Act One
The stage is empty as the audience arrives. There is one open white back light on the stage, nothing flashy. The music is kind of industrial, repetitive and has a sense of impending doom. There are ropes in the rig strung across the rig in a diamond shape and coming down to fixed spots on the sides. The rope is orange. Just caught in the light.
The house lights and music fade.
BRYONY and TIM enter the auditorium. They have baskets on their heads and maraccas in their hands. They are in their underpants, very unflattering, spanx, y-fronts, maternity bra, crap white socks, BRYONY all in nude, TIM in white.
Tacky rhumba muzak begins to play and the duo sing a song doing a stupid and ugly dance routine on the spot which includes butt shaking and kicks.
She nods a hello to everyone. Very friendly and chatty delivery.
B: |
Hello. |
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I’m Bryony Kimmings. I’m a loud mouth…slightly heavily pregnant now, feminist performance artist from London. If you aren’t familiar with my art work you can usually find me sniffing around some kind of social stigma or trying to tear down a terrible taboo. And I often work with people who don’t usually grace the stage. |
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So, that was Tim Grayburn. He works in advertising. He is an account director at a big media agency back in London so his days are usually spent buying advertising space for big corporate brands…like Barclaycard. (She boos.) |
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Or I should say he used to, up until about six months ago when he decided to leave his job, make this show with me and come on tour for a year. |
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Now. If you didn’t know it already Tim and I are a real life human being couple. So this unfortunately guys is going to be a love story. Sorry gross. But an unconventional one. One between two people that absolutely love the film Dumb and Dumber; or two people who like to make fart noises when the other one bends down in public spaces, but a love story nonetheless. |
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And as with all love stories, in the movies, in books…or on the stage, we had to leave quite a lot of stuff out. Because they only give you an hour. So we decide to remove, for your viewing pleasure, the mundanity of everyday existence. |
Like, in the first draft we took out the scene ‘Why Am I Making Breakfast When I Fucking Made It Yesterday?!”. We recently made the dramaturgical decision to remove the morning sickness dance routine, and just before we came on we cut a whole song called ‘My Black Sock Or Yours – The Laundry Day Debacle’. |
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But what we couldn’t remove was all the darkness, all the god forsaken bleak stuff. Because this is a show about clinical depression, more specifically clinical depression and men and the women that love those men. And this is a true story, based around just two and a half years of life together and it centres around a series of recordings made by Tim and I in our lounge back in London. |
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We have tried our best to balance out the darkness with as much light and pizazz as we possibly can! |
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Pause. |
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Look… I am a very superstitious person. Especially when it comes to being onstage. So I have made something to look after us while we share this space together. This is a Japanese luck doll. He will watch over us, bring us luck. I will hang him here for the duration of the show. |
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(She pauses, pulls a serious face.) Good luck everyone! |
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(Moves away from her mic shouting loud.) Now on with the love story people! |
Epic side light and smoke fill the space as the pair walk towards each other in slow motion like in a movie. TIM now has a backpack on and a pair of binoculars firmly held to his face. Ennio Morricone music plays…filmic and loud. They somehow manage to miss one another when they finally get to the bit where they should embrace. It’s funny. The music abruptly cuts.
B: |
This is Tim Grayburn, up close and personal in his pants. |
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He is a man, a real man. |
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The strong silent type. |
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TIM is nervous, he shifts his weight. |
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He is thirty-two years old. He is a Gemini if you go in for all of that and he is my fiancé. |
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He has dark brown curly hair that he absolutely hates and his body is covered in approximately 1 million freckles. I once promised Tim I would lay him in a gallery and count all of those freckles as some kind of meta love/art project, so that will probably be our next work together Tim. (He bristles nervously.) |
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I asked Tim his top three favourite things to do so you could get to know him a bit better. He said he loved playing football, eating dinner out and having sex. Classics! |
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But I can add, so you can get to know him a little better, that he is kind and very laid back. He has a terrible memory, has always wished he could play the guitar ever since he was a child but never learnt, and he takes great pleasure in hiding and then making people jump, which I absolutely hate. |
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Tim agreed to make this show with me just after Robin Williams died. But because the job was so far removed from his everyday life he gave me some fundamental rules that I had to follow. |
Rule number ONE. He didn’t want to have to look any of you lot in the eye. (TIM reveals that his binoculars are indeed stuck to his face as he puts his arms down.) |
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Rule number TWO. He didn’t feel like he had any tangible stage skills so he asked (She holds the mic for his mouth and he speaks nervously and like an ordinary human.) |
T: |
If I could learn how to play the guitar. |
B: |
So we got him some lessons and he is doing alright. (She shakes her head and betrays him, that he is in fact terrible.) And THREE. He wanted to always appear like a real man. I thought of Robert Redford in Out of Africa. |
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(Gestures to his pants. They laugh.) Done, I think you’ll agree! |
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TIM heads towards the plinth in front of him and kneels. He takes off his backpack and takes out a small brass machine covered by a glass box and places it on the plinth as BRYONY speaks. It lights up. |
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Now let’s start at the beginning of the story. Long before I was seven months pregnant with our son, before we got our embarrassing matching tattoos. (She lifts her arm.) For a very long time, almost eight years, Tim kept his mental illness a secret from everyone he knew… including me. |
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The lights fade. Apart for the one on the machine. |
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TIM goes backstage, BRYONY heads into the audience. |
The machine turns on, begins to spin under the glass. We hear BRYONY and TIM talking in their lounge.
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Laughter. |
B: |
Um can you tell me or us a little bit about your childhood? |
Alright, um, I grew up in quite a big family, grew up in a nice little village, um, beautiful little village, no stress. Just a pub, a school, a shop and that was it. Uh, quite a conventional family really, Mum and Dad together, happy, Dad went to work every day, a strong sort of typical man. Yeah at the weekends he would build houses, he would build our house that we lived in, so he would always be doing something physical yeah. |
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B: |
Depression? Was that ever mentioned? |
T: |
No, never, didn’t have a clue what it meant. |
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The machine turns off, its lights fade. |
BRYONY is in the audience confiding in someone.
B: |
I guess you could say I was looking for true love. Someone to knock my socks off, or sweep me off my feet, or who just got me. I think secretly Tim was too BUT I think we might have also resigned ourselves to the fact we were maybe never going to meet that special someone. So when Tim and I finally did meet we fell in love hard and we fell fast! And what started as a one-night stand in a dirty East London nightclub became the seminal and historic moment where we both meet the love of our lives. And we rolled in fields of one endless, reckless summer and it was paradise… He was like this beast running amok in Hackney. But I didn’t want to tame him, just chase him and soak him up. God it sounds so clichéd. I can even remember saying to mother on the telephone at the time, as gross as this sounds that it was like someone had sent him to me from heaven. |
‘Old Fashioned Walk’ by Perry Como suddenly begins to play. TIM comes onstage and BRYONY runs towards him from the audience. TIM has clouds on his head, the lights are soft focus, yellows and pinks. They duo dance like they are courting and in love. Like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Then at the end of the dance the duo snog and grope each other fiercely. They chase one another offstage frantically tearing at each others’ clothes.
The machine turns on, its light comes up.
T: |
I was around twenty-three/twenty-four, can’t exactly remember when but something changed completely in me, I was really tired all the time, I just woke up different. Um, I didn’t want to hang around with my mates anymore, I didn’t want to do things I loved doing like playing football and seeing friends. Um, I just thought I’m tired and that’s basically it, I just need to deal with it myself. I wouldn’t have even dreamed of going to the doctors. |
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The machine turns off, as does its light. |
The machine turns on. The lights fade down to just the machine and a little glow on the tent where BRYONY and TIM hang out their blue linen costumes as washing and then change slowly into them as the recording plays. TIM wears light blue linen trousers and matching top, pulling matching braces over his shoulders and boots of identical colour onto his feet. BRYONY wears dark blue linen functional trousers and a matching shirt with a ruffle neck, done up tight, her boots match too. The costume is cartoon like because everything matches in colour completely but also very American gothic in its references, very gendered.
T: |
I didn’t realize how, how dark, how dark it would get and how it would effect everyone around me. Erm. I… I woke up one morning and tears just poured out of my face into my pillow. Erm I just. I couldn’t believe what was going on to be honest, I hadn’t cried for years and all of sudden I am waking up nothing bad had happened in the family, nothing bad really in particular in my life and I’m crying my eyes out at nine o’clock in the morning. |
And it just got worse and worse as the days went on. I just could not sleep at night, I was just up thinking about random stuff like ‘Why are we all here? what’s the point of it? we all die in the end anyway so what’s the point of all these relationships you keep and the people you love are just going to disappear one day.’ I felt like I wanted to talk about it, but I just couldn’t I was too ashamed. My dad, my dad, wouldn’t have had a clue he would have just said I just need to get on with it. |
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There was a tree when I was a kid that I used to play at and I used to stop there for like twenty mins or so just staring at it and images of myself were just popping into my head of me hanging there. I wasn’t really shocked and I wasn’t scared I was just, get upset and I would cry because I have those thoughts. I would go home and think about where I’d get the rope from, how I’d do it. Erm I just thought, it just popped into my head and I guess, I guess it was something telling me that this is a way out if you want it. Until, I was so tired, so upset, so sad, I didn’t know what was going on, I basically had a breakdown in front of the family one evening at the dinner table. And ah, erm and then, and then, my mum said enough is enough and she took me to the doctors and I just sat there with a head full of muddled thoughts asking them to try and make me better. |
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The duo have made their way to their stools outside the tent and sat down. |
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The machine turns off. |
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Pause. |
Planningtorock’s sound ‘Let’s talk about gender baby’ plays loudly. The lights snap to bright colourful pools of yellow and pink.
The duo are in sunglasses seated on stools outside the tent. TIM has a hammer down his trousers and BRYONY has a whisk.
The pair do a dance routine together. Pretending to be boys and girls and everything in-between. They prance, they party, they produce a hammer and whisk from their pants. It’s funny and weird.
Until they find themselves downstage centre and next to one another. The music warps and changes. Slightly more sinister now. They speak in unison in monotonous almost robot-like voices into their mics. Kind of Kraftwerk-like.
B&T: |
Quick it’s a boy |
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Quick give that boy a truck |
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Quick get your boob out and give that boy a suck |
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(They begin to march in unison on the spot.) |
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Quick make him tough now |
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Don’t ever let him cry |
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Show him only heterosexual love |
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But don’t tell him why |
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(They begin to move backwards to the mouth of the tent.) |
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Quick give him limits |
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Don’t let him show his feelings |
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Tell him a lady’s only job is staring at the ceiling |
Quick show him power is only found in strength |
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Don’t let him know that talking |
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Can help him see some sense |
(They stop marching.) |
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And if he’s feeling sad now |
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Don’t let him tell you so |
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Just say that hiding sport and beer |
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Is the only way to go |
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(TIM goes slowly to collect his cloud head, taking his shades off and putting it back on his head like he’s getting ready for work.) |
B: |
(On her own now.) |
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Quick let him go to work now |
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Every single day |
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Even if he feels his brain is about to waste away |
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The music ends. BRYONY sets her mic and whisk down. Takes off her sunglasses and smoothes her clothes down. She kisses TIM on the cheek and he slowly heads to work. Walking like a slow stone giant statue to his microphone. A rumble sound begins. BRYONY waves him off like a good housewife, when he is out of sight she glares at the machine and heads inside. |
TIM’s mic spot snaps up and the mood changes. We are at TIM’s work.
T: |
Good morning all, |
On the agenda for this week’s meeting is: |
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A look at the weekly monitor, who are the winners and losers of the market. |
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Rates – what we can do to improve our ROI. And lastly, more importantly, tools to grow revenue and ultimately improve our bottom line. |
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BRYONY peaks out of the tent. Creeps out. She hangs out more good luck dolls and sits shadily on her chair staring at the machine which lights up. |
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The market as a whole is down 26.8% week on week. There are a number of factors for this, the week previous was one of the biggest spending weeks for advertisers this year. It’s likely cash will now be saved in the upcoming weeks. We must capitalise on this and stretch the market while it’s fluid. |
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BRYONY walks sheepishly towards the machine, the machine makes a sound like it is trying to turn on. She looks up in the air. He hears it somehow too and looks up into the air. He stumbles over his words. |
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Erm…ahhh… As you all know, we have the most discounted rates in the industry due to the buying power of the group. I need you all to push each negotiation as far as it goes in the next coming weeks, squeeze out of them what you can. |
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She touches the box with her finger, it tries to start up again. Again he can hear it calling him, it throws him. |
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Erm…er…The money we save here will go into supporting new clients, new clients that pay us well and keep the FD’s and board members happy. |
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She picks it up and shakes it, once more it gurgles and starts. He falters. She makes her way backwards across the stage. |
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Guys… Get on your planning systems, figure out how we’re going to reach our target audiences in the most cost effective way. |
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Danny, if you don’t mind I want you come to next week’s meeting with a deck on results… |
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The machine turns on and he stops dead, they both hear his voice, her at home, him at work. |
T: |
I would have to take myself to work in an absolute wreck and try and put on a fake smile in front of everyone and hold back the tears. |
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There is a massive sound of an explosion and the lights flare brightly. TIM is literally blasted away from his office presentation and onto the floor BRYONY flies across the stage. Blackout. |
A cold light comes onto BRYONY, who is holding the machine.
B: |
Oh gosh Tim. |
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I have got myself into a right tizz. I know it’s a busy day for you so ignore my text. I thought it better to send an email anyway. |
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I grabbed your black backpack to pop my laptop in to take into town. |
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I emptied it as it looked just like gym stuff, I thought you wouldn’t mind, but in it I found some Citalopram. Now I know what these are as my mum used to take them and Han had them for her bi-polar for two years and they were awful emotion blockers. |
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I didn’t know you took them?! Did I? |
I am wracking my brains to figure out if this is something HUGE that I did know… |
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But I am not finding the information anywhere. I was very shocked when I found them. I had to sit down on the edge of the bed. |
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I want to talk to you about it. Can you call me. I am wondering why I didn’t know, seeing as we are so close to one another. Or I think we are. I am sorry if that seems awfully dramatic, but I can’t put these two pieces of information together: my lovely, open, happy Tim and these drugs that I have seen turn my nearest into zombies. |
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Am I being a twat?! |
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Love you, Bry |
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With that there is another explosion and flash and BRYONY is blasted away from her microphone too. |
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Pause. |
BRYONY’s face is lit by a tiny light in the machine. She wanders in shock towards TIM. He is stumbling about to get out. They peer into it, heading to the plinth. They are whispering and speaking slowly.
T: |
What is that? |
B: |
It’s another way of not talking about it I guess. |
T: |
No…it’s not |
B: |
It’s some kind of incubator lighting up our faces? |
They place the box on its plinth. It lights up brightly, lighting their faces. |
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T: |
No it’s not. It’s a machine, functioning but with its wires all mixed up |
B: |
It looks like it is hard at work, digging away underneath all that glass. |
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Pause. She looks up at the light on the machine. |
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I think it’s some kind of metaphor? |
T: |
Don’t be wanky |
B: |
Whatever it is, I think we should leave it to do its job |
T: |
OK but I think we need to look after it. |
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They walk away into the darkness. |