SHOW & TELL: BLACKBIRD

For my first show-and-tell post, I'd like to share with you one of my favorites:

Blackbird by David Harrower

This play premiered in 2005 at the Edinburgh International Festival. Since then, it has ben produced by the West End Albery Theatre, off-Broadway, and at venues all over the world. (This information comes from my copy of the play.)

This is a really unusual play. The way it's written is very different from what most of us are used to reading. There are two characters, Ray and Una. Ray is 55 years old and Una is 27 years old. The play is one act, ninety minutes, and takes place in one room. The room is in Ray's workplace--the break room. Una has come to confront Ray about their relationship that unfolded fifteen years prior--when Una was only 12. Since that relationship ended in a climatic set of circumstances, Ray has been arrested, served time, been released, and started a new life. Una has tracked him down after seeing a photograph of him, and has come to ask him a long line of pointed questions. The two of them, after breaching the extreme level of awkwardness, begin to re-examine what happened 15 years ago and why, after all of this time, they still find themselves attracted to the other.

Sounds cool, right? It is. Two dramaturgical choices make it so:

1. The dialogue is written in a really unconventional style in which the two characters often cut each other off and finish one another's sentences. The dialogue is also chopped up quite a bit: Harrower begins a new line with every new thought. In fact, sometimes there is merely one word per line. I've never seen this play produced but I am dying to see how actors could portray this unique method of storytelling. I think this is really an unprecedented way of writing and I know of no other play that resembles the text of this one. IT GETS BETTER...

2. Although the play takes place in one room with no intermission or break, the events of their past unfold in this weird, ethereal reality that the reader/audience experiences with them. Within the rising action, both Ray and Una have a monologue in which they relate to the other their experience of the night that their relationship simultaneously peaked and ended. The story is told in a strange present-past that I find so stimulating. Not only are you seeing and living two stories at once..you also experience how each character remembers it AND how they feel about it. Again, I think this is noteworthy because few other plays that I've read tell two stories at once while only one is actually happening in front of you. 

I won't give anything else away or reveal any details but you NEED to read it. It's one of the most unique and thrilling reading experiences I've ever had. You won't be able to put it down.