Jordan Yen

1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-78001-564-4
Verlag: Nick Hern Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 144 Seiten

Reihe: NHB Modern Plays

Anna Jordan's Bruntwood Prize-winning play, Yen explores a childhood lived without boundaries and the consequences of being forced to grow up on your own. Hench is sixteen, Bobbie is thirteen. They're home alone in Feltham with their dog Taliban; playing PlayStation, streaming porn, watching the world go by. Sometimes their mum Maggie visits, usually with empty pockets and empty promises. Then Jenny shows up. Anna Jordan's play Yen won the 2013 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting and was first performed at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2016. This edition of Yen was published alongside the Royal Court Theatre production in January 2016.

Anna Jordan is a playwright, screenwriter and theatre director. Her play Yen won the 2013 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting. Her other plays include: Lost Atoms (Frantic Assembly, Curve Mayflower Southampton & Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, 2025); We Anchor in Hope (Bunker Theatre, London, 2019); The Unreturning (Frantic Assembly & Theatre Royal Plymouth, 2018); Pop Music (Paines Plough & Birmingham Repertory Theatre, 2018); Chicken Shop (Park Theatre, 2014); Freak (Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, 2014); Closer To God (Best Play and Audience Award at the Offcut Festival, 2009) and Just For Fun - Totally Random (Best New Writing at the Lost One Act Festival, 2009). As a director her work has included Crystal Springs (Eureka, San Francisco, 2014) and Tomorrow I'll Be Happy by Jonathan Harvey at the National Theatre Shed as part of the 2013 Connections Festival. She is Artistic Director of Without a Paddle Theatre, Associate Director at Theatre503, London, and teaches acting and playwriting.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jordan, Anna

Leseproben

Scene One

Present day. An estate in Feltham. 10 p.m. A living room which has been made into a bedroom. HENCH sits on the end of an open sofa bed in the middle of the room and BOBBIE lies face down on it. Next to the sofa bed an old armchair. Everything is tatty and worn, apart from a collection of shiny equipment: a flat-screen TV, PlayStation, laptop and some speakers. Both boys are bare-chested and barefoot. BOBBIE wears some dirty tracksuit bottoms. He is a little pudgy, rosy cheeks, bright eyes, at the first flush of adolescence but quite physically strong and bullish. He has a rash at the top of his back. HENCH is anything but hench; painfully skinny, very pale, perhaps the suggestion of some acne. He wears scruffy jeans. They are watching hardcore pornography linked from the laptop to the TV by HDMI. The room is dull and dark, but the TV flickers and lights up their faces. We hear grunting, moaning, a few words, a couple of yelps; indecipherable between pleasure and pain. The boys’ faces are transfixed but blank. After some moments BOBBIE leans down by the side of the bed, not taking his eyes off the screen, and comes back with a pint of milk in a glass bottle. He downs quite a lot of it and does a little burp after. He puts the milk down and runs over to a window. He looks out.

BOBBIE. She’s still there.

HENCH. Is it?

BOBBIE. Yeah.

HENCH glances briefly towards the window, and then back to the TV.

What a skank.

Hench?

Beat. Nothing from HENCH. BOBBIE leans out of the window.

Piss off, you skank! –

HENCH. Shhhh, man! You’ll wake the dog.

Beat.

BOBBIE. What does she want?

HENCH. I dunno, do I?

BOBBIE. Maybe she wants to fuck you.

HENCH. Fuck off.

BOBBIE (looking out). She’s got reeeeaaaaalllly small tits, man. I need a sniper scope just to see ’em.

Beat.

Hench?

No response from HENCH. BOBBIE runs towards the bed and jumps on it three times, annoying HENCH. Then he flops down next to him and looks at the screen.

Not like those, bruv. (Pointing.) One of those is bigger than your head.

HENCH. They’re fake innit.

BOBBIE. Is it?

HENCH. Yeah!

Beat. BOBBIE ponders this.

BOBBIE. I would want a girlfriend with fake tits.

BOBBIE rests his chin on HENCH’s shoulder.

HENCH. Get off, man.

BOBBIE (still watching). Can a man’s arsehole go like that?

HENCH. Like what?

BOBBIE. All big, like that?

He makes a circle with his hands.

HENCH. S’pose.

BOBBIE. Oh my DAYS!

HENCH (irritated). A man’s arsehole can basically do whatever a woman’s arsehole can do innit?

BOBBIE. Is it?

HENCH. Yeah! How do you think gays do it?

BOBBIE. Gays are dirty.

HENCH. Yep.

BOBBIE. I fucking hate gays.

Beat. BOBBIE thinks.

Do you think my arsehole would do that?

HENCH. DON’T even think about it!

Beat. BOBBIE runs round in front of HENCH.

BOBBIE. Can you scratch my back?

HENCH. No. MOVE.

BOBBIE. But I got an itch! And it’s a bitch! (Thinks for a sec.) Oi. Hench. (Like Jay Z.) ‘I got 99 problems but an itch ain’t one!’

HENCH picks up a large bottle of Lucozade from the side of the bed and has a swig.

Don’t drink the Lucozade!

HENCH. She’s not coming!

BOBBIE. In case she does though and she needs it.

HENCH (like he’s stupid). Bob, she’s all loved up with Minge-Face Alan. Rolling his fags. Washing his socks. And you know what they smell like.

BOBBIE. Like sick.

HENCH. Right. So she ain’t coming, is she?

Beat. BOBBIE looks sad.

She never washed our fucking socks.

BOBBIE. We haven’t got any socks.

HENCH. We used to.

Beat.

BOBBIE. She might want a break from it all.

HENCH. What and you reckon she’d come here? It’s hardly a Premier fucking Inn is it?

BOBBIE. What if she comes round and goes low and has a hypo and DIES cos we’ve got nothing to give her! That would be you then, that would, you would have killed our mother.

Beat. HENCH sighs and puts the Lucozade down.

Ah fanks, bro. Here.

BOBBIE fetches the bottle of half-drunk milk from the side of the bed.

Have some milk.

HENCH. I don’t want your fucking milk, do I? What d’you nick milk for?

BOBBIE. It was off a doorstep.

Beat.

Might make you stronger.

HENCH. Fuck off.

Beat. BOBBIE thinks. To make amends he runs up to the window. He pulls his trousers down and presses his bare bottom against the glass.

BOBBIE. HENCH!

No response from HENCH.

Hench. Bruv. LOOK!

HENCH glances. BOBBIE turns back and looks out of the window.

Oh.

He wanders back to the sofa bed but doesn’t sit.

She’s gone. She was waiting for you.

HENCH. You should show her your shrivelled little cock. Then she’d go and never come back.

BOBBIE slaps HENCH around the back of the head. HENCH jumps up.

Don’t fucking hit me, right? I told you not to hit me!

HENCH gets BOBBIE in a headlock. They struggle.

Suddenly BOBBIE begins to bark viciously at HENCH. HENCH stumbles back and knocks the Lucozade over.

BOBBIE. The LUCOZADE!

He goes to rescue it.

HENCH. You’re a fucking animal.

Suddenly a dog starts barking for real, loud and aggressive, from the other room.

Now look what you’ve done, prick. Shut UP, TALIBAN!

He pushes BOBBIE towards the door.

Right, you’re going in with him!

BOBBIE. I can’t – we got no food for him!

HENCH. Well, you should have thought of that, shouldn’t you?? Prick.

He kicks BOBBIE hard in the arse and BOBBIE skids a bit. A stand-off. The dog stops barking now. Calm descends for a moment. HENCH sits back down.

You stink.

BOBBIE. You’re ugly.

HENCH. Your pits, man. And your hair. And your breath. You stink like rotten milk. Go brush your teeth.

BOBBIE. I haven’t got a toothbrush.

HENCH. What you been using then?

BOBBIE. Yours.

HENCH lunges for BOBBIE and BOBBIE hops away, laughing gleefully.

HA! Just jokes, bruvva! Just jokes innit.

HENCH. Fuck you. Have a wash.

BOBBIE. Oi. You’re Hench. I’m Stench. Gettit?

BOBBIE wanders over to the shelf, grabs a can of Lynx and sprays it liberally under his arms. He hovers it over his open tracksuit bottoms.

Hench.

No response from HENCH. BOBBIE sprays liberally into his shorts. Then he sprays his hair. Then he sprays into his mouth and starts to cough. HENCH ignores him. He wanders back over to the screen.

Oh snap! Look how far his cum shoots out of his dick, bruv! Does yours go that far?

HENCH. Shut up.

BOBBIE. We should have a competition.

HENCH. Fuck off.

BOBBIE. If you could cum on any part of a woman where would it be?

HENCH. Dunno.

BOBBIE. Come on. Think!

HENCH. Tits I guess.

BOBBIE. I’d cum in her eyes. Blind the bitch.

Beat. BOBBIE loses interest in the video and starts wandering the room. He picks up an old T-shirt from the floor, puts it on.

I’m hungry, bruv. I feel like I got a monster in me tummy. Are there any Wheat Crunchies left?

HENCH. You gave the last bag to Taliban.

BOBBIE (in a cod-American accent). Oh man!

HENCH. There’s Twiglets.

BOBBIE. Twiglets???

HENCH. Yeah.

BOBBIE. Twiglets taste like your arsehole.

Beat. BOBBIE has an idea.

And they look like your dick!

HENCH. WELL, DON’T FUCKING EAT THEM THEN!

BOBBIE. Ooh alright, don’t have a period! Jeeezus.

HENCH (slamming the laptop shut). I’m going to bed.

BOBBIE. What about COD?

HENCH. What about it?

BOBBIE. We was gonna have a night sesh! Fuck up those – (In a cod-American accent.) American faggots.

HENCH. You do my head in, Bobbie.

HENCH turns the light off.

BOBBIE. What if I want it on?

HENCH. Tough shit.

BOBBIE. Oh brother!

HENCH takes his jeans off and gets into bed.

You’re not sleeping in your pants, are you? What if your horrible cock escapes and touches me in the night?

HENCH throws a pillow at BOBBIE. BOBBIE giggles. He opens the laptop. The porn noise starts again.

HENCH. Switch it off.

BOBBIE. I wanna watch it.

HENCH. Put it on mute then!

BOBBIE. Oh. It’s no fun without the noises.

BOBBIE puts it on mute. He carefully puts it down in front of him. He sits at the end of the bed, the screen lighting his face. BOBBIE turns round to check behind him, then puts his hand down his tracksuit bottoms and starts wanking a little bit inside them.

Pause. Calm descends for a...