issue 9

Issue 9, February 2010

www.dur.ac.uk/grove

ENGLISH WRITING • TRANSLATIONS DURHAM DRAMA FESTIVAL SPECIAL STUDENT WRITING

IX

THE TEAM’S PAGE

ENGLISH WRITING

Welcome to the first Grove of the New Year! It’s been a while in the making, but hopefully you’ve all enjoyed the Christmas break and want to spend some time with a copy of The Grove this term. This issue includes the usual sections of English Language, Translations and Student writing.

We’re bringing you quite a diverse selection of writing for this issue of The Grove!

There’s a chapter from George Orwell’s excellent memoir, Down and Out in Paris in London, which is taken from the Paris section, and as ever there’s poetry too. Enjoy!

Our Events section features fantastic extracts of student drama taken from the upcoming Durham Drama Festival, which will run from 25th-27th February. There’s some great material there that will be performed in DST at the end of February, and each extract is accompanied by exclusive interviews with the writers themselves.

We’ve also introduced a new Centrefold section, which will grow to have essays on all sorts of topics, book reviews and conversations. Another first is our new format, which we will stick to for the foreseeable future. We hope you enjoy the content as well!

If you are interested in writing for either the Student, Translation and Centrefold sections contact us at grove@dur.ac.uk. For more information about everything, go to www.dur.ac.uk/grove. Join our mailing list.

And do come to our birthday party! We’ll be celebrating our second birthday and the launch of issues 9 and 10. The event will include some very special readings, live music and, later... more music! So make sure you join us at Cellar Door on 1st of March, 8pm.

Hope to see you there, -The Grove Team.

To join our mailing list or get in touch, write to grove@dur.ac.uk Back issues and more information at www.dur.ac.uk/grove

THE GROVE TEAM ARE

PHILIP GROSS

Bread and Salt (for Jonathan and Petra) Out of the bloodstream steps an old Estonian. He has waded so far to bring you this - bread, salt, a threshold gift, like frankincense and myrrh: bread the colour of peat (in Lahemaa I met a bog pool’s gaze, its pickled moss-threads like an iris round its clear black, its bottomless knowing) and salt like snow-grit at the roadside, rocksalt from forced-labour caves where miners might shrivel and parch and, left for dead, preserved like salt cod, never rot.

Out of the bloodstream they come to find us home - plain blessings, salt and bread.

Executive Editor: Maxime Dargaud-Fons; Senior Editor: Chris Hogg; Acting Editor: Steve Hopkinson; Deputy Editor: Emily Chester; Section Editors: Sophie Caldecott and Chris Wright Sub-Editors: Kate Broderick (publicity), Lyndsey Fineran (production), Kate Hutchings (treasurer), Alicia Lewis (distribution), Alex Mason (listings), Becca Sheppard (acknowledgments) and Jess Sorah (copy)

THE GROVE IS FUNDED BY

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PAUL MULDOON

Immrama I, too, have trailed my father’s spirit From the mud-walled cabin behind the mountain Where he was born and bred, TB and scarletina, 3

Paul Muldoon

ENGLISH WRITING

The farm where he was first hired out, To Wigan, to Crewe junction, A building-site from which he disappeared And took passage, almost, for Argentina.

The mountain is coming down with hazel, The building-site a slum, While he has gone no further than Brazil.

That’s him on the verandah, drinking rum With a man who might be a Nazi, His children asleep under their mosquito-nets.

DYLAN THOMAS

I have longed to move away I have longed to move away From the hissing of the spent lie And the old terrors’ continual cry Growing more terrible as the day Goes over the hill into the deep sea; I have longed to move away From the repetition of salutes, For there are ghosts in the air And ghostly echoes on paper, And the thunder of calls and notes.

I have longed to move away but am afraid; Some life, yet unspent, might explode Out of the old lie burning on the ground, And, crackling into the air, leave me half-blind.

Neither by night’s ancient fear, The parting of hat from hair, Pursed lips at the receiver, Shall I fall to death’s feather.

By these I would not care to die, Half convention and half lie.

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ENGLISH WRITING

George Orwell

GEORGE ORWELL

from Down and Out in Paris and London One day, when we had been at the Hotel X five or six weeks, Boris disappeared without notice. In the evening I found him waiting for me in the Rue de Rivoli. He slapped me gaily on the shoulder.

‘Free at last, MON AMI! You can give notice in the morning. The Auberge opens tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Well, possibly we shall need a day or two to arrange things. But, at any rate, no more CAFETERIA! NOUS SOMMES LANCES, MON AMI! My tail coat is out of pawn already.’

His manner was so hearty that I felt sure there was something wrong, and I did not at all want to leave my safe and comfortable job at the hotel. However, I had promised Boris, so I gave notice, and the next morning at seven went down to the Auberge de Jehan Cottard. It was locked, and I went in search of Boris, who had once more bolted from his lodgings and taken a room in the rue de la Croix Nivert. I found him asleep, together with a girl whom he had picked up the night before, and who he told me was ‘of a very sympathetic temperament.’ As to the restaurant, he said that it was all arranged; there were only a few little things to be seen to before we opened.

At ten I managed to get Boris out of bed, and we unlocked the restaurant. At a glance I saw what the ‘few little things’ amounted to. It was briefly this: that the alterations had not been touched since our last visit. The stoves for the kitchen had not arrived, the water and electricity had not been laid on, and there was all manner of painting, polishing and carpentering to be done. Nothing short of a miracle could open the restaurant within ten days, and by the look of things it might collapse without even opening. It was obvious what had happened. The PATRON was short of money, and he had engaged the staff (there were four of us) in order to use us instead of workmen. He would be getting our services almost free, for waiters are paid no wages, and though he would have to pay me, he would not be feeding me till the restaurant opened. In effect, he had swindled us of several hundred francs by sending for us before the restaurant was open. We had thrown up a good job for nothing.

Boris, however, was full of hope. He had only one idea in his head, namely, that here at last was a chance of being a waiter and wearing a tail coat once more. For this he was quite willing to do ten days’ work unpaid, with the chance of being left jobless in the end. ‘Patience!’ he kept saying. ‘That will arrange itself. Wait till the restaurant opens, and we’ll get it all back. Patience, MON AMI!’ We needed patience, for days passed and the restaurant did not even progress towards opening. We cleaned out the cellars, fixed the shelves, distempered the 5

George Orwell

ENGLISH WRITING

ENGLISH WRITING

George Orwell

walls, polished the woodwork, whitewashed the ceiling, stained the floor; but the main work, the plumbing and gas-fitting and electricity, was still not done, because the PATRON could not pay the bills. Evidently he was almost penniless, for he refused the smallest charges, and he had a trick of swiftly disappearing when asked for money. His blend of shiftiness and aristocratic manners made him very hard to deal with. Melancholy duns came looking for him at all hours, and by instruction we always told them that he was at Fontainebleau, or Saint Cloud, or some other place that was safely distant. Meanwhile, I was getting hungrier and hungrier. I had left the hotel with thirty francs, and I had to go back immediately to a diet of dry bread.

Boris had managed in the beginning to extract an advance of sixty francs from the PATRON, but he had spent half of it, in redeeming his waiter’s clothes, and half on the girl of sympathetic temperament. He borrowed three francs a day from Jules, the second waiter, and spent it on bread. Some days we had not even money for tobacco.

Sometimes the cook came to see how things were getting on, and when she saw that the kitchen was still bare of pots and pans she usually wept. Jules, the second waiter, refused steadily to help with the work. He was a Magyar, a little dark, sharpfeatured fellow in spectacles, and very talkative; he had been a medical student, but had abandoned his training for lack of money. He had a taste for talking while other people were working, and he told me all about himself and his ideas. It appeared that he was a Communist, and had various strange theories (he could prove to you by figures that it was wrong to work), and he was also, like most Magyars, passionately proud. Proud and lazy men do not make good waiters. It was Jules’s dearest boast that once when a customer in a restaurant had insulted him, he had poured a plate of hot soup down the customer’s neck, and then walked straight out without even waiting to be sacked.

As each day went by Jules grew more and more enraged at the trick the PATRON had played on us. He had a spluttering, oratorical way of talking. He used to walk up and down shaking his fist, and trying to incite me not to work: ‘Put that brush down, you fool! You and I belong to proud races; we don’t work for nothing, like these damned Russian serfs. I tell you, to be cheated like this is torture to me. There have been times in my life, when someone has cheated me even of five sous, when I have vomited--yes, vomited with rage.

‘Besides, MON VIEUX, don’t forget that I’m a Communist. A BAS LA BOURGEOISIE! Did any man alive ever see me working when I could avoid it? No. And not only I don’t wear myself out working, like you other fools, but I steal, just to show my independence. Once I was in a restaurant where the PATRON thought he could treat me like a dog. Well, in revenge I found out a way to steal milk from the milk-cans and seal them up again so that no one should know. I tell you I just swilled that milk down night and morning. Every day I drank four litres of milk, besides half a litre of cream. The PATRON was at his wits’ end to know where the milk was going. It wasn’t that I wanted milk, you understand, because I hate the stuff; it was

principle, just principle.

‘Well, after three days I began to get dreadful pains in my belly, and I went to the doctor. “What have you been eating?” he said. I said: “I drink four litres of milk a day, and half a litre of cream.” “Four litres!” he said. “Then stop it at once. You’ll burst if you go on.” “What do I care?” I said. “With me principle is everything. I shall go on drinking that milk, even if I do burst.”

‘Well, the next day the PATRON caught me stealing milk. “You’re sacked,” he said; “you leave at the end of the week.” “PARDON, MONSIEUR,” I said, “I shall leave this morning.” “No, you won’t,” he said, “I can’t spare you till Saturday.” “Very well, MON PATRON,” I thought to myself, “we’ll see who gets tired of it first.” And then I set to work to smash the crockery. I broke nine plates the first day and thirteen the second; after that the PATRON was glad to see the last of me.

‘Ah, I’m not one of your Russian MOUJIKS...’

Ten days passed. It was a bad time. I was absolutely at the end of my money, and my rent was several days overdue. We loafed about the dismal empty restaurant, too hungry even to get on with the work that remained. Only Boris now believed that the restaurant would open. He had set his heart on being MAITRE D’HOTEL, and he invented a theory that the PATRON’S money was tied up in shares and he was waiting a favourable moment for selling. On the tenth day I had nothing to eat or smoke, and I told the PATRON that I could not continue working without an advance on my wages. As blandly as usual, the PATRON promised the advance, and then, according to his custom, vanished. I walked part of the way home, but I did not feel equal to a scene with Madame F. over the rent, so I passed the night on a bench on the boulevard. It was very uncomfortable--the arm of the seat cuts into your back-and much colder than I had expected. There was plenty of time, in the long boring hours between dawn and work, to think what a fool I had been to deliver myself into the hands of these Russians.

Then, in the morning, the luck changed. Evidently the PATRON had come to an understanding with his creditors, for he arrived with money in his pockets, set the alterations going, and gave me my advance. Boris and I bought macaroni and a piece of horse’s liver, and had our first hot meal in ten days.

The workmen were brought in and the alterations made, hastily and with incredible shoddiness. The tables, for instance, were to be covered with baize, but when the PATRON found that baize was expensive he bought instead disused army blankets, smelling incorrigibly of sweat. The table cloths (they were check, to go with the ‘Norman’ decorations) would cover them, of course. On the last night we were at work till two in the morning, getting things ready. The crockery did not arrive till eight, and, being new, had all to be washed. The cutlery did not arrive till the next morning, nor the linen either, so that we had to dry the crockery with a shirt of the PATRON’s and an old pillowslip belonging to the concierge. Boris and I did all the work. Jules was skulking, and the PATRON and his wife sat in the bar with a dun

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7

George Orwell

ENGLISH WRITING

and some Russian friends, drinking success to the restaurant. The cook was in the kitchen with her head on the table, crying, because she was expected to cook for fifty people, and there were not pots and pans enough for ten. About midnight there was a fearful interview with some duns, who came intending to seize eight copper saucepans which the PATRON had obtained on credit. They were bought off with half a bottle of brandy.

Jules and I missed the last Metro home and had to sleep on the floor of the restaurant. The first thing we saw in the morning were two large rats sitting on the kitchen table, eating from a ham that stood there. It seemed a bad omen, and I was surer than ever that the Auberge de Jehan Cottard would turn out a failure.

durham

drama festival 2010 www.dramafestival.co.uk

TRANSLATIONS Welcome to the translation hotchpotch! Today we have a little something from an old classic, a famous Bulgarian drama’s final scene, lyrics by the two great mystical poets of Islam, - and more. I’m very proud to say that half the translations here have been done specially for The Grove - I hope the trend will continue. Dip in and explore.

TALOG DAVIES (Translated by Hickish and Jones from Welsh)

Gwen (A Smile) Give a smile in the sun of summer, So maiden’s eyes see all the more, By growing old her smile you gain, Lighter till the last.

EDITH SÖDERGRAN (Translated by Reetta Humalajoki from Finnish)

The Day Cools The day cools come evening.

Drink the warmth of my hand, in it is the blood of spring.

Take my hand, my white arm, take my thin shoulders’ longing…

It would be strange to feel, in one single night, a night like this your heavy head on my breast.

STEFAN ANDERS (Translated by John Clegg from German)

The Scorpion The pit of dreaming sinks so low I saw the sky as through a reed.

A damp vault - was I here again? When on grey earth a patch of shade Froze. Through it came the scorpion.

9

Stefan Anders

TRANSLATIONS

And when he saw my line of sight, That I was with him in the dream, He lingered, sowing dark ideas Motionless from his shadow-beam Among my deepest hopes and fears.

TRANSLATIONS

Miguel de Cervantes

the day (being one of the warmest of July), armed himself cap-a-pie, mounted on Rozinante, laced on his ill-contrived helmet, embraced his target, took his lance, and by a postern door of his base-court issued out to the field, marvelous jocund and content to see with what facility he had commenced his good desires. But scarce had he sallied to the fields, when he was suddenly assaulted by a terrible thought, and such a one as did well-nigh overthrow his former good purposes; which was, he remembered he was not yet dubbed knight, and therefore, by the laws of knighthood, neither could nor ought to combat with any knight: and though he were one, yet ought he to wear white armour like a new knight, without any device in his shield until he did win it by force of arms.

Then as I watched, the poison plant Lifted his thorn-bud, tentative, A threat among the nest of shadow My fear in the stitch and weave, The dream-pit’s solid earth below.

Not knowing whether I’d been stung I heard the scorpion address Me: ‘Step into the cavern of The hieroglyphs, its nothingness.

For visions nothing is enough.

‘Now kick the symbol and you’ll see It’s not a mask, this chitin shell The world’s without a purpose, but Each single thing is meaningful.

No abyss wanders off the straight.’

O hollowness, the mocking tone Which even sounds in dreams! My heart Shuddered at the advice. I went To the Sarcophagus which stored Forgetfulness. Mould hid bright paint.

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES (Translated by Thomas Shelton from Spanish)

from Don Quixote Things being thus ordered, he would defer the execution of his designs no longer, being spurred on the more vehemently by the want which he esteemed his delays wrought in the world, according to the wrongs that he resolved to right, the harms he meant to redress, the excesses he would amend, the abuses that he would better, and the debts he would satisfy. And therefore, without acquainting any living creature with his intentions, he, unseen of any, upon a certain morning, somewhat before 10

These thoughts did make him stagger in his purposes; but his follies prevailing more than any other reason, he purposed to cause himself to be knighted by the first he met, to the imitation of many others that did the same, as he had read in the books which distracted him. As touching white armour, he resolved, with the first opportunity, to scour his own so well, that they should rest whiter than ermines. And thus he pacified his mind and prosecuted his journey, without choosing any other way than that which his horse pleased, believing that therein consisted the vigour of knightly adventures. Our burnished adventurer, travelling thus onward, did parley with himself in this manner: ‘Who doubts, in the ensuing ages, when the true history of my famous acts shall come to light, but that the wise man who shall write it, will begin it, when he comes to declare this my first sally so early in the morning, after this manner?— “Scarce had the ruddy Apollo spread over the face of the vast and spacious earth the golden twists of his beautiful hairs, and scarce had the little enamelled birds with their naked tongues saluted with sweet and mellifluous harmony the arrival of rosy Aurora, when, abandoning her jealous husband’s soft couch, she shows herself to mortal wights through the gates and windows of the Manchegall horizon; when the famous knight, Don Quixote of the Mancha, abandoning the slothful plumes, did mount upon his renowned horse Rozinante, and began to travel through the ancient and known fields of Montiel”’ (as indeed he did).

And following still on with his discourse, he said: ‘Oh, happy the age, and fortunate the time, wherein my famous feats shall be revealed, feats worthy to be graven in brass, carved in marble, and delivered with most curious art in tables, for a future instruction and memory. And, thou wise enchanter, whosoever thou beest, whom it shall concern to be the chronicler of this strange history, I desire thee not to forget my good horse Rozinante, mine eternal and inseparable companion in all my journeys and courses.’

And then, as if he were verily enamoured, he said: ‘O Princess Dulcinea! lady of this captive heart! much wrong hast thou done me by dismissing me, and reproaching me with the rigorous decree and commandment, 11

Miguel de Cervantes

TRANSLATIONS

TRANSLATIONS

not to appear before thy beauty. I pray thee, sweet lady, deign to remember thee of this poor subjected heart, that for thy love suffers so many tortures!’

And with these words he inserted a thousand other ravings, all after the same manner that his books taught him, imitating as near as he could their very phrase and language, and did ride therewithal so slow a pace, and the sun did mount so swiftly, and with so great heat, as it was sufficient to melt his brains, if he had had any left.

They walk past Guncho and mix with the crowd.

YEDRAN YOVKOV (Translated by Petya Yankova from Bulgarian)

Savka: Oh my god, how beautiful she is…..

Yedran Yovkov

The crowd splits in two. Albena is surrounded by two officers. She is wearing new clothes – a blue dress and a short jacket. She keeps her hands in front of her, as a sign of penitence.

On her head she wears a black kerchief.

Keranitsa: She has changed…

Marinitsa: She is pale….

Marinitsa: She has cried….

Albena, Act III

Savka: Poor Albena…. (Savka cries)

A classic turn of the (previous) century Bulgarian drama, Albena, like plays by Chekhov, sets many questions, but doesn’t pass judgment. The most beautiful woman in the village, Albena is married to the ugly Kustar (the villagers sigh that the worst pig often gets the best pear). On Easter day, the night before, Kustar was murdered and Albena is now being taken to jail. Young and handsome Niagul is Kustar’s boss Niagulista is his wife - the others are villagers.

Gavrilitsa: I hope she’s not coming back here. And she won’t – they will hang her for murder.

Savka: Gavrilitsa, don’t say that.

Keranitsa: Where is she now? Where’s Albena? (...)

Savka: The officers are waiting – one at the door, the other – under the window. In the house – Albena’s changing.

Gavrilitsa: They would change her – at the rope.

Savka: Oh, Gavrilitsa, don’t talk like that……Albena is good, life is…..

Gavrilitsa: She’s good, good for the grave.

Keranitsa: Come. Come thither; let’s see what the others are talking about.

Guncho Mitin, coming out of the pub, talking to himself: Hm…Look at them now…. look at them now…

Two women walk past him.

The first woman: Plague on her….she killed her husband; she killed her husband on Good Friday.

The second woman: And we are wondering why we have hail so often.

The first woman: Not hail, God will punish us with fire because of her.

12

Keranitsa: Poor, poor…..

Albena and the officers step forward, the crowd shrinks back. Complete silence sets for a moment.

Mita cries: My Albena, my daughter, what did you do Albena!

Voices cry: Oh, Albena! Albena! Where are you going? Albena! Albena!

Cries and sobs are heard.

Albena, stops, turns to one side and says loudly: Mita, farewell! Turns to the other side.

Marinitsa, Todorka, Savka, goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye to everyone!

Several women start crying. Everyone wants to be close to her. The officers are trying to push them away in vain.

Albena, stops again: Farewell! I’m young, I sinned. Forgive me!

The women start to cry even more loudly and everyone tries to reach her.

Some voices: She is not wrong! She didn’t do it! Albena, Albena! It cannot be her….we have known her since she was a child.

The officers: Back! Back!

Voices from the crowd: Let her go! She is innocent! We will take her! Leave her!

Let her go!

The officers: Back! Back!

An old man at the back of crowd, who has been claiming that she deserves the severest punishment, cries: People, don’t let the officers take her! The village is nothing without Albena!

The officers: Back! Back!

The crowd presses even more tightly. The officers threaten to shoot. The crowd shrinks away and Albena is left with some space around her. She stops.

13

Yedran Yovkov

TRANSLATIONS

Albena: I sinned. Forgive me! Starts crying At this very moment Niagul makes his way through the crowd and goes straight to Albena.

Voices: Where is he going? Where are you going, Niagul? Look at him! Look at Niagul!

Niagul goes to Albena, stands next to her, taking her hand with both his hands: Albena!

The older officer: What are you doing? Get out of here!

Niagul: I won’t go. I killed Kutsar!

CENTREFOLD The Iraq Inquiry is charged with ‘learning the lessons’ of 2003, but when thinking about the history of American and British power in Mesopotamia, it’s worth starting a bit further back.

Here’s an analysis written in 1991 to whet your appetite…

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Realpolitik in the Gulf: A Game Gone Tilt

The older officer: What? What?

Niagul, adamantly and loudly: I killed Kutsar!

The crowd roars with mixed feelings. Flabbergasted, stunned, scared Niagulitsa comes forward and timidly peers into her husband and Albena.

Niagulitsa: What is going on? What happened?

The officer: I will ask you once again – did you kill Kutsar?

Niagul: I did it.

Niagulitsa, timidly: Niagul!

The officer asks Albena: Is he right?

Albena nods and cries.

The crowd is speechless. The cart takes Albena, Niagul and the officers away. Niagulitsa looks after them unable to comprehend what has happened, then falls on the road crying.

RUMI (Translated by Andrew Harvey from Persian)

Can Anyone Really Describe Can anyone really describe the actions of the Matchless One? Anything I can say is only what I’m allowed to.

Sometimes He acts this way, sometimes in its exact opposite; The real work of religion is permanent astonishment.

By that I don’t mean in astonishment turning your back on HimI mean: blazing in blind ecstasy, drowned in God and drunk on Love.

14

On the morning before Yom Kippur late this past September, I found myself standing at the western end of the White House, watching as the coloured guards paraded the flag of the United States (and the republic for which it stands) along with that of the Emirate of Kuwait. The young men of George Bush [Senior]’s palace guard made a brave showing, but their immaculate uniforms and webbing could do little but summon the discomforting contrasting image – marching across our TV screens nightly – of their hot, thirsty, encumbered brothers and sisters in the Saudi Arabian desert. I looked away and had my attention fixed by a cortege of limousines turning in at the gate. There was a quick flash of dark beard and white teeth, between burnoose and kaffiyeh, as Sheikh Jabir al-Ahmad al-Sabah, the exiled Kuwaiti emir, scuttled past a clutch of photographers and through the portals. End of photo op, but not of story.

Let us imagine a photograph of the emir of Kuwait entering the White House, and let us see it as a historian might years from now. What might such a picture disclose under analysis? How did this oleaginous monarch, whose very name was unknown just weeks before to most members of the Bush administration and the Congress, never mind most newspaper editors, reporters and their readers, become a crucial visitor – perhaps the crucial visitor – on the President’s autumn calendar? How did he emerge as someone on whose behalf the President was preparing to go to war? We know already, as every historian will, that the President, in having the emir come by, was concerned with dispelling any impression that he was the one who had ‘lost Kuwait’ to Iraq in early August. The tiny kingdom had never been understood as ‘ours’ to lose, as far as the American people and their representatives knew. Those few citizens who did know Kuwait (human-rights monitors, scholars, foreign correspondents) knew it was held together by a relatively loose yet unmistakably persistent form of feudalism. It could have been ‘lost’ only by its sole owners, the Al-Sabah family, not by the United States or by the ‘free world’.

What a historian might make of our imaginary photo document of this moment of diplomatic history that most citizens surely would not is that it is, in fact, less a discreet snapshot than a still from an epic movie – a dark and bloody farce, one that chronicles the past two decades of US involvement in the Persian Gulf. Call the film Rules of the Game of Nations or Metternich of Arabia – you get the idea. In this particular scene,

15

Christopher Hitchens

CENTREFOLD

CENTREFOLD

Christopher Hitchens

the President was meeting at the White House with the emir to send a ‘signal’ to Iraqi president Saddam Hussein that he, Bush, ‘stood with’ Kuwait in wanting Iraq to pull out its troops. After the meeting, Bush emerged to meet the press, not alone but with his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft. This, of course, was a signal, too: Bush meant business, of a potentially military kind. In the game of nations, however, one does not come right out and say one is signalling (that would, by definition, no longer be signalling); one waits for reporters to ask about signals, one denies that signalling is going on, and one trusts that unnamed White House aides and State Department officials will provide the desired ‘spin’ and perceptions of ‘tilt’.

On ordinary days the trivial and empty language of Washington isn’t especially awful. The drizzle of repetitive key words does its job of masking and dulling reality.

But on this rather important day in an altogether unprecedented process – a lengthy and deliberate preparation for a full-scale ground and air war in a faraway region – there was not a word from George Bush – not a word – that matched the occasion. Instead, citizens and soldiers alike would read or hear inane words from reporters, followed by boilerplate answers from their President and interpretations by his aides, about whether the drop-by of a feudal potentate had or had not signalled that intent. There is a rank offence here to the idea of measure and proportion. Great matters of power and principle are in play, and there does in fact exist a chance to evolve a new standard for international relations rather than persist in the old follies of superpower raison d’état; and still the official tongue stammers and barks. Behind all the precious, brittle, Beltway in-talk lies the only idea young Americans will die for in the desert: the idea that in matters of foreign policy, even in a democratic republic, the rule is ‘leave it to us’.

Not everybody, after all, can be fitted out with the wildly expensive stealth equipment that the political priesthood requires to relay and decipher the signal flow.

The word concocted in the nineteenth century for this process – the shorthand of Palmerston and Metternich – was ‘Realpolitik’. Maxims of cynicism and realism – to the effect that great states have no permanent friends or permanent principles, but only permanent interests – became common currency in post-Napoleonic Europe. Well, there isn’t a soul today in Washington who doesn’t pride himself in the purity of his Realpolitik. And an organisation supposedly devoted to the study and promulgation of such nineteenth-century realism – the firm of Henry Kissinger Associates – has furnished the Bush administration with several of its high officers, including Brent Scowcroft and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, along with much of its expertise.

Realpolitik, with its tilts and signals, is believed by the faithful to keep nations from war, balancing the powers and interests, as they say. Is what we are witnessing in the Persian Gulf, then, the breakdown and failure of Realpolitik? Well, yes and no. Yes, in the sense that American troops have been called upon to restore the balance that existed before 2 August 1990. But that regional status quo has for the past two decades known scarcely a day of peace – in the Persian Gulf, it has been a balance of terror for a long time. Realpolitik, as practised by Washington, has played no small part in this

grim situation. To even begin to understand this, one must get beyond today’s tilts and signals and attempt to grasp a bit of history – something the Realpoliticians are loath for you to do. History is for those clutching values and seeking truths; Realpolitik has little time for such sentiment. The world, after all, is a cold place requiring hard calculation, detachment.

Leafing through the history of Washington’s contemporary involvement in the Gulf, one might begin to imagine the cool detachment in 1977 of arch-Realpolitician Henry Kissinger, then national security adviser to Richard Nixon. I have before me as I write a copy of the report of the House Select Committee on Intelligence Activities chaired by Congressman Otis Pike, completed in January 1976, partially leaked, and then censored by the White House and the CIA. The committee found that in 1972 Kissinger had met the Shah of Iran, who solicited his aid in destabilizing the Baathist regime of Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr in Baghdad. Iraq had given refuge to the then-exiled Ayatollah Khomeini and used anti-imperialist rhetoric while coveting Iran’s Arabicspeaking Khuzistan region. The Shah and Kissinger agreed that Iraq was upsetting the balance in the Gulf; a way to restore the balance – or, anyway, to find some new balance – was to send a signal by supporting the landless, luckless Kurds, then in revolt in northern Iraq. Kissinger put the idea to Nixon, who loved (and loves still) the game of nations, and who had already decided to tilt towards Iran and build it into his most powerful regional friend, replete with arms purchased from US manufacturers – not unlike Saudi Arabia today, […]

The principal finding of the Pike Commission, in its study of US covert intervention in Iraq and Iran in the early 1970s, is a clue to a good deal of what has happened since.

The committee members found, to their evident shock, the following: ‘Documents in the Committee’s possession clearly show that the President, Dr. Kissinger and the foreign head of state [the Shah] hoped that our clients [the Kurds] would not prevail.

They preferred instead that the insurgents simply continue a level of hostilities sufficient to sap the resources of our ally’s neighbouring country [Iraq].’

Official prose in Washington can possess a horror and immediacy of its own, as is shown by the sentence that follows: ‘This policy was not imparted to our clients, who were encouraged to continue fighting.’ ‘Not imparted.’ ‘Not imparted’ to the desperate Kurdish villagers to whom Kissinger’s envoys came with outstretched hands and practised grins. ‘Not imparted’, either, to the American public or to Congress.

‘Imparted’, though, to the Shah and to Saddam Hussein (then the Baathists’ numbertwo man), who met and signed a treaty temporarily ending their border dispute in 1975 – thus restoring balance in the region. On that very day, all US aid to the Kurds was terminated – a decision which, of course, ‘imparted’ itself to Saddam. On the next day he launched a search-and-destroy operation in Kurdistan that has been going on ever since and that, in the town of Halabja in 1988, made history by marking the first use of chemical weaponry by a state against its own citizens. […]”

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DURHAM DRAMA FESTIVAL For this issue we’ve been lucky enough to interview the student writers of this year’s Durham Drama Festival. As well as interviews we’ve selected some extracts from the plays to give you a taster of the exciting performances set to follow. The main purpose of the festival is to provide a yearly platform for new writing, and the opportunity for this writing to reach the stage for an incredibly cheap price. All plays will be judged by a host of internationally renowned professionals who will also be hosting free public workshops throughout the festival. All that remains to be said is get down to the Assembly Rooms from 25-27 February for a resplendent assortment of excellent drama!

DONNCHADH O’CONAILL

Attempts A single light up on Traverse, standing downstage. He is dressed in a sober pullover and trousers. He addresses the audience.

Traverse: Julia. Julia, I know how this will seem. I know how you must feel. But I have to do it. I’ve thought about it, and I really must. I’m sorry. (beat) I know what you’ll say. I should have talked to you. I should have told you, before it ever came to this. (beat) I thought about it, every night. For months. Years. I, couldn’t say it. It’s too late now. (beat) I suppose they’ll miss me on the 72A. Where’s Jimmy, they’ll be saying. Not the same without him. Did you hear what happened to him? (beat) That’s… what they’ll say. (beat) Say goodbye to the… (beat) Tell them. You’ll tell them. (pause) I love you. I’m sorry.

Traverse steps out of the light, which goes out.

Lights up on an office, upstage left. A desk and two chairs. A window at the far left. A door on the right.

Traverse, wearing a shirt and tie with no jacket, is sitting on a chair.

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Donnchadh O’Conaill

Jackson: Mr. Traverse.

Traverse: Yes? Jackson: I think I’ve heard enough. (beat)

KATE HUTCHINGS INTERVIEWS DONNCHADH O’CONAILL I was wondering whether you could tell our readers a little bit about ‘Attempts’.

I suppose it’s a black comedy. It’s about a man who tries to commit suicide but who discovers that he can’t because he’s immortal. So that’s the basic premise. I don’t know if it’ll appear in the programme, but the subtitle I’m working with at the moment is “A Comedy of Futility”, so that’s its theme and the initiating idea. In terms of presentation, I just want it to be fairly simple and it’ll be very much the actors, the weight will be placed on them. We don’t have an enormous amount of set or scenery or lights or sounds or anything like that, in fact we wouldn’t be able to afford them. But also, because of the kind of play it is I think it makes sense to have the actors as the focus of it.

Did anything in particular inspire you to write the play? Where did the idea come from?

Well I’ve had this idea for a long time, the basic initiating idea I told you about. I wrote a long story on it about ten years ago when I was around your age. I’m not sure where I got that idea from but I suppose the idea of someone desperately trying to do something and failing for various reasons is quite interesting. It’s particularly interesting when it comes to a mixture of comedy and drama because the fact that they care desperately about this thing makes it dramatic and the fact that they fail allows you to bring in the element of comedy. Something that’s very common is that in a very, very light play or a light movie is one where it’s very difficult to care about or empathise with the characters beyond a very superficial level.

Jackson is sitting behind the desk, dressed in a sober suit and tie. A file is open in front of him, more papers on the desk to his right. A jug of water and two glasses on the desk to his left.

As you are Irish, I was curious if you think that tragic-comedy is a characteristically Irish genre?

Traverse: …the 72A, taking twenty-one minutes. Fifth floor, second room on the left, first desk on the left. Behind Mark, beside Louise. Start at eight. Coffee at eleven, lunch at one. In the canteen, sit opposite Bob, beside Dick, Mary beside Bob and opposite Dick. A little square, you see? (beat) Potatoes, a selection of vegetables. Milk. Tea. With milk. No sugar. That would be an indulgence.

Resume at quarter to two. Clock out at quarter past five. Home by six twenty.

Five minutes to wash my face and hands before dinner. Chops, carrots…

I don’t think it is actually. But I’m not really that familiar with the great Irish canon of writers. I mean, to take an obvious example, someone like Beckett, it’s interesting that Beckett’s often listed as an Irish writer because he wrote quite a bit in French and lived most of his adult life outside France, and he was certainly outside Ireland when he wrote the works that made him famous. So, it’s difficult to say to what extent Beckett is an Irish writer, of course there are Irish elements in his work,

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Donnchadh O’Conaill

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but I’m not sure how distinctively Irish that is. I’d say the writers I most study and am most influenced by generally aren’t Irish, but there are Irish writers I’m aware of who do this balance between something comic and something tragic. I mean in a quite different way there was a play by a fellow called Mark O’Doherty who was a stand-up comedian, his brother David O’Doherty won what was the Perrier Award in 2008, and Mark O’Doherty wrote a play called Trad, the initial premise of which is quite absurd. It’s about a hundred year old man who’s searching for his father who is something like 180. But the really striking thing is that it starts off with this premise but it manages to, while allowing for how ridiculous it is, it manages to make it work as a little world and thus creates a thing the audience gets drawn into.

So there’s that, it’s quite an Irish play, but I’m not sure if it that approach is specifically an Irish one. I mean someone like Pinter is someone who does this kind of thing very, very well.

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James Morton

the Moment: the North Finchley meteor. In the last week alone, the nation has expressed its utmost sorrow and disbelief after a meteor, the largest on record to hit the UK, landed in an area of North Finchley, killing a resident of the region.

[Linda tuts and rolls her eyes, having heard it all before.]

Seventeen-year-old Miles Dashforth was out walking near his home when the meteor struck at approximately 8.52p.m. on Monday evening. A mere four days have passed since then, and the impact of Miles’s death has been truly remarkable, prompting candlelight vigils across the country. Yet is the hysteria surrounding the boy’s death an accurate reflection of the public’s anguish, or an overblown outcome of media frenzy?

EMILY CHESTER INTERVIEWS JAMES MORTON

On the same line I was wondering if you’d agree with Beckett’s infamous line from Endgame that there’s nothing funnier than unhappiness.

Is there anything in particular that’s inspired you/influenced to write this play?

I wonder how much that was said for show to be honest. I mean it’s a very nice line, and maybe Beckett himself believed it, but you have to wonder... some of his lines are sometimes too epigrammatic. There’s something almost Wildean about them.

Wilde comes up with these wonderful aphorisms: in some sense they express his personality but I’m not sure how truly he believes them. I think the same is possibly true of Beckett, the way his characters come up with these lines that are really aphorisms.

I think there’s a lot of drama around at the moment that tries to be a bit too modern. I think there’re a lot of very zany plays that are designed to make you think, but are quite bizarre, and so I want to hark back to the plays from the ‘70s, things like Alan Ayckbourn and Abigail’s Party by Mike Leigh, living room plays. I did one like that last year for DDF, and I think there are lots of different ways you can approach such plays, so I thought I’d do another one set in a living room, and allow the characters to unravel in one setting, and from that I think you can produce something quite profound.

Will you be directing the play?

Yes, I’ll be directing it, and I have Adam Usden who directed W;t last year and who directed The Shape of Things just at the start of this term as the assistant director.

JAMES MORTON

The Impact Female Interviewer: It’s now two minutes past eleven; you’re listening to ‘A Year in Review’ on RFM. Over the next hour, we’ll be looking back at some of the more significant events of the past year, from the Haitian earthquake back in January to England’s disappointing performance at the World Cup in July, whilst revealing our predictions for the year ahead. First, however, we’ll be discussing stories that have made headlines more recently, most prominently the Story of 20

So what influence will that have on the setting? Is there any particular backdrop you’re going to use?

Well, we’re going to keep it pretty basic, with a breakfast bar in the corner. It’s set a few months in the future, so a setting that seems quite modern and typical of modern households, for example the kitchen seems to have taken over from the living room as a place where people convene. I don’t know whether that’s because of the influence of things such as Big Brother, it’s just that’s where people seem to congregate now. But I thought that would be interesting, bringing ideas from the 70s into the setting of the contemporary era.

You also explore the idea of mass hysteria in the play, and its “plethora of chain reactions”. Is this reaction symptomatic of contemporary society?

I think the hysteria via the meteor could be seen as a metaphor for many things: the 21

James Morton

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past decade itself or even certain events like 9/11 or the recession and their subsequent impact. Something I think the play represents is that there is this instinct to panic all the time now. For example with swine flu, it was as if it was the end of the world, and I think it’s something that’s developed a lot in the last ten years. Also, with 24-hour news channels this “hysteria” effect is constantly heightened. There was a talk recently at the DUS, and Jon Snow said that there was a prime minister who always smoked a pipe, put it in his pocket, and it caught fire, and Jon Snow was saying if this had been shown on 24-hour news era, then that would have immediately gone to the papers as a terrorist attack, when actually it was just a mistake. I think there’s a lot of instant hysteria around at the moment.

Phil: Just let me help you back, and we’ll talk.

Despite that, though, in the play you have the character, Linda, turn the radio off to block out the news programme playing to carry on making a banner for her New Year’s Eve party. Do you think, because of this hysteria, that we do become emotionally severed from the world to some degree? Is that the other side of the coin?

Phil: She was only trying to spare your feelings.

She’s definitely trying to avoid dealing with this conflict there, and then there’s also the part when she’s talking about her daughter and her immense loss, and she just tries to brush over it. Not to get too philosophical here, but I do think we tend to get detached from ‘the real world’; there’s a sense of realism missing there, and I think that’s what the character of Karen brings into it-she’s just very down to earth, and doesn’t take any shit, basically.

ANDRA CATINCESCU

Edelweiss Charley: Good-bye, Phil. You know I loved you.

(Charley starts leaning forward, as if allowing herself to fall. Leaping forward, Phil grabs the waist of her boxers.)

Phil: The staff ’ll plunder the place and you’ll be paying for the booze you know.

Really, just put the stock away, it’s the least you could do!

Charley: Fuck the stock.

Phil: You’re just upset.

Charley: You think?

Phil: You’ve been drunk before, you’ll be fine (she attempts to get his hand off) Charley, don’t! You don’t know all the facts, ok?

(Charley turns to look at him.)

Andra Catincescu

Charley: Say it, if you’ve got anything to say.

Phil: I really think you should be sitting down for this.

Charley: Wouldn’t work just now. I am trying to fall and die.

Phil: She’ll never even know you jumped, alright?

Charley: Who? Phil: Fia! She’s gone, Charley, she left.

Charley: Why would I give a shit?

Charley: Strange way she chose then. Let go Phil.

Phil: She’s dying. Cancer. She went back home.

KATE HUTCHINGS INTERVIEWS ANDRA CATINCESCU If you could just say in your own words a little bit about the play so people have an idea what it’s about.

It’s about a couple of parents who are middle-aged and divorced, and their longestranged daughter rings them up to tell them that she’s terminally ill and she needs to return home to die. To bring her some final relief they have to do something for her: they have to act like they’re a couple again and just give her the experience of the childhood she’s missed. It’s just about what ideal images we’re left with of our childhood and what those actually turn out to be once you get new information.

Funnily enough, even if you’re an adult, once you have to deal with that you just revert back to quite a primal state.

It tackles some quite big issues with the euthanasia and homosexuality. I was wondering how you dealt with those sensitive things. Did you feel at any point you had to step back and be careful with you wording, or did you find it quite easy to deal with those issues?

I’m not planning to answer any big existential questions, in terms of any of those issues. The play just comes from the characters and those just happen to be problems that the characters have. So, I’ve sort of stayed true to the characters and just written those problems as part of themselves, as they feel. I really haven’t tried to make it a political mission or handle them thematically in any way.

And where did those characters come from? What inspired your ideas for the play?

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Andra Catincescu

DURHAM DRAMA FESTIVAL

Funnily enough, I’m quite an admirer of Bill Hicks and that’s really his story. He got pancreatic cancer in his thirties. He rang his parents and went home to spend his last few weeks with them. And obviously just said goodbye to everyone else on the telephone. So, I sort of liked that story and wanted to explore it a bit. And everything else just grew around it.

And the nationality of the characters – a lot of them are Eastern European – was that important to you? What does it add to the play?

As a writer I think you get bits and pieces from people you’ve met and people you know. Because, I came up with her and her girlfriend, and in a way it’s their story. I thought, looking at it from that eastern mentality and being confronted with that Eastern mentality would just add a lot of weight to the issues. These are things that people here sort of deal with slightly more open-mindedly. I feel easterners really don’t. So, it’s just a way of looking at the problem of slightly more traditional and slightly more conservative mentalities.

DURHAM DRAMA FESTIVAL

Elizabeth Rose O’Connor

ELIZABETH ROSE O’CONNOR

Here Comes the Beaten Man Michael: This is a play about sharing. It is also about illusions. [laughs] It is in itself an illusion. After all, every one of you will leave the theatre tonight as exactly the person you were when you came in, which is, in turn, the very character you were when you bought a ticket. You have expected entertainment for an hour or so, you will receive entertainment for an hour or so, and then, homeward bound, you will set foot upon the dark cobbles and fall into the night. It’s only a show. You should remember that. And if you do forget, just have a look into the wings. You might see one of us there, standing where we shouldn’t. We’re only pretending.

This is a play about time. Illusions are lucky enough to exist out of time, making me a sort of magician, if you will. Able to influence time, to swap the sequence around, to rewind, repeat, stop, repeat, to warp my own memories under a delicate shroud of realism. Yes, I live ungoverned by the ticking clock.

But then… I don’t really exist.

I am the play’s narrator. Almost. I would say I am more of a character, actually.

Is that your personal background?

There are other characters. My friends from boarding school: Jeremy, Walter and Thomas.

Yes, I’m Romanian.

So you’ve drawn from your family and friends?

Yes. And I’ve also noticed... I lived in London for three years before coming here and upon meeting other eastern Europeans who have come here to work I’ve noticed that something very interesting happens to them: they tend to feel quite cornered and any sort of emotional crisis they’re going through gains new momentum and it becomes dangerous.

When I was reading the script I noticed you give a key for the punctuation indicating delivery of lines rather than grammatical function. I was wondering how much you think it is a writer, director or actor’s place to control the delivery?

I think it’s a combined effort. I did a course at the Royal Court this summer, and that’s the general guideline you’re given: always use punctuation to indicate delivery in the text, and always signal it. And what I’m doing with that is I’m not questioning a certain way for the line to be delivered, I’m just dropping some clues for the actors and the directors if they want to pick them up. Professional directors tend to cross out all of the writer’s directions and the punctuation and just work on the raw text itself.

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There is my father. We won’t be seeing much of him.

And there’s this handsome fellow. [He pats the corner of the oil painting, stage right, knocking it askew.] The ever-charming presence of unarguable authority, watching our every move with a glare that falls heavy as the blow of an axe. [He looks at it for a few seconds, and uneasily fixes it so that it is no longer crooked.]

The stage is as much a home for the actors as it is for symbols. My character will be used as a symbol. He is… the part of every human being that will always remain helpless. Or rather, the part so ignorant that it may feel nothing but the most inexorable sense of loneliness. He is stranded in a bleak winter or swimming alone in a great, black sea.

There are no answers in this play. No solutions, no resolutions. Only questions.

There are no… people, no real feelings. Only actions.

There are no heroes. Each of us is a villain and, in turn, an idol.

In this sense it is uncomfortably realistic.

So let’s begin.

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Elizabeth Rose O’Connor

DURHAM DRAMA FESTIVAL

BECCA SHEPHERD INTERVIEWS ELIZABETH ROSE O’CONNOR What inspired or attracted you to write for the medium of the theatre specifically?

Well I’ve always loved the theatre – it’s always been a passion of mine, and I’ve done a lot of acting. I’ve always regarded the theatre as a way to make people think about certain issues and, if not necessarily to change society, to make people think about society and maybe spur that into change. So it was a combination of a love of that medium and me having a subject that I found really fascinating and wanting to share that with people, and maybe make them think about it in the same way as I do.

Do you have any specific writers that you think you might have been influenced by?

One thing that really interested me was a play called Woyzeck by George Buchner, written in the nineteenth century. I saw a production of it recently and it had this image of “the beaten man.” It was not only about working class people and how they were oppressed at the time, but how human beings as a whole can be oppressed by their own morality and expectations. I really wanted to explore that idea, not necessarily in the context of modern society, but for audiences to apply it to their own society, and in doing that, to see if the problem could ever be rectified or resolved.

So you’ve mentioned the idea of class system – would you say that is the most prevalent theme in your play?

I would say that was one of the prevalent themes. I also wanted to explore the relationship of class to other factors such as family relationships, as well as how class can affect us but also not affect us – whether class is the most prominent influence on how people live or whether it’s something else and that takes a back-seat.

Reading your work, particularly in the opening scene, you appear to play with the conventions and limitations of a play itself. To what extent do you consider your play a realist one?

I think the style has elements of realism in terms of the dialogue and plot, but I don’t see it as trying to present a part of reality. I see it more as a story off which people can think about certain topics – I suppose it’s more didactic than realistic.

DURHAM DRAMA FESTIVAL

to get obsessed with being innovative and to retain a kind of traditional aspect, in the same way that a lot of art will hark back to say Turner and the masters and the Renaissance…

And ultimately respect its predecessors’ craft.

Exactly.

And finally, what advice would you give to aspiring young playwrights like yourself who want to get their work recognised?

I’d say have confidence in your work and try not to get daunted by it, because it can get quite scary at times when it doesn’t quite work out how you want and you’re trying to change it! So just believe in it and take any opportunity there is for it to be read or performed.

INDIA FURSE

Alice An abstract forest scene. On a stool slightly stage right forward sits Caterpillar, smoking a pipe. On a stool stage left further back sits Dormouse, asleep.

Caterpillar: Who are you?

Alice: I hardly know just at present - at least I know who I was when I got up this morning but I think I must have been changed several times since then.

Caterpillar: What do you mean by that? Explain yourself!

Alice: I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, because I’m not myself you see.

Caterpillar: Take a drag. Alice does. I don’t see.

Alice: I’ve been so many things today, and in so many places, it is very confusing.

Caterpillar: It isn’t.

Alice: Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet, but when you have to turn into a chrysalis and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?

So would you say you were ultimately a traditionalist or a modernist writer at heart?

Caterpillar: I’d like to think I’d feel fucking queer dressed up as some poncy butterfly!

I’d say a bit of both – I think it’s important for theatre to progress and adapt, especially if it’s going to have a social voice. But, at the same time, it’s important not

Alice turns and begins to walk away.

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India Furse

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India Furse

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DURHAM DRAMA FESTIVAL

Callum Cheatle

EMILY CHESTER INTERVIEWS INDIA FURSE

CALLUM CHEATLE

You’ve chosen to use ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and ‘Alice Through the LookingGlass’ as the basis of your play. What is it about these novels that motivated you to mingle them with your own work?

The Photographer

Well firstly, they’re my favourite books, and I always found them quite disturbing.

Other people maybe don’t see it, but they are quite disturbing books. She just falls down a rabbit hole, and then all of these strange things happen…

Jasper: I don’t know. I just thought ‘You’re my cousin, you’ve probably got my best interests at heart’, and seeing as you were, you know... Well you know about it.

How do you feel about it? I mean are you glad that you told your brother?

I think Terry Pratchett felt the same way about Carroll’s work. So are you trying to bring out that disturbing element by having the double characters in the play?

Yes, but it’s not going to be pantomime-style in terms of costumes, etc; hopefully costume will be quite simple, so that should be quite confusing to create a disquieting aura.

You say the original text is disturbing, and your play builds on that by exploring quite controversial issues such as paedophilia and drug-use. Was there a particular reason you decided to use a fantasy world to bring up those elements?

It wasn’t meant to have a particular message about anything. Originally, the idea was just to write a creepy version of ‘Alice in Wonderland’, and those elements seemed to be more easily incorporated within the weird world of the play, but it wasn’t intentional to have a specific message. It was more the chaos of it that I was going for.

Also, the language of the play is really interesting. In the way you manipulate Carroll’s language, it’s almost as if you’re creating a parody of the language of parody already present in the novel. Can you explain a little more on your choice of language for the play?

Yes, well I use puns and innuendoes quite often in the play, and I’ve tried to create humorous parts, but I’ve also manipulated the original language in a darker way, for example with the poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter” which I find really strange, so I thought there was a lot of scope to build on that in my own play.

You’ve chosen the music of Philip Glass as an undertone for the play which has quite a hypnotic quality. Is that the feel you were going for?

Yes, it’s very repetitive, dreamy music which does fit well with the illogical world of the play. And also he’s my favourite composer!

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Evan: What made you want to tell me?

Evan: Um. Yeh, yeh I am. I feel better for it. I’ve got an accomplice now as it were.

Well two, with you. Look, I can’t give you advice I’m just starting down the same road as you are, but I would say this: I think that you, and I suppose myself, we’ve both shown a great deal of courage and intergity. Yes our choice may cost us, but surely our qualities as human beings are way more important than who we choose to hold at night. We should worry about other people later. I haven’t had the courage yet, but hey, we’re the most important people here, surely!

Look: Evan goes over to the sofa, reaches into one of its pillows and pulls out a feather. He stands on the sofa with the feather outstretched. Jasper stands and follows him to the sofa, he watches from below.

It’s gonna be brittle, there’s gonna be inchoate longing, but like a feather we either fly or fall. We’ve had some guts and shunned the convenient path. It’s better to fly than to fall.

He drops the feather which flies/falls to the ground. Whilst it does so Jasper does not take his eyes off Evan, he is close to him now. Evan follows the feather, as it hits the floor he looks up at Jasper and is caught in eye contact. They are still, staring at each other. Jasper moves to Evan, who is still on the sofa. They slowly move together and kiss, softly, smoothly, lovingly.

EMILY CHESTER INTERVIEWS CALLUM CHEATLE With the exception of Jasper, the play is, effectively, a monologue. Why did you choose this format?

Well, the play’s essentially an exploration of the main character’s (Evan’s) life, his shortcomings evaluations and situation. It’s a very understated play about him, so I’ve made it very naturalistic to give the audience an insight into this one guy. It’s has no massive storyline or plot twists; it’s a very simple story about one person.

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Callum Cheatle

DURHAM DRAMA FESTIVAL

But within that he does always seem to be contradicting himself and chastising himself for his feelings.

Yes, he’s very intelligent, and you will notice that he’s very creative, and that’s why he covers so many different aspects. It’s very subtle, because it’s written in a very naturalistic and chatty style, and so it covers the thought process you would go through as you’re actually speaking to someone. You don’t go straight down one line of enquiry. The whole point of it is you’re never really sure where you stand in the situation as a member of the audience. You don’t know whether you’re in the room with him. I think that’s the whole point of the play. It’s uncomfortable for him and you should feel uncomfortable too not knowing exactly where you stand in regard to his private space. It’s like, for instance, Ibsen’s A Doll’s House where the setting is a family home. There’s a sense that you shouldn’t be there.

DURHAM DRAMA FESTIVAL the story, I suppose.

I suppose though, with incest, it’s easier to decline from passing moral judgement, as nobody else is directly getting hurt. But with an issue like paedophilia, it’s much more difficult for an audience to simply observe without passing judgement.

Of course it is. One of my main influences is Lolita which follows many of the same ideas. You end up feeling sorry for this man although you know that it’s horrible and wrong. But he does genuinely love this person, and that surprises readers and it’s hard to get your head around feeling sorry for someone who society labels as evil.

BEN WHITTLE

You mention A Doll’s House which explores social and gender issues. Your play examines homosexuality, but seems to end with the quite negative image of the photographs being torn up. Is it your intention that this negativity resonates with the audience. Is homosexuality still a taboo topic for many people?

A Night at the Countess’

Well the fact of the matter is that it’s not an issue that’s completely sorted in society.

It’s still relatively taboo. It’s still a big deal for everyone, like you don’t come out when you’re five years old. The play’s neither a celebration nor a disavowal of homosexuality.

Felicity: Have you been watching me, Geoffrey? I’m flattered.

But there is a moment where they do get together and there seems to be a release of tension.

Yes, that’s true, and I suppose that part is celebratory. It should be quite beautiful, a moment of climax. That ties in with the ending as well, which ends very abruptly.

It’s about the build up of tension that contrasts with how suddenly it’s dissipated.

Ultimately, though I don’t see it as a gay play. It actually explores the incestuous themes more, where Evan can’t control his feelings for Jasper. Evan has never chosen to love Jasper, it just happened. The incestuous themes are much more taboo in society than homosexuality. It’s about whether you should feel the way you do.

Ben Whittle

Felicity: God, I hate these parties.

Geoffrey: I’ve noticed.

Geoffrey: It’s been hard not to notice you – that... dress you’re wearing makes you quite distinct as it is so very different from every other ladies’ in the room. I’ve been wondering whether it’s rude to ask where you possibly could have got it from.

Felicity: It’s from Paris, Geoffrey. It’s a new style, that I wouldn’t expect you to appreciate. It requires a certain eye.

Geoffrey: Judging from the other styles in the room, you must be the only person at this party to have that ‘certain eye’. How wonderful it must be for you.

Felicity: Now Geoffrey, don’t be so cruel. You’ll see, soon enough this style of dress will be flooding the shops and every young lady will be wearing them to these parties. And when that happens, I shall have to find another style – it helps to stay ahead of the crowd. Anyway, since when have you been interested in dresses?

It’s more about exploring it. I’m not looking for a judgement from the audience particularly, more looking for them to be aware. It’s the same concept with incest as with paedophilia. Is it wrong that someone feels what they do? It’s the other side of

Geoffrey: It’s not the dresses that interest me particularly, it’s more the filling. Take young Ethel Marduke over there. I can’t say that I care one jot whether her dress is silk or satin, whether the colour is too pale or not or even how much it cost.

None of that matters to me as I think in more artistic, poetic terms, being the romantic character that I am. No, when I see her dress, all I’m thinking about is the easiest way to get her out of it.

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And do you want the audience to make a judgement, or is it more about simply presenting the issue?

Ben Whittle

DURHAM DRAMA FESTIVAL

Felicity: Geoffrey! I hardly think that’s the kind of thing you should be discussing here, especially with a lady such as myself.

Geoffrey: I apologise, my dear Felicity, sometimes I quite forget that you are a lady.

I hope I can rectify the situation by saying that when I look at your dress I have absolutely no desire to see you out of it.

Felicity: You always were a charmer.

Geoffrey: I try. I try.

STUDENT WRITING Receiving submissions from known and unknown people out there is really wonderful, and so is seeing how the style of some of the writers included here has changed since we last published work by them. But give the new kids’ verse a warm welcome! It’s funny to see that The Grove’s student section is still a poetry bastion. To all you writers at there, keep doing your hardest, we’re proud of everyone who submits.

THOM ADDINALL-BIDDULPH

BECCA SHEPHERD INTERVIEWS BEN WHITTLE Tell me about your decision to put your play in a period setting.

I’ve always like the Agatha Christie-style, murder-mystery theme, and I wanted to give the play that politeness that you get in the setting of a 1930’s cocktail party, where the witty insults would be slightly more balm-like, or hidden behind that setting.

Would you say, then, that you play most closely identifies with the genre of murder-mystery?

I’d probably put it more in the genre of comedy. Although there is a murder in it and it gets solved throughout the course of the play, I don’t think that’s the main focus really – it primarily serves to keep the story moving along.

Are there any specific writers who have significantly influenced your own writing?

Well the play does engage with that Hercule Poirot or Agatha Christie kind of storyline, but I can’t think of anyone specific really.

As a writer, it seems to be that you don’t feel the need to shy away from silences, and in many ways the dialogue seems to be one of self-consciousness. Would you agree with that?

Theremin You haunt the Language of my soul That creepy, catchy Spooksong The proof to Music Inherent in Our physical World Expression of The ultimate sinister And brilliant Weirdness Of Life JOHN CLEGG

Black Bear Denning

Yes, I think that’s fairly accurate.

Would you say, then, that your play was a psychological one?

I think it’s more sociological. I put quite a few pauses into it because I think it’s quite a telling way of illustrating those situations which are a bit awkward and where people aren’t really quite sure what to say.

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North-facing, so the first meltwater streams won’t wake him before spring proper sets in, the black bear cuts a hallway to his den.

The old one half collapsed under a rainstorm.

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John Clegg

STUDENT WRITING

Down among the beech bracken and leaf mold dragged for bedding is the skeletal ring finger of Ms. Elsie Redman, 84 years old.

Woodmen have given up on finding her: these woods have swallowed smarter hikers whole.

An elbow of an unnamed creek; the bear drinks once more deep to last him out the year.

His new den-mouth gawps like a grinning whale.

For five months now he won’t shit, won’t stand, won’t nuzzle sleeping tents.

The bargain for each summer he sees out is half a year of underworld existence, but he has no choice. He pushes forward into his long home. Under the snow his fat-wrapped heart and all the rest go slow, a bony digit jabs his side all winter.

FREDERICK HICKISH

The Gum Tree’s Soil I did stay one night In my uncles quiet farmhouse on that silent farm On the scorched continent.

STUDENT WRITING Giving off one final burst of light and life, ‘As they do in these times’ And in that barn there, he did hang himself With his own bailing twine.

The rivers should have run red on that farm, But they had run dry, and there was no need.

There was no blood in his stock to run, Only flesh and bone Soon to turn To a handful of dust.

BEA MOYES

Morning has Broken Words of streaming consciousness lie in the fold of the duvet wrapped around my thigh, like men in morning snores and daybreak smiles firm tones on the radio amidst the boiler’s dulcet rustle, the dry mouth cracks.

I am awake before I am knowing, as the new day collects me ROWENA KNIGHT

Bigamist

My uncle had said on our walk That his good friend, the farmer Who owned the farm next door Had killed himself quite recently.

And he pointed

You’re smug, safely ensconced in your new marriage, framed wedding photo and cute inconsequential disputes.

Across the acres and acres of land And I squinted through the blinding heat Of that stubborn sun, who had not moved And the red earth, shimmering and letting off vapors From water that was not there And past the Gum Trees stood tall in their soil 34

But you’re a bigamist, your real husband is grief, and always will be.

You haven’t taken off your wedding dress since the blessed day.

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Rowena Knight

Rowena Knight

STUDENT WRITING

You were nineteen and pregnant; no wonder your life stopped lying before you and made a run for it.

Yet you kept grief close, committed yourself to him and his ways.

You wear your veil to keep good opportunities at bay, trail white lace through the house.

So now someone has lifted back the veil and they think that because they’ve given you their gold you’ll give up your lace.

But eventually the love of your life will find his way back into your bed.

You won’t be satisfied by lovers’ tiffs and the headache of bills, you need pain with more depth, the touch of his cold hands.

STUDENT WRITING

Six months later you’re laughing: some inane story I tell about my mother’s absurd new penchant for Englebert Humperdink. She always went through these phases: at Christmas she’d declared her life’s calling was to introduce the world to the wonders of her carrot and beetroot cake. Now she was convinced Englebert was the answer. You laughed, in that snorting way that made heads turn, and indeed the only other passenger on the number 11 bus - an elderly lady clutching an iceberg lettuce - shuffled round in her seat to examine the offending guffawer.

“Do you know, she might be onto something this time.” You mused. I raised an eyebrow, “Really? Englebert?” “Music can have an immense...” You hesitated, searching for a suitable word and stuttered it out in a volley of laughter, “...power!”

I exaggerated my sarcastic expression and rolled my eyes. The exchange was over and I watched your reflection in the bus window, a playful smile still brooding on your lips. I slipped my fingers between yours and caught the infectious smirk.

That was the day which was to take you away from me.

MATTHEW GRIFFITHS

New Year’s Day KATE HUTCHINGS

A Fragment You said it was probably the way I said your name. Like a miniature mantra I’d clasped between the lips and held in my mouth for as long as possible. Like a toffee I didn’t mind getting stuck in my teeth. A myriad yesterdays have passed since I last tasted that particular toffee. You’ve changed. We’ve parted. But it probably was the way I said your name that started it all.

“Evelyn?” I repeated, making a more than usual effort to remember the name.

You fixed me with your eyes and I couldn’t help noticing the way your mouth raced sideways to the dimple in your left cheek every time you smiled. You were the most irritatingly beautiful thing I’d seen. Irritating because I knew you were dangerous and I knew I’d be sucked in. You were the exotic Bertha Mason of twentyfirst century Covent Garden and I loved you.

How annoying, I thought, to be a practical man whose first love was alphabetising his CD collection and watching re-runs of “Have I Got News For You”, to be suddenly interrupted by someone who belonged in women’s literature. Someone I could not wrench myself away from. Someone who would go on to make me read women’s literature.

I wonder what you’d say now, knowing I write about names being like toffees. I’ve changed. But this is about you. It was always about you.

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Sara Rotolo

We have spent the sunlight in bed.

Some of the moon, too – he’s an indulgent old uncle Who would rather blacken his mouth than tell us Any sort of truthful thing.

With little gravity, he tugs the duvet smooth Over our dreaming bones.

Yesterday was a long illness And we are bathing in sleep until We are washed clean Of its memory.

SARA ROTOLO

Untitled Twenty to four in a dingy hotel with a bottle of you and some labels as well and a pen that can’t write but can scratch for a living 37

Sara Rotolo

STUDENT WRITING

after divorces from ink and all her concrete misgivings I thought it was you on a morning somewhere a cataclysmic enigma smeared on simple despair and your little net heart and its political bait politicize, politicize these labels these weights of experience, lamp, lamp, light, light I can’t walk from your door to my door belly-down on the floor, devil eyes, anymore, the fragmentary whore who you loved for a week maybe more, maybe not maybe knots tie our shoes make us walk after all after all but do you remember our soap sud bubble of a love of a lie of a love of a lie of a love you pachyderm-boy, you stoned little boy?

I remember your songs and my knee-high socks ‘just find someone you like and be nice to them’ just find someone you like and then poison them as the longing slips from off of my tongue JOHN TURNER

Our Dormant Cornwall The scattered beaks of rooks - working for worms, nested in cracks, the black pockets of winter.

Knuckles of stone - set pounding the sea, counting the tides, to be left but bulbs of sand.

Salivary pools - thirsty for feet, suck a kiss from a curtain of evening mist.

Coated in cloud the Cornwall coast lies and breathes with each breaking wave She dreams of summer surfers and open pool houses, when her sand is fashioned with footprints.

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STUDENT WRITING JAMES BUCKHALTER

One for the Church, One for the Sea i After the service we all stepped outside.

No sunshine. Night-time. A clifftop cathedral. His choice. ii

She contemplates the journey home, top tier, front row, slotting inside the bus-shaped holes that are clumsily carved between the leaves.

Those same two seats.

iii

The deed done, all dispersed. Just us aside the trench of fresh turned dirt, trying to grasp how there is no longer a steady beat keeping 2/4 time beneath our feet, feeling on our own chests the weight of all that sodden earth.

iv

We peer over the edge with just our toes, barefoot, together, alone, perched between the marauding church and the groaning sea, she turns, smiles half scared, half knowingly

and then she is gone.

That’s one for the church, and one for the sea.

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James Buckhalter

Joshua Dixon

STUDENT WRITING

JOSHUA DIXON

LISTINGS THE GROVE BIRTHDAY PARTY

Ingrid Bergman I walked through the back of a spoon And found myself in a strange world All the while Ingrid Bergman’s eyes eluded me I could not capture their sparkle, but I walked on through Throwing out smiles and crumpled banknotes To whomever I encountered, whether or not they had a headSome of them had six! Can you believe?

And lipstick on each one set thick like plaster Pressing them pursedly to the cool grass That grew thick and fresh and purple everywhere The meaning of all this is Ingrid Bergman’s face Now a panorama filling the operatic skies Breathing gently over all it saw We were all animals, now animals no more And more than twice as beautiful as we ever were before.

But still, this purposelessness like a cobweb Hangs and captures every thought and unwashed hand Stretching its greasy palms across this strange, ignoble land.

Unfinished, yes, but only scraping by Enjoying a new birth in this darkly comic trend.

LISTINGS MOSTLY HARMLESS Durham’s magazine of Satire and Comment returns! Submission deadline 1st of March (funny pieces, comment, satire, parody). Contact mostlyharmless10@gmail.com.

REGULAR EVENTS Leonard’s café book group meets 2nd Monday of the month, 6-7.30pm. All welcome, free.

Next read: “How to Paint a Dead Man”.

The Grove’s next launch party is going to be something special. On March 1st, we will be two years old, release our 10th issue and hold a very special event. It will bring your usual blend of stories, poetry and music to the next level. We mean this. Best Monday night yet? Come and see: venue - Cellar Door.

UPCOMING EVENTS 23rd February, 6 - 7pm: St Chad’s Poetry Aloud invites Anne Stevenson. St Chad’s Chapel. Free, all welcome.

24th February, 7.30pm: Allegri String Quartet playing Beethoven, Zemlinski and Brahms.

Music School, Palace Green. Students £4.

26th February, 8.00pm: Colpitts poetry: Colin Simms and Jacob Polley. Alington House.

Saturday 27th February 12-4pm: Russian Winter Festival. Traditional Russian food, drink, concert, guest speakers, painting and photography exhibition. At Van Mildert college.

1st March, 7:30pm: English Society AGM - come along to Elvet Riverside to be part of the English Society exec next year! For details, contact english.society@durham.ac.uk 2nd March, 8:00pm: Alt Soc Open Mic Night, The Angel Inn. Free entry - All welcome!

5th-7th March: A student event and one of the major folk festivals of the year, the InterVarsity Folk Dance Festival is coming to Durham this year and should not to be missed.

More details at ivfdf2010.org.uk 8th March, 6:15pm: Public Lecture - ‘The Myth of Venice in the Decline of Eliot and Pound.’

ER 201, given by the inimitable Dr Jason Harding.

Monday, 8th March: SIREN: Durham University Woman’s Collective, International Women’s Day celebration. Also looking for volunteers to sing/perform/read prose or poetry, if interested please email: e.j.chester@durham.ac.uk.

10th March 7:30pm: Philsoc Talk: Simon Blackburn - ‘Can analytic philosophers read poetry?’

10th and 11th March: A lecture on modern poetry by Jem Poster on one night, and him reading his fiction and poetry on the next.

Thursdays, 5.30 - 6.30 Literary Theory Reading Group, Hallgarth House. We meet weekly to discuss seminal texts, from Zizek to Badiou. Contact maebh.long@durham.ac.uk

More events at www.dur.ac.uk/whatson For regular events and societies, see our website at www.dur.ac.uk/grove

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FRONTISPIECE

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Stefan Anders, “The Scorpion.” Trans. John Clegg. From Gedichte (reproduced by kind permission of Piper, 1966)

Ilya Repin, “Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom”, 1876.

Miguel de Cervantes, from Of the First Sally That Don Quixote Made to Seek Adventures.

Trans. Thomas Sheldon. (text is in the public domain)

Frame artwork by Demelza Hillier.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE Philip Gross, “Bread and Salt.” From The Water Table (reproduced by kind permission of Bloodaxe, 2009)

Hafiz, “Two Giant Fat People.” Trans. Daniel Ladinsky. From The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master (reproduced by kind permission of Penguin Books, 1999)

Paul Muldoon, “Immrama.” From Poems 1968-98 (reproduced by kind permission of Everyman, 2001)

Yedran Yovkov, from Albena. Trans. Petya Yankova. Intellectual copyright is held by the author and translators.

Dylan Thomas, “I have longed to move away.”

From Collected Poems (reproduced by kind permission of Everyman, 2000)

Rumi, “Can Anyone Really Describe.” Trans.

Andrew Harvey. From The Rumi Collection (reproduced by kind permission of Shambhala, 2000)

George Orwell, from Down and Out in Paris and London. (reproduced by kind permission of Penguin Classics, 2001)

DURHAM DRAMA FESTIVAL AND STUDENT WRITING

Christopher Hitchens, “Realpolitik in the Gulf: A Game Gone Tilt.” From For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (reproduced by kind permission of Verso, 1993)

Intellectual copyright of all material in the Durham Drama Festival and Student Writing sections are held by the authors.

TRANSLATIONS

THANKS

Talog Davies, “Gwen.” Trans. Frederick Hickish and Anita Jones. From Talwrn Y Beirdd (reproduced by kind permission of Gwasg Gwynedd, 1984)

We would like to express our thanks to Oscar Blustin and the Durham Drama Festival writers: Andra Catinescu, James Morton, India Furse, Callum Cheatle, Elizabeth O’Connor, Benjamin Whittle and Donnchadh O’Conaill for their interviews. Also, to Taahir Patel at for the launch parties, Nick Swift and Karen at Hope Estates, Stephen Regan for his continued support and Lynn at Prontaprint.

Edith Södergran, “Dagen Svalnar;” “Päivä viilenee;” “The Day Cools.” Trans. Uuno Kailas; Reetta Humalajoki. “Päivä viilenee” from Kohtaamisia (reproduced by kind permission of WSOY, 1991) Other intellectual copyright is held by the author and translators.

Contact: grove@dur.ac.uk without whose express permission no part may be reproduced.

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