Another England
Thursday 18 May 2017, 7pm, Pay What You Decide, 14+
If we scratch below the surface of mainstream media, what stories of optimism and hope can we find?
Murphy and Rat are unlikely companions. Murphy is a 55 year old veteran of the welfare state: a cantankerous grouch, filled with the pessimism of humanity. Rat is a young woman driven by a passionate belief in people, in their capacity for empathy.
Both are being erased, scratched out, invalid, told they don’t actually exist and so, take refuge in an empty house on the outskirts. Forced together, the pair must find common ground to survive.
A lively, funny piece, incorporating projections as memories and predictions.
Murphy and Rat don’t know each other until the performance begins, when they, like the audience, find themselves in a deserted house on the outskirts of the town. They are both disabled people with a rich sense of their own identity and their own belonging, although on opposite sides of the same coin. Both are furious at being moved on, told that they don’t have a role or a place. Both find their new identities challenged and their worth as citizens questioned.