SSWEEET

OPENING REMARKS TO THE AUDIENCE

The scream in my head. I am calling my PLAY ‘The scream in my head’, I am renaming my play, for a moment, right in front of you, to get my point across, to prepare you. THE SCREAM IN MY HEAD ….. AND HOW IT GOT OUT.

My character, MADS, the character who is important to the play has THIS scream in her head and shares it with two other people I seem to know, with whom I am, if you like, on nodding – acquaintance – terms. THESE ARE, JEANNE D’ARC AND JINA AMINI. Look them up. And look carefully at their images, they are the stuff of saints.

You know what MADS thinks about the idea of a runway expansion on your doorstep ? She thinks you’re all mad !

Ssweeet it is NOT

The absurdity of expanding any airport can only be responded to by further absurdity. That is what I set out to do with the play: have a singular and courageous woman doing the right thing in the face of opposition and incredulity.

Mads lives in a tree and can summon the sea. Her lifestyle and talents are clearly quite modest.

Mads changes as the action takes place and so, finally, do the friends around her. WHY ? Because they realise they have displeased nature. If you think you can displease nature and get away with it you are mistaken.

The only way I could make sense of the town of Venusberg and its opposition to Mads was comedy. Inter-generational tension is not new but in Ssweeet we see it in end game. Authority deserves to be made to look ridiculous even in the last chance saloon.

As I said above, I saw this in two other women I thought about when I wrote the play. They made authority look ridiculous but paid a heavy price.

These are women of instinct who were made active by circumstances. Who consciously or unconsciously ACTIVATED the thinking of young people around them. This is progress. Young people thinking. Once young people are thinking progress is unstoppable. It was the case with Jeanne and will be the case with Jina.

I shall turn to what I mean by progress a little later.

The most important journey in the play is the one made by ‘lin – from mobile to motherhood – but she receives help. The help she receives is from nature. She is young, superficial and stupid. She tells us how stupid she is but she also saves us.

SAVES US ! Rest assured, we need saving.

That is why I make use of quite a lot of tech in the play. And quite deliberately so IN ORDER THAT you, the audience, understand that around the characters something is working that is invisible and unstoppable. It is transformative but wordless because we have run out of words.

The narrator and chorus are vital to the language. Their concerns are your concerns but what comes out of their mouths are words that hardly add up. This is the language of the everyday. It is also how we disguise what we are really thinking. The Chorus say things in the play you are probably thinking yourself and might even say. The Chorus Leader, Nana, has a lovely line in fatalism for those who enjoy an even darker form of humour. Nana and the Chorus are older and in my view much less wise than TF [Touf], Mads and ‘lin who form the university circle.

TF is the most classical of this younger group, he is both young and delights in lost causes. His vanity, double-dealing and ultimate sentimentality must owe something to the idealism of Mads.

The arrival, development and domination by Silver and Mr Gates give fresh impetus to the essentially comic situation. HOW IS THIS REVEALED ? IT IS REVEALED BY WHAT THEY SAY AND THEIR ABSOLUTE BELIEF THAT WHAT THEY ARE SAYING IS THE ONLY VERSION OF THE TRUTH EVEN THOUGH IT IS A LIE. Got you ! For a moment you thought I was implying truth has different blends and colours ! Call for the magimix 🎼

This is how BIG government works: repeat a lie enough times and it becomes true. Of course a lie is not the opposite of truth. Truth, in fact, has no opposite. Since a lie is a false statement, it cannot be considered the direct opposite of truth. Instead, we can say that truth exists outside the realm of lies.

In fact Mr Gates and Silver are geniuses and deserve their accolades as comics. It seems the Absurdists just got VOTED IN.

This pair have no intention of letting good old Venusberg prosper as a holiday destination. NO, they want Venusberg to become Droneville. A little side show for the military industrial world into which we are now descending. ‘A show’ that is not only about making more guns but desensitizing us to life itself while operating with a supreme nonchalance towards basic human rights.

“LOCK HER UP, SHE DOESN’T LOOK RIGHT.”

MADS’ super abilities are viewed as disabilities by the town she lives in. The state concludes, ultimately, she had special powers that can be put to good use – THEIR GOOD USE – but it is too late. We should pay attention to minorities: they tell us something about ourselves.

In the case of all three of these courageous women, they get to start something but don’t get to see it finished.

HOW COME? That part I leave to you. We often find ourselves ganging up on such people simply because they are different. People who gang up on other people are called gangsters. The repeated action of government is to gang up on nature. These permits me to call them gangsters, too.

THE IDEA THAT WE NEED ANY MORE ‘Heathrow’ is comic. It is already an army of occupation, controlling the skies above our heads. It is a super power all of itself that wants TO TEACH THE LOCAL POPULATION A LESSON. ‘Look up and be afraid, there’s more where that came from’.

Air travel and the thinking that goes with it has weaponised the planet and nature is not happy. ONLY YOU KNOW WHY. Those airport terminals you move through so quickly, well, they’re rotten and full of dark secrets you’d rather not think about. Don’t the ends justify the means, you say ? No, they do not.

At the heart of this big society of ours are gangsters. Their deal with you is simple, BE GOOD TO US AND WE’LL BE GOOD TO YOU. It is not good for you. It’s good for a very small group of people but it’s not good for you.

Rest assured those skies above you illuminate this fact.

Even for government to think about expanding air travel smacks of desperation. All this energy of theirs being spent on NIL. Has government not reviewed what progress means ? Progress means NO ❌ to travel.

So now we turn to my play.

And if you learn anything from my play, learn this. That a third runway at Heathrow is NONSENSE.

Nature reviewed the business plan and rejects it.

There are fine speeches in the play about nature and a tree. DON’T BE FOOLED. Both take a very dim view of humans after a long and very patient review of their character. About 300,000 years of careful analysis.

Are we born good ? Neither Jeanne nor Jina could answer this question and neither believed they were perfect but being right was good enough. It must be of minor consolation to these individuals that we remember them for a life cut short short but IT IS OUT OF THEM THAT SOMETHING IS BORN THAT LIVES NOW.

By the end of the play Mads hopes you will say the same about her.

My play is a comedy but behind it lies a tragedy. Young people, wake up to avert a tragedy. And tell those older than you to mind themselves, to ‘mind their own business’. They’re lucky to be here. I leave you to experience the play: we are at a chaos moment both on this stage and off it which is why I present you with a comedy.

For some of you the conclusion to the play may not be so Ssweeet.

Delivered: The Questors Theatre, Friday, 25th July 2025