2012 By Josh Overton This play was commissioned as part of TEN and first performed in March 2019 by 55 members of Hull Truck Theatre’s Young Company. TEN featured 10 ten-minute plays, each based on a year in the decade since Hull Truck Theatre moved in to its Ferensway home. This play was inspired by the 2012 phenomenon in which a small number of people across the planet believed 2012 would be the end of the world. Plot This play imagines a fictional riot in Hull in 2011, offers insight into the many reasons that young people may feel disenfranchised and why some felt the need to lash out. Notes: Recommended for 12+. This play contains mild bad language and discussions of mortality. This play’s characters are either Numbers or Letters and is not naturalistic. (Which means not like real life.) The playwright has decided to leave the interpretation of meaning to the cast and audience. If you see a Number or Letter in bold on the left, then the dialogue on the right should be spoken by that character. Text in [brackets] or italics describes what the audience sees or hears on stage that
isn’t dialogue. About the playwright: Josh Overton is a playwright, poet and bartender in that order. Working with companies up and down the country from his home in Hull he has created work ranging from the dark, violent and political to goofy family friendly nonsense. His latest work includes Dungeons and Dragons: An unofficial adventure (2019) a choose your own adventure family show and Thank You for Doing Nothing (2020) a comedy musical about the spin doctors convincing us to destroy the planet.
2012 [The numbers ignore the letters, the letters ignore the numbers] [We are at a New Years party for the last 4.5 billion years. Over the speakers we hear the beginnings of the ten second countdown from various locations. Think the huge crowds in time square or Vama Vecha who shout the ten - one count in unison in their own particular languages. These sounds will be referred to as ‘voices’] [The characters are ostensibly addressing the audience with the majority of their lines. Initially we only see one two and three but each number and letter will find a moment to join the party before their line] [The numbers and letters have two totally different conversations for their audience] ONE: It- oh. Hang on, yo [the technician’s name]! will ye do the …? [The projection reads ‘2012’] You’re a hero! Sorry I just figured ye know. It just came up on the last three so… TWO: It is-! ONE: The end of the world. TWO: It is. THREE: The end of the world. TWO: Supposedly. THREE: Oh, start the counter. TWO: Oh yeah. TWO has a remote or a device of some kind which they activate VOICES: TEN! ONE: Sweet THREE: Cool, FOUR: Nifty. TWO: It isONE: The end of the world. TWO: Or new years. FOUR: Or both. THREE: I’m not hugely sure how they worked it out. Or what the ‘it’ is you know? FOUR: I always figured it’d be, like a meteor or something. THREE: Stupid FOUR: No like the dinosaurs, You know how history repeats itself
TWO: I don’t think that applies to meteors. FOUR: Sure it does, we’re at peak dinosaur civilization right now ONE: You’re talking gibb’rish sonny FOUR: Peak dinosaur civilization I says, we’re in the endgame you know? Gigantic lizard gits, swanning about the planet all full of themselves ONE: Ye what? FIVE: Its an ego thing innit? FOUR: Yeah spot on, Dinosaurs are all proud and like ‘we rule the world’, they’re laughing at all the little mammal fellas scurrying about and hiding away in their holes aren’t they? Thinking “ah look at these stupid tiny rat guys, my head’s bigger than their entire family, I am a literal God.” , and the universe, yeah? FIVE: The universe doesn’t like a bad winner does it? TWO: Mental FOUR: It is yeah TWO: No you’re both mental FOUR: That’s what they say, when some sage-like dinosaur, wizard genius comes up to ‘em to warn ‘em about their evil ways FOUR: He comes up all humble like, comes to chat to Mr. Brontosaurus or whatever, THREE: Mister(?) Brontosaurus? SIX: He’s most likely a Mister ONE: Don’t you start. FOUR: You’re completely right. So Mr. Brontosaurus is chatting away to the wise dinosaur person, who’s trying to warn him of how he and all the other smug dinosaurs are making the universe angry by being all shallow and self obsessed. A: So if the world did end in 2012 like idiots said it would, I’d’ve been [number] years old. All I really thought about at that point was Spongebob and Burger King. Not McDonalds. It’s marginally more expensive but it’s worth it. That’s what my mum says. FOUR: He’s talking all fire and Brimstone yeah? TWO approaches an audience member with the device FIVE: The end is nigh? TWO: Push the button. FOUR: Exactly. VOICES: Neuf! TWO: aha. SIX: Is it?
FOUR: Eh? SIX: Nigh? FOUR: I dunno. Maybe. We’ll find out together though alright? FIVE+SIX+SEVEN: Yeah okay. One notices and reacts to the growing crowd of incorrect people. A: If your parents take you to Burger King that’s how you know they love you. You get me? Cause you’re only there, you’re only at the restaurant cause they want you to shut up and eat some food they haven’t had to cook… but they could have taken you to McDonalds. That’s how you know you’re at least more important to them than the bare minimum, if they didn’t love you, why would they spend the extra few quid? FOUR: Where was I? SEVEN: Fire and brimstone FOUR: Oh yeah, So he’s talking all fire and brimstone right. Warning the dinosaur boss man about his ego and the coming dangers. A: My mum says my first word was duck FOUR: ‘We will all suffer the consequences of your hubris’! A: I like ducks. FOUR: One day we will be but bones in the dirt!’ FIVE: And movie bad guys FOUR:Hmm. Try it in fancy talk FIVE: ‘’And recognized only as villains in the legends told by our successors!’ FOUR: Perfect! A: If I’d died on the 31st of December 2012 I’ve no idea what my last word would be be. B: Nothing good probably. A: Ha B: Are there 31 days in december? A: This year? B: Every year. A: Yeah. Must be.
FIVE: And what does Mr. Brontosaurus do? SEVEN: What did he do? FOUR: Verily he did laugh in his face. TWO has approached an audience member with the device TWO: Go on. VOICES: Opt! FOUR: He knows not the danger, he sees not the truth. C: They say the world didn’t end in 2012 but every year since has kinda felt like some alien pranksters blew up the planet and replaced it with an identical one just where everything’s mental. Pause A: Yeah FOUR: ‘Thou art shallow of intent, O long necked silly lizard! And yay, the longer thou dost wallow in thine decadence, the longer thou wilt neglect thine place in the universe, the sooner the universe will correct your mistakes!’ ALL NUMBERS: (with varying degrees of agreement) AMEN! C: I literally can’t remember 2012, which is sad ‘cause I’m not even that old. I mean, I wasn’t too young to remember it and I’m not so old I should have forgotten it. I guess sometimes your brain just goes a bit melty. D: File not found. C: Yeah exactly. I’ve probably repressed it. D: Or it was just super boring, C: Yeah one or the other. Super traumatic or super uneventful. FOUR: Heed not my warning at thine own peril, he cries! But lo, they do scorn his otherworldly wisdom and verily do they kick his teeth in for being a nuisance. TWO: Harsh. SIX: Aye! FOUR: Harsh indeed, but carry about their lives the dinosaurs did, each with the smug certainty of he who believes he will live forever, giving no care to the many helpless creatures of this world in which they ruled. SEVEN: What do ye reckon happens next? ONE: What are you stupid? D: I definitely went on holiday that year.
C: Yeah? D: Yeah, cause it was the first time I’d been on a plane. I remember that. C: Oh that’s cool, did you panic and die? D: Sortof, I remember it really well cause my dad kept turning to me whenever the plane made a weird noise or wobbled all weird like or whatever, he kept turning to me and going ‘oh thats not meant to happen, that sounds dangerous’ stuff like that. Pretty sure I cried in the end and mum hit him. C: Magical memory that. FOUR: And lo, all occurred as was foretold, a great and mighty rock from space or whatever did come crashing into our world, setting ablaze the very skies themselves! ONE: I don’t think that’s how science works. FOUR: For the universe was indeed in great pain! A pain caused by the ingratitude that our dino-predecessors flaunted before its very eyes! A pain that could only be vanquished with the crazy violent and painful deaths of all the major inhabitants of our planet! ONE: Definitely not how science works THREE: Shush. FOUR: The sun is hidden from the world by dust, the air becomes poison and the plants and animals drown in it. FIVE: This they brought on themselves! E: Didn’t die though eh? D: Don’t think so. Good thing too I wouldn’t want my last moments to be people thinking I’m a loser on a plane E: Yeah you can just live another 60 years knowing people thought you were a loser on a plane Two has approached another audience member TWO: Do it. VOICES: Siete! FOUR: And the lizard men did know the suffering they had been the architects of! ALL NUMBERS: AMEN!/ ONE: /my dad’s an architect... D: If I did die, I hope the world ends soon after. A: What? E: You selfish little so and so D: If I’m not allowed to be alive I think its fair I don't want anyone else to be.
E: You are history’s greatest monster. D: Ah I won’t care what ye think of me, I’ll be dead. TWO has climbed into the crowd to find someone new to push the button. TWO: Haha go on, you know what I want. VOICES: Chē! FOUR: And now! In our modern age, the universe turns its mighty gaze towards us, wondering aloud, if we, the new kings of the planet, the successors to the evolutionary line of the scurrying little mammell fellas, it wonders if we have learned the lessons the dinosaurs didn’t. And what does it see my children? FIVE: ARROGANCE! SIX: INGRATITUDE! SEVEN: POLLUTION! TWO: WAR! THREE: Oh uh, Reality television. SIX: Good one. THREE: Yeah? TWO pushes the button themselves VOICES: Five! TWO: Oh, boring. FOUR: “LOOK AT US WITH OUR OPPOSABLE THUMBS” WE CRY, APPALLING HUBRIS OF THE HIGHEST ORDER! THREE: Yeah FOUR: So once again the universe raises its lethal hand against our fair planet, death and devastation are most surely on the menu. If all I have said is trueSIX: And it is! FOUR: We find ourselves, brother’s and sisters, in the end times! ONE: Wish I’d never opened my mouth. SIX: What should we do? TWO: Push the button! VOICES: čtyři! FOUR: Sell everything you own, do drugs and punch strangers. FIVE: I don’t really own that much. ONE: I don’t know any strangers. B: Do you reckon right, if the world did end at whatever point. A: Aye?
B: If the world did end, and some new version of us did kinda come about. C: New us? TWO: Now you, and you! Both at the same time. VOICES: Se! A: Like new me and you? B: No, You know like cockroach people or whatever, whoever becomes the next type of people after we all die. C: I think I get ye. B: Cool. So you reckon like the cockroach people or whoever, you reckon if they get all smart like we didTWO: We’re nearly there! VOICES: Două! B: And they start digging up all our fossils and imagining what we looked like when we were alive and scary. A: Yeah? B: You reckon they’ll make movies where we’re the bad guys? Homo Sapien park or whatever? A: Yeah Probably. FOUR: REPENT LEST YE BE DESTROYED! GIVE UP YOUR SINFUL WAYS, PUT DOWN YOUR PHONES, STOP EATING MEAT AND RESPECT YOUR PARENTS TWO pushes the button themselves for the final time. VOICES: One! SIX: Hmm SEVEN: Nah sod that. ONE: Stupid. TWO: Happy ‘yet another year’ you guys. The sound of one of those rubbish party blower things. Beat Blackout END