All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application for performance etc. should be made before commencement of rehearsal to the Author c/o Oberon Books Ltd. No performance may be given unless a licence has been obtained, and no alterations may be made in the title or the text of the play without the author’s prior written consent.
HEROIN was authored by Grace Dyas in collaboration with Barry O’Connor, Lauren Larkin, Gerard Kelly, Rachael Keogh, Graham Ryall and The Men’s Group at Rialto Community Drug Team.
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.
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
– 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 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
– 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?
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
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 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
– 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 knows 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
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’
We’re not being encouraged by getting free needles
We’re not interfering in God’s Holy Plan with contraception
We’re spreading diseases we know nothing about
We’re stealing to pay for our habits
We’re shooting to recover our debts
We’re suffocating in our boxes
We’re drinking whiskey for our regrets
It’s okay though
None of this is really happening
They tell us it’s not happening
– The footpaths are painted green, white and orange.
The streetlamps are beginning to flicker.
You can feel the sun on your back.
There’s one less family at mass.
Corrugated iron windows. The grass has been burnt. Destruction. Don’t say too much. You don’t have to.
The space is as big as eleven acres, or as small as one. Looming over you. You’re standing across the road. It feels like the city has just stopped moving. It hasn’t. But that’s how it feels. You can hear humming. A red car passes you. You don’t see many of those nowadays.
Looking at all the windows makes your eyes squint. There’s all these holes in the walls and you wonder about them.
If you look past the railings that cage the whole thing in, you can see the dirty syringes in the muck where the grass used to grow. Or maybe you just saw that on television.
You walk inside and you can feel the weight of people inside. If you look up, it feels like everything might fall down.
There’s a Guard [policeman] standing here 24 hours a day.
He has to stand here all day.
And there’s a van at every block.
There are no other parts of the city now and this is a war zone.
– A war zone is better than a famine though.
– Yeah.
This is where everyone feels like they’re serving time, and the whole country comes to buy drugs.
And you can even buy a gun here, now that the troubles are over.
But you’re afraid to actually own anything, in case it gets robbed.
Where were you when Ireland lost in Italia ’90?
– That was the first time I saw me da cry.
– This is the part where everything gets terrifying.
Where all the colours are dark and nothing makes sense. Everybody is acting on impulse, or autopilot. This is the bit where we all stood up and ran. We left empty flats behind us and people moved in and started banging up.
This is the bit where the hero dies of AIDS, and the heroine gets raped.
Where the baby was born with an addiction, where the mattress was set on fire.
This is when her ribs were broken. Ireland lost in Italia ’90.
This was the moment when we got rich. And you might say, if you weren’t there, that this was when we split. Before we were all together, and some of us were poorer or less well off than others. But now this is the part where we’ve all succeeded, and everybody else has fucked it up for themselves.
This is the moment before the end of the war. The bit where the most people die. The bit where the most irrational choices are made. The camera pans out and all the casualties are lying in the street.
This is when we’ll feel like we can’t take it anymore. Where we’ll declare that we want to die. Where we’ll decide that the situation is inevitable, and that change is impossible.
Things have just been getting worse for a very long time.
We might come together for the very first time. We might organize effectively for change. We might use our fists. But when it comes to tell the story, we won’t be able to remember.
This is when we’ll knock it all down. Because we’re at our rock bottom. And now we need to fight.
This is what it feels like when pressure builds. When the emersion is left on for too long. When the pot boils over and something has to happen. This is the bit where the guy who was saying ‘What are you looking at?,’ actually beat up the guy who was looking at him.
– We’re moving now
We’re going
We’re putting ourselves on the agenda
God is saying they can’t grow poppies anymore
They’re flying over Columbia with poisons
We’re purring
We’re swimming
We’re going for gold
We’re spending money
We’re teaching children
We’re wearing tracksuits and getting our rings engraved
We’re coming together and doing things we saw in films
We’re getting guns and nicknames
We just don’t give a fuck
We’re killing Veronica Guerin
We’re paying off our mortgages
We’re getting jobs in Industrial Estates
We’re hearing the secrets from industrial schools
We’re moving
We’re kicking Josie Dwyer
We’re packing out our prisons
We’re taking down our net curtains
We’re going on holidays to Spain
We’re buying a new car
We’re complaining about insurance
We’re building
We’re moving
We’re blaring rap songs out our windows
We’re hopeful
Swings and roundabouts
We’re watching Saturday morning television
We’re wearing multi-coloured caps
We’re playing with our Pogs
We’re robbing cars and driving in the park
We’re walking into the bushes
We’re in an epidemic
We’re jumping off a tower block
We’re collapsing our veins
We’re injecting into our feet
We’re living in stairwells
We’re taking ecstacy with our Evian
We’re getting our pictures in the papers
We’re easing the sickness with methadone
We’re going to clinics twice a week
We’re breaking our balls to help people
We’re raising a profile
We’re understanding the situation
We’re on committees
We’re strategizing
We’re forward thinking
We’re building help in our communities
We’re making our marches bigger
We’re hearing that Brenda’s got a baby
We’re containing it off the beaten track
We’re left to our own devices
We’re killing each other
I’m sorry
We can’t say it’s not happening anymore
– I’m not doing this tomorrow night.
– And you know, you feel very alone
– She can read that book all she likes but she’s never gonna understand
– I’m sorry
I am sorry
I don’t think I can do this anymore
I’m lost
I’m falling apart
I’m losing
Sorry
I’m sorry but
I don’t think I can do this anymore
I’m sorry
I am really fucking sorry
I just want it all to end
I don’t think I can stay quiet anymore
I don’t know what to say
I’m sorry
I am
It’s all my fault
Nobody forced me to do anything
It is all my fault
And I’m sorry
I’m sick
I’m really feeling sick now
I’ve lost it all
And I need help
I don’t want to do this anymore
I don’t want to do this anymore
I don’t want any of this anymore
None of it
Nothing
I’m lost
I would like to be able to join in
I would like to calm down
Look at me
Please
Can you just look at me?
I feel like I never had anything to lose
I can’t do this anymore
I can’t even wake up
I’m finished
I don’t even know this
I can’t even notice
Can you please tell me what to do?
Can you please tell me what the fuck I’m supposed to do?
I don’t know how this works
I wish I could see a video of my life
I wish someone had recorded it
I wish there was a record
I wish I was caught on CCTV
Help me
Please
Can someone just help me?
Please
Can you just look at me?
Can you just look at me?
Please?
I think that might help
Look at me
Look at me
Look at me
I’m really fucking dying sick now
Please
– I’m in my dress just waiting to sing, look lovely, etc.
This is what happened
We took drugs
We took any drugs we could get our hands on
Because we were scared of being normal
Of having to live with our heads
Because horrible things happened to us
Or because nothing ever happened to us
Because our fathers drank and battered us
Because our mothers never washed our uniforms
Because we had no socks
Because we couldn’t tell the time
Because we couldn’t tie our laces
And we felt nothing
And we didn’t know how
And we ran
And I was there and I saw it
This is what happened
I was there and I saw it
And I wrote my name on a wall
This is what happened
We took drugs
Because we wanted to take drugs
We wanted to feel different
This is what happened
I stole handbags and wallets
And I smashed windows with bricks
This is what happened
I took cocaine
And crack cocaine
And I mixed my methadone with heroin
And I lied to the relieving officer
And I ran
This is what happened, my uncle took me into a room and told me to undress
This is what happened, I slept under a bridge
This is what happened, my teacher humiliated me in front of the class
This is what happened, my brother was better than me
My daughter kept crying
I didn’t know what the fuck else to do
I couldn’t fill in the form
I couldn’t give directions
I spread the poison
And nobody mentioned it
This is what happened
We were told we were nothing
We had nothing
This is what happened
Our address came with a stigma
We never did well in school
Our parents were bad parents
I was there and I saw it
And I wrote my name on a wall
I was there
This is about everything that ever happened
Because we needed to talk about this
Because we couldn’t
Because we needed to be on the dark side of life
Because we believed in God
Because we left the empire
Because we saw our fathers peddle death to people we didn’t know
Because we never saw anything
Because we were bored
This is what happened
I was there and I saw it
I was there
I was there
Because we had no sense of pride in ourselves
Because our parents shouted over our heads while they cleaned our faces
Because we injected cigarettes
Because we mainlined McDonald’s
Because we rubbed vodka into our pores
Because we were disqualified in Italia ’90
Because Tony Gregory had the balance of power
Because we needed something to feel well
Because we ran
This is about everything that ever happened
One day you will wake up and you won’t want this anymore
You will see everything laid out in front of you
For the first time
You will really see what’s on offer
And you won’t want it
It’s the minute when the choice is there
It only lasts a minute though
One day you’re caught or you have no veins to inject into And you claim that this is a crisis, a desperate problem that you need help in overcoming
A photograph of thirteen people, everyone of them dead but you
And now you have to look at it and stop running
We learn to find hope in small things
In the mundanity of everyday life
We are afraid of reliving our past, that looking back might finish us off altogether
Nobody is forcing us to
Nobody can
We’re getting something to take the sickness away
We learnt to find hope in the small things
We’re sleeping in one of thirty detox beds
We are afraid of reliving our past
But we’ve collapsed all our veins
We can’t take one more turn on
So they gave us something to take the sickness away
We can’t bury what had happened under a ton of drugs
We can’t face thinking about what happened
We’re taking something so we won’t get sick
But we’re not getting better
We’re drug free, and we’ve never looked back
We’re starting to live in the world again
We’re trying to be adults, but we never learnt how to be children
We’ve stopped stealing, we’re legal, above board
And almost as sick as ever
Sick, but different
We’re telling our story
We’re sweating and our teeth are rotting
They gave us something so we wouldn’t get sick
But we are not getting better
We were bored
And the temptation was too strong
We couldn’t move forward
We couldn’t face it
So we ran again
We smoke heroin at the weekends
We are confronting it all head on
We feel all the pain and the guilt
We surrendered
We are were powerless
And we are still sick
We have switched to smoking crack
Our teeth are rotting and we can’t even smile
We can’t go on holidays without their permission
But we are were living
We are here
Still
Just
Just here
We are here
We are standing here
In the moment that is the aftermath and the beginning But we don’t know what yet
– We’re sticking around for longer
We’re fighting a war on terror
We’re shaking hands in Northern Ireland
We’re roaring for a while – we are
We’re mixing our heroin with cocaine
We’re getting weaker hits for bigger prices
We’re slitting skin for seventy quid
We’re all working in offices
We’re drinking Starbucks and wearing Gap
We’re getting LA tattooed on our necks
We’re moving now
We are
We’re moving now
We’re taking off our rings
We’re injecting into our groins at this stage
We’re taking a ten percent cut
We’re talking about leaving
We’re robbing and selling people to feed our habits
We’re really fucking dying sick
We’re paying off our sons’ debts
We’re using our guns like toys
It’s countrywide
We’re crying about not seeing our children
We’re trying to be better
We’re putting other people first
We’re watching people nodding off on YouTube
We’re taking shits in lane ways
We’re buying weed in shops
We’re drinking more than we ever have
We don’t know how to stop
We’re living on the streets
We’re getting our dole cut
We’re contracting Hepatitis C
We’re knocking it all down
We’re operating the bulldozers
We’re having wakes for buildings
We’re tasting dust in our mouths
We’re documenting our past
We’re putting our gardens at the front
We’re not living on top of each other
We’re shaking hands with politicians
We’re making murals about Hope
We’re missing a generation
We’re feeling this huge sense of loss
We’re trying to forget
We’re thinking it doesn’t affect us
We’re feeling this huge sense of loss
We’re talking about our memories
We’re watching it all crash down around us
We can’t believe it’s happening again
We’re worrying about what We’re leaving behind us
We’re strung out on methadone
We don’t know if we want to stop
We’ve separated
We’re being fragmented
And screaming about feeling fragmented
And this is what We’re up against
We feel this huge sense of loss
And we’ve lost
We have lost
We’re starting again