Enterprise Dramaturgy: Brian Parks @ Edfringe 2017

Americana Absurdum Productions Proudly Presents

 Enterprise

VENUE: Studio Two - Assembly George Square Studios, George Square, EH8 9LH

TIME: 1:35pm

DATES: 3rd -28th August (not 14th or 22nd)

PRICES: Weekend £11-£10.  Weekday £10-£9. Previews @ £8

TICKETS: 0131 623 3030 / www.assemblyfestival.com

AGE RESTRICTION: 14+

Originality and ‘Enterprise’ abound this August as the Fringe sets itself for the UK premiere of Fringe First winner and internationally acclaimed playwright Brian Parks latest, fast-paced and surreal comedy.

With their corporation on the brink of collapse, four panicking businessmen have one desperate night to save their futures. Emergency proposals, email hacking, animal sacrifice – will any of it work?

Landry, Owens, Sanders, and Weaver arrive at their office on what seems to be an ordinary day in their corporate skyscraper. But their morning takes a dramatic turn when Owens starts to smell—literally smell—the collapse of the company’s stock price. Soon the Board of Directors is in meltdown, and the four middle-managers band together with twenty-four hours to rescue the company, and themselves. It’s a project that takes them deep into a bizarre night that involves espionage, hypnotism, and, perhaps, an imp. But what will all their fates be the next morning?

The hour-long play is told in forty-five quick-moving scenes and takes the office comedy in a wonderfully odd new direction. Enterprise is a play in the spirit of Parks’ comedies Goner and Americana Absurdum, the latter of which helped launch the New York International Fringe Festival in 1997, where it also won the Best Writing Award. It went on to win a Fringe First award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and became the first play produced by London’s Menier Chocolate Factory theatre.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

I’ve always loved the way people in business suits look onstage – there’s something very clean and sculptural about it. So I decided a while back that I wanted write a play where all the characters are wearing business suits. That general original impulse eventually became “Enterprise,” a semi-absurd comedy about four business people trying desperately to save their collapsing company overnight. We’re performing it at Assembly George Square Studio 2. It’s the fifth project I’ve had at Assembly, and I’m eager to be back.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?

Of course. Though I’m not sure “Enterprise” is exactly burdened with ideas!

How did you become interested in making performance?

At some point I discovered that I had a certain facility with dialogue, plus theater allowed for a kind of strangeness that I like. I also really enjoy the energy that a good play can create in a room. That’s something I’m always after both as a writer and as an audience member. The first play I ever really liked was also an inspiration: a production of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” at Wayne State University in Detroit. Many years later I learned that the play was first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, so there’s a nice connection there.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

My intention was to have the production by very simple physically, and then let the great comic actors have fun with it. This one is told in many brisk scenes.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

It fits in with one wing of the plays I write: fast-paced, surreal/absurd comedy. “Enterprise” is a bit similar in style to my plays “Americana Absurdum” and “Goner,” both of which we did in Edinburgh at Assembly. Both were well-received – “Americana Absurdum” won a Fringe First. Hopefully folks will like this one too. If not, well, it’s short.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

That they’ll come away changed people. No – scratch that. That’s creepy. Could get sued by their families if that happened.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

The theater’s shape is rectangular. The audience will have a good, rectangular experience.

BRIAN PARKS (playwright) is an American playwright whose work has been produced in New York City as well as several cities across the U.S. The plays have also been produced worldwide from London to Berlin to Adelaide and beyond. His other plays include American Absurdum, Goner, American Poodle (Splayfoot) and Imperial Fizz, all of which have garnered top critical acclaim at the Edinburgh Festival.

In New York City, he has worked with various theatre companies, including the Present Company and Clancy Productions and has had his plays published; Imperial Fizz  by Josef Weinberger, Ltd., London, and The Invitation in the collection Plays and Playwrights 2010 by the New York Theater Experience, Inc. He has also served as the theatre editor of The Village Voice in New York City, and as Chairman of the Obie Awards. He holds an M.F.A. in Playwriting from Brooklyn College and has been a playwright in residence in his own residences.

DAVID CALVITTO (director). 2017 marks David’s 14th Edinburgh Fringe since 2000, acting in 19 different plays and directing twice, including  seven Fringe First winning-shows at the festival; Americana Absurdum (2000), Horse Country (2002), Fatboy (2004), Screwmachine/eyecandy    (2005), The Exonerated  (2005), The Event  (2009-producer) and The Christians   (2015).

Besides his on-stage work, David has directed in the US, the UK and in Australia, including two site specific immersive theatre productions: The Hunchback of Notre Damn at 900 year-old Selby Abbey in Yorkshire, and Macbeth in London at the Clerkenwell House of Detention, which is haunted and where he recorded a ghost on film.  Other directing credits include The Half by Richard Dormer, Brian Parks’ American Poodle - Splayfoot, Specter, The Conversation, A Streetcar Named Desire, True West and American Buffalo.

As an actor at the Edinburgh Fringe, David has been nominated three times for The Stage Best Actor award and once for Best Solo Performer, winning best actor for his role in Horse Country in 2002.  In 2011, he was named the Best Theatre Performer of the Adelaide Fringe Festival for his performance in The Event by John Clancy and was given a statue and an envelope stuffed with $500 in cash and felt like the bride at a Mafia wedding.  In 2004, he starred in Guy Masterson’s production of 12 Angry Men, laughing a lot and in a bit in awe of Bill Bailey, Stephen Frost, Andy Smart, Steve Furst, Ian Coppinger, Jeff Green, Owen O’Neill, and comedian turned movie star, Dave Johns.

In 2013, David starred as Juror 2 in a completely different production of 12 Angry Men, this one in London’s West End at the Garrick Theatre with Martin Shaw, Tom Conti and the late great Robert Vaughn. 

CAST

BRIAN DYKSTRA (Landry) is an actor, playwright, and HBO Def Poet. He is the only person (other than Mos Def) to appear on HBO Def Poetry and Chappelle’s Show in the same season, appearing in the premiere episode as Dave Chappelle's “White Hand Man” in the infamous “Blind Hatred” sketch. Season one is still the biggest selling DVD in history. 

Acting credits include Americana Absurdum by Brian Parks, Johnny “Rooster” Byron in the first (and so far only) professional regional theatre production of Jerusalem in the U.S., Mark Rothko in Red, LBJ in All The Way, Eddie Carbone in A View From The Bridge, and Shakespeare’s Sir Toby Belch, MacDuff, Claudius, Capulet, and Benedick. He appeared on Broadway with Tom Hanks in Lucky Guy written by Nora Ephron and directed by George C. Wolfe.

As playwright, he wrote and starred in his play Clean Alternatives in four productions including the Edinburgh Fringe 2006 where the play was awarded a Fringe First Award. Other plays of his include Hiding Behind Comets, The Two of You, Strangerhorse, Forsaking All Others, A Play On Words and Silence! His latest play, Education is slated to open in NYC in March of 2018 at 59E59. He is a Lark Play Development Center Core Artist and awards include a National Theatre Conference Stavis Award, a Lester Bangs First Person Journalism Award, an End of the World As We Know It award for poetry, and was named a Distinguished Alumnus from California State University.

His political stand-up / solo-shows, Cornered and Alone, The Jesus Factor and Selling Out have been sold-out hits in NYC and LA.

http://www.briandykstra.net/index.htm

JONATHAN FISHMAN (Owens) has performed in and directed numerous plays over his theatrical career across the US and internationally.  This production of Enterprise reunites him with Brian Parks, having appeared in the premiere production of Brian’s Vomit & Roses at NADA in New York City, and then multiple roles in Parks’ Wolverine Dream, the two one-acts that make up Americana Absurdum.  Born in England but raised in the US, Jonathan spent five years as ensemble member of the Present Co., a Manhattan based theatre collective started by multiple-fringe first winners Obie Winnerand John Clancy, along with his wife Nancy Walsh, where he starred in John Clancy’s The Paper Man and Don Nigro’s evening of one-acts Nigromantia, both directed by Mr. Clancy.  He is a founding member of the New York International Fringe Festival which recently celebrated 20 years as New York’s premier fringe festival. He recently appeared as Jerry in the razor-sharp black political comedy Spin by Robert William Sherwood (Women’s Theater Company, Parsippany Playhouse), Mickey in David Rabe’s Hurlyburly (UC Performing Arts Center), Charlie Fox in David Mamet’s Speed-The-Plow (Cranford Theatre) and George Hay in Moon Over Buffalo , for which he was nominated for the NJACT Perry Award Outstanding Lead Actor in a Play.

http://jonathanfishman.net/

CHRISTOPHER CARLEY (Sanders) starred as ‘Father Janovich’ in the feature film Gran Torino opposite Clint Eastwood and appeared in 2/3’s of Martin McDonagh’s Leenane Trilogy; first in  the 1998 Broadway production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane in the role of Ray, and then off-Broadway in A Skull in Connemara in 2001. He has appeared on American television in The Crazy Ones (CBS), CSI: NY, House M.D (Fox), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, The Sopranos (HBO), Veronica Mars and the recurring role of Jeff in the Aaron Sorkin NBC series Studio 60.

Christopher also performs stand-up comedy and will be appearing at different venues throughout the 2017 Edinburgh Festival.

MATTHEW BOSTON (Weaver)

This production marks Matt’s third collaboration with Brian Parks, having performed in the world premiere of his play, The House, and the ten-year New York Fringe Festival Anniversary production of his Americana Absurdum. He’s been seen in leading roles in most of the U.S’s top regional theatres, including the American premiere of Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love at A.C.T in San Francisco, the inaugural production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Water By the Spoonful, by Quiara Alegria Hudes at Hartford Stage, and the premiere of Donald Margulies’ adaptation of God of Vengeance at ACT in Seattle.  Most recently he originated the role of Shylock in District Merchants, a new adaptation of The Merchant of Venice by Aaron Posner at Folger Shakespeare Theatre. He was also kinda known as a child star, having appeared in over 70 episodes of the family classic Camp Wilderness  on the ABC network in the 70’s.  Since then he’s been clawing his way back into fame with roles on television in The Blacklist, Blue Bloods, Mysteries of Laura, Law and Order, One Life to Live and All My Children.

More Paper Dramaturgy: Lesley Eadie @ Southside Fringe

A new play by award winning playwright Heloise Thual. A and E are playing in the garden that A changed into a graveyard for books. Unable to find her other brother’s (J’s) body, A is burying his books. A and E are playing games, taking on different roles: life and death, Greek tragedies, poetry. With a paper bag.  In a house controlled by the despotic and violent Auntie who has forbidden them to imagine, remember and read, A teaches her brother to resist. But the last book, J’s favourite, will change her beliefs, opening a world where a pragmatic mind struggles and where the limits between stories and memories collapse.  Directed by Lesley Eadie.

What was the inspiration for this performance?
The inspiration was the text itself and Heloise’s formidable ability to multi-layer her work. I love the way she plays with classic texts and mythology in her writing; always finding a way to make it relevant to society today or using it to make a social or political point in the piece.

I love the ‘mud’ imagery in the play. The characters are literally stuck. Stuck in a situation. Mentally, stuck in a moment. I also loved the imagery of birds; the thought of the papers (her memories) flying away and leaving ‘A’ and helping the characters to unstick themselves from the trials their lives have given them.

Originally I wanted the actors to construct an enormous birdcage around the action as they spoke; trapping themselves in the garden, becoming the memories as the horror of their situation overwhelmed them. The idea was to stage the play in the round and have the audience part of the garden, sitting on garden furniture or on the artificial grass itself. Let the audience feel the grass and mud on their feet: we all have memories we can’t escape and I wanted them to reflect on that as they encountered ‘A’ and ‘E’s predicament. 

Unfortunately we were not allowed to use the space in that way, so we compromised with the mud and the trees. Despina (Isaia - our head Designer) understood where my ideas were coming from and managed to do a marvelous job of creating the sensation of mud and isolation that was required within the set.

Overall I just wanted the performance to be seething with memory, with the angst felt by ‘A’ and many women before her, and with hope that you can escape from any situation regardless of how dark.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?
I knew Elaine’s (McKergow) work and on a first reading of the play could see her in the role of ‘A’. She has this presence about her; a strong, don’t mess with me attitude but she is also incredibly caring with those around her and meticulous with her roles. She is the embodiment of a strong Scottish woman: perfect for ‘A’, who is, as Heloise writes, “strong like mum”.

Filling the role of ‘E’ was trickier. He is an incredibly complex character; 2 in one really and we knew we had to find someone who had an instant sparky relationship with Elaine. As soon as Euan (Cuthbertson) started the scene in his audition we all (myself, Elaine and Heloise) knew he was the man for the job.

Heloise had worked with Jen (Martin – Sound Designer) and Despina before and I had worked with Oliver (Gorman – Lighting Designer) on a previous production at the Tron and loved his ‘lightscape’ creation so was eager to work with him again.


How did you become interested in making performance?
I’ve been interested in performing since I was a little kid, making up stories for family and dancing around whenever I could. At drama school I discovered writing and devising and have been in love with making new work ever since. 

Life got in the way for a while but in 2014 I started a new young company Urban Fairytale and have been making work solidly since then. The ethos of the company is to give young theatre makers a chance to get their feet on the professional stage. I work with a core of actors/performers and bring in other people when the script or performance piece requires it. I teach (Drama/ English) in a high school during the day and the bit I always liked best was the creation process, I thought I would use that as the basis for my company and get the young people to do what they like best – create theatre with a purpose and entertain and engage audiences. 

The idea behind the name of the company is to create/present stories from the city to people from the city by people from the city. We try to use public engagement in our devising process and try to bring theatre to spaces where people might not expect it – performing BOYS in a brewery being just one example.

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?
In rehearsal, I am definitely a collaborator. I love nothing better than everyone mucking in and having their say. I loved having Heloise in the room during Paper Bag rehearsals – it meant if you had a question about the writing or if I wasn’t sure about how much poetic license I had with an element of the play I could get the answer right there and then. Very liberating. The whole team we had around us were very flexible which was lovely.

Design wise it was thrilling having a tiny fledgling idea and watching the designers grow it into something exciting. Despina is a genius – we had a lot of issues through our way with regards to the space we could create and how we could use it. She took every setback with grace and turned it around into something usable and beautiful. 

She worked tirelessly for hours creating our ‘muck’ which looked spectacular under the lights. Oliver’s lighting design was stunning. I asked the poor guy to change the direction of the sun on stage and never to have the lights static so that we get the idea of the days constantly rolling by for the characters! He did a beautiful job of it. I hope people notice his ever changing lightscape – there is not one moment on stage when the lights are not fading into another state but it is so subtlety done, beautiful. Jen had a rare old time creating our drone and ‘storm of voices’. 

She wanted to create the grim dark noises out of something joyful so took a wedding crowd cheering reversed it and slowed it down to create our ‘auntie’. We saw the sound as another character in the piece, personifying the Creon character of auntie. In the Tron version of the show auntie was ever present in this new version at the baths she ebbs and flows throughout, almost as if she is coming into and out of the scene with the main actors.
Acting wise the guys worked tirelessly on their characters, constantly questioning their motivation and finding new information in their words. That is the beauty of Heloise’s writing there is always something to find. I like to give actors space to find their character and flexibility of movement on stage. I like them to listen to each other and both Elaine and Euan are fantastic listeners.

This was a very long winded way of saying... Yes, definitely.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?
‘A’ is such a strong character, gathering her strength from sorrow. As a lifelong Glaswegian, I understand this mentality; having seen it in my family role models. One of my favourite comments from our Tron run was, “I didn’t know whether to hate ‘A’ or run onto the stage and save her”, that’s when I knew we had achieved an understanding of both her uncompromising strength and underlying vulnerability. I hope at least one member of our Govanhill audience feels this strongly about the characters and the play.

I also hope that they are captivated by the setting and situation. This play is a rollercoaster ride that doesn’t stop to let you breathe. It’s visceral. For me, the hour feels like it is over in a fraction of the time.



What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience? How did the composition of the music come about - was it part of the scripting or production process?

I’m lumping these questions together as one sort of answers the other. We saw ‘Auntie’ as a character. We wanted the audience to feel her there with them. That’s where the idea of the drone (sound) came in. The humming beneath the surface; the undercurrent of danger. Jen took this idea and created this uncomfortable sound in a very low register that we were able to put through subs to make the space vibrate. I really wanted it to be annoying, like white noise that gets under your skin. 

I wanted it to be part of the experience for the audience. I like to push elements of production in that way to see how the audience reacts to it. We had some people who raved about the unseen auntie character and for them it really enhanced the experience, others, however, found it grating. I loved that. I loved that it grated them, it was supposed to. 

For me, the noise annoying people means that the audience experience I wanted, succeeded. I know that may seem a little bit twisted, to be happy that people felt uncomfortable with ‘auntie’, but that was part of the experience we had designed for them and they got it.

The music composition was part of the production process in the initial version of the show but our revised idea makes it part of the script. We have weaved ‘auntie’ in and out of the scenes, building her part and making her move around the house that we don’t see. She is not so grating anymore – or she is but in a different way. If anything I think she is more foreboding now and hope that the audience sense her and are still horrified by her existence.

One element of musical composition which was always part of the script was the ‘storm of voices’. Heloise wrote this into the script from the beginning and wanted a build up of character voices almost like it was overwhelming ‘A’s mind. We decided we would add a different voice to represent the character of J (who is normally ‘played’ by Euan through ‘E’) to show her memory of her other brother. Danny Holmes plays this character in the voiceovers.

Why Antigone, why now?
There has been a real resurgence of Greek theatre in recent times so I am not surprised Heloise chose this play to produce. Antigone is a strong woman, who knows her mind and stands up for what she thinks is right. She’s a feminist. Who doesn’t love that in a character?

For me the lines which resonate for this play from Antigone come from Ismene,

“Our own death would be if we should go against Creon
And do what he has forbidden!
We are only women, We cannot fight with men, Antigone!”


Auntie is Heloise’s representation of Creon, this beast who controls their little world, and I see a lot of Ismene in the character of ‘E’, scared to go against the regime. ‘A’ is fighting everyone for the right to bury her brother regardless of how dysfunctional their relationship was. But she is strong (like mum), strong like women are, even although they aren’t often represented in that way.

The beauty in Heloise’s multi-layered writing lets us take a lesson from Antigone, from her strength and from the universal themes within it (freewill, determination, power, mortality) which are, as Heloise has so beautifully showcased, relevant and prevalent in today’s society.

Paper Dramaturgy: Heloise Thual @ Southside Fringe

The Paper Bag

Héloïse is a young playwright, writing both in French, her native language, and in English. She is particularly interested in tackling the issues regarding bisexuality, trans-sexuality and investigating the transgressive space between the archetypal notion of masculinity and femininity.

Her female characters are defined by what are seen as masculine attributes, their profession, their social and sexual behaviours. This aims to provoke the audience and engage them to rethink the relation between the natural dispositions of an individual and the cultural expectations attributed to him/her. 

Heloise started theatre as a performer in the semi-professional collaborative group ATRE connected to the Opera of Lyon. Having to edit a range of texts for the stage, she fell in love with playwriting and decided to come to Glasgow in order to follow a Masters in Playwriting.

As a young playwright, she is looking for a professional perspective on her work and detailed feedback to help her in her creative process. Having recently graduated from a Masters in Dramaturgy and Playwriting; she had the opportunity to meet different playwrights such as Sylvia Dow and Douglas Maxwell.

Héloïse is a recipient of Playwrights' Studio, Scotland's New Playwrights Awards 2015. 

What was the inspiration for this performance?

I researched during my Playwriting and Dramaturgy Masters adaptations and appropriations of Greek myths by female playwrights. During this research, I became fascinated by the staging of rituals, which most of the time are expressions of a trauma, on stage, two texts which particularly intrigued me were The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood and A Mouthful Of Birds by Caryl Churchill and David Lane.  

I wanted to create a play staging a ritual and turned to my scrap yard, I found a diary reflecting my experience as an artistic leader in a workshop with teenagers from a rural high school about poetry and rural landscape and several pages were actually dedicated to Antigone, a myth I always affectionate. Those pages were under the clumsy title of “Antigone or the art of digging”.

The aim of my artistic workshops was for the teenagers to create books from organic material and carve the poetry into them, as the landscape was pretty muddy, we ended up making books from mud and carved their texts into it. This image printed deeply inside me and was my starting image crafting the play.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?

I have worked with Lesley Eadie the director, Despina Isaia the designer and Jen Martin the sound designer on small projects with no budget before. I knew they were all aware of my theatrical aesthetic and that they could do wonders with a limited budget.

Lesley is a theatre educator as well as a director and this project being my first production, I knew I needed someone with this pedagogical mind to help me find my marks. Lesley was patient and reassuring at the times I needed it the most and went head on into this challenge. 

Coming back to the “digging metaphor”, I think there was a lot to dig in and in the restricted time and with the limited production budget we had, I was genuinely impressed to see her working it all. I learned a lot coming into the rehearsal room and in order to improve as a writer I knew that was the thing I needed, being with the director and the actors, experiencing the production process from start to finish.

How did you become interested in making performance?

During my two years of Mentoring at the Playwright Studio, I had two rehearsed readings organised in order to present my work and get the audience feedback. Both were really valuable and help me develop my writing, only the script is still physically on the stage and that’s something which makes me nervous. The script is too present. 

I suppose this nervousness was the realisation that if the audience didn’t like the rehearsed reading, it was pretty much my fault as the aim of the process is for the writer to hear is work and evolves a lot around the writer. 

You can feel a bit lonely there… I was eager to see my work performed, see the writing take flesh and which physicality will arise from it. The collaborative process of the performance was really enjoyable, losing the ownership of my text gave me great satisfaction as director, actors and technicians were putting their own interpretations in the performance.

I felt more part of a whole which was nice.

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?

This is a first for me so it is quite difficult to answer this question.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

I hope this is ok but I would like to quote the words of Mary Brennan who reviewed the show “First names would confer a degree of normalcy: nothing about this hour-long lurch into troubled psyches is normal. If, that is, A and E are telling the truth.” 

This distrust towards the two narrators was one of my aims writing it, I wanted to create a contrast between the physical conditions of the narrators, grounded in the mud and their voices which never settle. I have a strong interest in unreliable narrators in literature like in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Narrators who are unbiased, unbalanced and misinterpret the events.

A feeling of defiance towards what’s being told was something I hoped for.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience

experience?

I like theatre for its sensuality, there was a moment before reading the health and safety conditions when we were thinking of having the audience feet in the mud, emphasising this sensation of being stuck as the characters are stuck in a moment but also physically stuck to their performing environment.

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

I am fascinated by the literary and performative work referring to the concept of ecriture feminine.  This idea of a fragmented and poetic style which allows some void to come in particularly influenced me, especially for this project.

After I am frequently asked the question if I consider myself as a French writer lost in Scotland or a Scottish writer with a terrific French accent, I think the answer is…neither of them. I am affectionate towards the Surrealist movement, writers like Robert Desnos and the Easter European Surrealist wave with authors like Bohumil Hrabal and Laslo Kraszahorkai.

How did the composition of the music come about - was it part of the scripting or production process?

The prologue and Epilogue of the play entitled “Storm of Voices” pushed us to develop a soundscape, I didn’t put clear indications in the text, and for the rest of the text but Lesley and Jen worked together on creating a soundscape which would be present for the whole performance.

Why Antigone, why now?

Antigone is my favourite Greek myth, I am still doing my own secret research and reading a lot of adaptations/ appropriations by various artists in various art fields.

As I was thinking of staging a ritual, Antigone’s tireless and irreverent digging which in most of the theatrical production happen off stage offered I thought a lot of performative possibilities. The play drifted progressively from the myth and got corrupted by my experience working with teenagers from difficult social background and their response to the artistic workshop I was leading. 

It was worrying to see how many of them have already this idea of “unbreakable social fate”, the myth of Antigone explores that idea of free will struggling against fate. The act of digging is an act of defiance against her condition and introducing those teenagers who strongly thought “art was not for them” to poetry was to a certain extent one as well.

I find it quite soul breaking to be honest it seems like one.

A new play by award winning playwright Heloise Thual. A and E are playing in the garden that A changed into a graveyard for books. Unable to find her other brother’s (J’s) body, A is burying his books. A and E are playing games, taking on different roles: life and death, Greek tragedies, poetry. With a paper bag.  In a house controlled by the despotic and violent Auntie who has forbidden them to imagine, remember and read, A teaches her brother to resist. But the last book, J’s favourite, will change her beliefs, opening a world where a pragmatic mind struggles and where the limits between stories and memories collapse.  Directed by Lesley Eadie.