Stop and Search

Gabriel Gbadamosi

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781786827135
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Emigration & Immigration
• Index: Social Sciences

A driver picks up a young man crossing Europe. Two police officers work a surveillance case. A passenger directs her taxi to the edge of a bridge. Three conversations grow increasingly uneasy. From award-winning writer Gabriel Gbadamosi comes a visceral and poetic new play, exploring a time of distrust where the lines blur between conversation and interrogation. Stop and Search explores our deep ambivalence about the ways we police each other.

SCENE ONE

ANYONE CAN GO

Driving in the car, TEL, a white guy, and AKIM, an African, stand on stage, motorway music far and spacy, the back seat and boot space behind piled up with domed beaver hats. The two men silent, uncomfortable, shifting from one foot to the other: the driver, TEL, appalled, judgmental; the passenger, AKIM, embarrassed, dripping wet. It’s a long journey, so like that for a long time…

… The beat of the music skips and travels, gives us time and space to imagine who these men are, make up our minds about them, come back to notice the half-empty coke bottle on the floor, wonder what’s going on… AKIM will be trying to ease out of his wet things unobtrusively, one at a time – back pack, coat sleeve, shirts, shoulder strap – one shoe on, one sock off – his stuff a gathering puddle at his feet over the time of the scene.

TEL signals with a hand across his throat to cut the music – it snaps down not off.

TEL: Let me tell you the rules.

Stop dripping in the fucking car.

See I’m trying ‘a drive.

We’re not stopping, so piss in the bottle. When it’s full – you fucking spill it – fling it out.

That’s for starters.

Fucking hell.

(AKIM nods and nods…)

Who you nodding at?

AKIM: Thank you.

(TEL gives him a funny look.)

TEL: Where you from?

AKIM: UK.

TEL: UK? Who the fuck says they’re from UK?

AKIM: It’s OK. Just as far as we can go.

TEL: You got a passport?

AKIM: Yes sah, I have my passport here.

(AKIM fumbles under his belt, struggles to get out a water-tight plastic bag, a long job to undo elastic bands and get to the passport.)

TEL: Nah, it’s not my problem.

AKIM: (Scans TEL’s face anxiously.) No?

TEL: You got your problems, I got mine.

(AKIM thinks and starts to fold the bag away.)

Under the fucking Alps.

I’m not going in another tunnel, come Calais I’m getting the boat.

Mountain on top of yer, it’s not right. What am I, a fucking dwarf?

I got my hands sweating.

AKIM: Anywhere you can take me.

TEL: The other end of this tunnel. Don’t fucking annoy me.

(AKIM nodding. TEL gives him another funny look.)

At least from the boat you can make a swim for it.

You see ‘em swim the Channel. You seen that?

(AKIM shrugs, he doesn’t know.)

Yeah, they swim it.

Covered in fat. Trying not to get knocked down by a tanker.

Fucking sweat, I’m fucking drowning in it.

AKIM: Slow down.

(TEL looks up sharply, flinches and slows down with his hand out, palm forward.)

TEL: … You’re gonna keep me awake.

AKIM: What?

TEL: See that car in front? Almost touch it?

That was a long way off last time I looked.

Just talk to me. Don’t fall asleep.

Make me talk back.

(AKIM looks how you would if that was you.)

How long you been standing there?

AKIM: … Not long.

TEL: In the rain?

It’s alright, you don’t have to tell me. I saw you jump up when you saw my number plates, rain bouncing off yer hood.

Lucked out, n’t yer?

Mont Blanc mountain on top of yer. You’re dry now.

But you ain’t home.

So keep talking. That’s why I’ve picked yer.

(TEL clocks AKIM frozen, staring ahead into the tunnel.)

Cos you looked miserable.

AKIM: I’m so sorry.

TEL: Least I won’t have to stomach some cheerful fucking Johnny on about his holiday.

I’d have chucked him out the car. And you can see I ain’t stopping.

Yo...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Scene One
• Scene Two
• Scene Three