Gilt

Stephen Greenhorn, Rona Munro and Isabel Wright

WHO    Chris, Scottish, age is unspecified.

TO WHOM    The audience (see note on ‘Direct audience address’ in the introduction).

WHERE    Unspecified. Perhaps somewhere outside on the street or in a park. You decide.

WHEN    Present day.

WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED    Chris has spent much of his life living on the streets. When we first meet him he is staying in a dingy flat with Jo, a teenage girl who is equally lost and alone. However, when Jo is given fifty thousand pounds by a man she has slept with in order that she keeps quiet about the affair, she moves out, leaving Chris on his own. He, meanwhile, has been running ‘errands for the boys’. This has involved picking up bags in designated places and delivering them to Al who works in the bar of a hotel. On the last occasion, Chris, thinking there might be money in the bag, dared to look inside. To his horror he found a dead body hacked to pieces and covered in blood. Chris is repulsed by the sight of it and, once he has delivered the bag, makes a decision that this will be the very last time.

WHAT TO CONSIDER

•	The play follows the stories of seven people whose lives are strangely interwoven. Read the play to understand fully the intricacies of its plot and the complexity of its themes.
•	The horror and repulsion he feels at having had a diced body in a bag in his possession.
•	The strength of Chris’s character. However down and out he might be, he refuses to lose his dignity or sense of morality.
•	The ease with which a person can become homeless.
•	‘Jaikie’ is a word used to describe a tramp/an alcoholic/a down-and-out.

WHAT HE WANTS

•	To show that living rough is not synonymous with a loss of humanity.
•	To justify his actions. He knows he has stepped over some line and is keen to explain how and why it could have happened.
•	To challenge the smugness that our materialistic world engenders.
•	To determine some moral ground for himself.
•	To maintain his sense of self. How hard might this be if you have absolutely nothing? To what extent do most of us quantify and qualify ourselves according to what we have?

KEYWORDS  meal  sleep  spiritual  bigger  scared  bottom  jungle  beasts

Chris

When you’ve got your next meal and somewhere to sleep sorted, that’s when you have time to ask the spiritual questions. Consider the bigger things in life.

First time I ended up on the street I was so scared, just young you know. Curled up in a doorway, shaking. Thought I was at the absolute bottom. I was out in the jungle and the beasts were coming to get me. Then you get to know folk. You just step round the trouble. Most folk would as soon be good to you as not, or else everyone’s scared all the time aren’t they? I’m no saying it’s fucking Les Mis. But you’d never sleep if you spend every second waiting to get a brick through your head.

Thing is, you take what you can and you don’t contemplate. You take the bag and don’t ask who is so expendable they can be cut into steak-size pieces and got rid of. It’s a world that lets folk drop off the edge of the radar. Naebody feels it. The lack. Doesnae keep naeb’dy awake if there’s one less hoor on the streets, one less rent boy, if that old jaikie they pass every morning just vanishes overnight.

When you’ve a meal and a sleep sorted, that’s when you have time to ask questions. (Sarcastic.) ‘Am I truly satisfied? Do I have space to grow? I love my wife, but am I in love with her? How can I use my transferable skills to achieve my boyhood dream? Can I still be working class and rent a villa in Tuscany?’

Look, I always said don’t look in the bag. That’s the answer. See where curiosity gets you? Cannae do it anymore. I’d rather do the streets.