Company of Angels

Four Plays by John Retallack

John Retallack

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781849433303
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

In Hannah & Hanna having escaped from Kosovo, Hanna, 16 meets Hannah, 16, from Margate. An unlikely friendship develops when they find that music is a common bond between them despite their different cultures and circumstances. Virgins explores issues of sexuality for young people: How do you explore your sexuality when you are still living at home with your parents? How do your parents sustain their love life with you in the house? And why do we find it so difficult to talk about? Risk asks how young people can discover their limits, how can they find out who they are? It asks why young people are drawn to danger; why they risk their freedom, their bodies, their minds and their futures, through dangerous activities and crime.
Club Asylum is a devised dance theatre piece about teenage asylum seekers in Glasgow based on research with both young asylum seekers and residents. A thrilling fusion of dance, theatre and music.

VIRGINS

for Hanna and Jack

Background

I read an academic paper that says English and American families tend to dramatise adolescent sexuality (highlight negative risks and speak ominously about the consequences – pregnancy, infection, effect of drugs, etc). Dutch and Scandinavian families, on the other hand, tend to normalise it; that is, they talk openly about their sexual lives, accommodate the changes and see little cause for over-reaction. After all, parents have been there before, haven’t they?

The drama of Virgins springs (naturally) from a family that dramatises sexuality rather than normalising it. Jack’s night at the party is his own ‘dramatic’ response. A ‘Dutch family’ would have talked through the pointlessness of a night like that long ago. Jack’s family are reactive and unable to open up the subject until it has become an actual source of conflict.

A key aspect is the sexuality of the parents themselves. Adolescents have a natural urge to place their own dramas centre-stage – but if the family is a happy one there will be a sexual narrative going on with the parents as well. At certain points in a family’s life, there is a great deal of discrete sexual energy under one roof. English houses are quite small and all the bedrooms are usually on the same floor. To normalise everything as effectively as the Northern Europeans do requires a more sexually enlightened culture than the one I know.

Here are a couple of interesting quotes that we put in the programme for Virgins:

The present controversies about family values – about marriage and the divorce rate – are really discussions about monogamy, about what keeps people together and why they should stay together. […] What are couples for if they are not for pleasure? And if pleasure does not matter, then what does?

(From Monogamy by Adam Phillips (Faber 1996))

Children are expected to retain a sexual naivety and to be passive onlookers on a highly sexualised culture […] But for all that teenagers are over-informed about how other people do it, this has not brought young men and women any closer to developing an erotic language […] In a world where I often feel every experience has been flayed of flavour through over-exposure, sex is one of the few things that retain its tang […] But until adults can address the double standard that surrounds young people’s experience of intimacy, this will remain a sexual revolution in waiting […] If we are to reach a consensus on the kinds of moral ambitions and characters we want our children to have, then we need to return to a notion of common citizenship. Parenting cannot happen in isolation. Children themselves can play an active part in their own development.

(From The Story of Childhood – Growin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Dedication
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface by Suzy Graham-Adriani
• Introduction by John Retallack
• About Company of Angels
• HANNAH AND HANNA
• CLUB ASYLUM
• VIRGINS
• RISK