it happening to you.

And then it does. It does happen to you.

And nothing prepares you for how fierce it is.

Scene One

Immediately after the previous scene perhaps a change of lights/music.

Long pause.

IZZY. So I found out my mum was dead on Twitter. Which wasnt, you know, great.

Yeah.

It was about ten-thirty on a Friday morning and I was just printing off some stuff for a client workshop at eleven, and the printer was being just you fucking you know?

And then out of absolutely nowhere there was just this massive, massive bang

It was even like a sound it was just this, I dont even know the word this pure violence .

And I guess I must have been knocked down by the blast because I realised I was on the floor, so I got up and I was deaf, like my ears were underwater

And I looked up, and all the windows of the office were broken, and I was just like shit

And people were bleeding from the broken glass, covered in dust, and everybody was just shocked kind of isnt the word they were like really wired and breathing really fast and just acting strange and shaking and

And this one woman was screaming, so me and this other girl tried to calm her down.

And everybody wanted to get the fuck out of the office run for the hills, you know but the facilities guys were all like Stay Where You Are Its Not Safe to Leave the Building.

And part of me was like fuck that, who listens to the facilities guys? Wearing a yellow Day-Glo fucking tabard doesnt make you the King of the World, you pompous, megalomaniac, fuck-stick cunts but part of me knew they were probably right

So I brushed the glass off my desk by now I was sort of on autopilot, you know trying to re-normalise my situation.

And I sat there at my desk, covered in dust and glass trying to do the deep breathing from my yoga, but it wasnt helping in the slightest and so I did what millions of other people were probably doing that exact moment I googled Explosion, London, and pretty much within two seconds I just found this photo of well, this woman, lying face down in the street, in this pool of

She was in a really bad way. Like the bottom half of her was just gone sorry.

That was like five minutes after it happened.

She was outside the Space.NK apothecary on the New Kings Road.

And all the hair on my arms was standing up because

I was like it fucking cant be.

But in my heart I knew it was.

And the one thing Ill always my first reaction wasnt grief or it was disgust.

Which Im so unbelievably ashamed about. Thinking that. About my mum.

ANA comes on, in a wheelchair. She should be wearing a roll-neck jumper or something, to hide her scars.

Theyre not apparently aware of each other, but they are of us.

ANA. That morning Friday 22nd July 2016 I was on Eel Brook Common in Fulham it was about ten-thirty. My shift at Strada didnt start until midday, but Id arrived early so I could do some sunbathing. I was in a bikini, lying on a towel, reading a book.

And you know? It was the most beautiful day. The first day without rain for like a month. The sky was so blue.

And suddenly there was this enormous bang. It was louder than anything Ive ever heard louder than reality

And I thought it was a car crash or a I dont know I looked up and

Your mind cant process what youre seeing, it this jumbo jet plane hurtling straight at us me it was smashing the trees in the park like matches as it the whole plane flipping over and over like this

And it just smashed into the line of houses at the end of the park

And after it crashed I remember a split second where everything was quiet totally quiet and then there was the explosion, and then I was covered in burning aviation fuel

And then I passed out.

FLOSS joins them, apparently unwillingly.

FLOSS. So Im not sure what I can actually add to the whole Im just not completely down with emoting , you know? Like this. Feels a bit dickish.

Sorry.

Fuck it. So basically I was in my dads kitchen making a sandwich and then all of a sudden this guy, still in his airline chair, just crashed into the garden.

Wee Bop.

Like a cartoon a really fucking dark Tim Burton cartoon or something.

And I for the first couple of seconds he was alive, and then he wasnt.

And Im a twat, and Ill feel guilty for this for the whole of my life, but the first thing I thought was just that song Its Raining Men!

Sorry.

GRAHAM enters.

GRAHAM. Im Graham. Welcome.

So to start off with tonight Ill just stick to the facts, right because some of what Im going to be talking to you about, its right at the edge of what its possible for me to talk about, yeah?