Red Sun and Merlin Unchained

David Rudkin

Description

Red Sun and Merlin Unchained are the most recent original stage works by one of the most acknowledged yet neglected dramatists of our time. Red Sun is a two-hander, tightly tethered within the classical unities of theme and space and the span of a single day. Merlin Unchained is an explosive, multitudinous epic, crossing continents and centuries and passing between worlds. Yet though technically so contrasting, both works speak with the same distinctive voice, offering an exhilarating and sometimes disturbing challenge to the cultural and political perceptions of a contemporary audience, and exploring alien worlds that, alarmingly, begin to become recognizable as our own. 

Red Sun: Dramatist’s Foreword – David Rudkin

 

RED SUN 

 

Red Sun and the Promise of Myth – Karoline Gritzner

 

Merlin Unchained: Dramatist’s Foreword – David Rudkin

 

MERLIN UNCHAINED

 

‘Broken Magic?’: A Director’s Perspective on Merlin Unchained – David Ian Rabey

 

‘Only a Bard’: The Theatre of David Rudkin – Robert Wilcher

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Histoire des Arts
• Histoire des Arts
• Histoire des arts visuels
• ART
• History
• Cultural Studies
• General
• General officer
• Performing Arts

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 27 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841504544
• Langue: English

Extrait

Red Sun and Merlin Unchained
Red Sun and Merlin Unchained
David Rudkin
with expository essays edited by David Ian Rabey
First published in the UK in 2011 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2011 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2011 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
Copyright (c) 2010 David Rudkin The dramatist David Rudkin wishes to assert his right to be identified as the author of this work, under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights whatsoever in these plays are strictly reserved, and applications for performance, etc., by professional and amateur companies in all countries should be made to Mel Kenyon, Casarotto Ramsay and Associates Ltd., Waverley House, 7-12 Noel St., London W1F 8GQ. No performances of the plays may be given unless a licence has been obtained prior to rehearsal.
Series: Playtext Series Series Editor: Roberta Mock
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover designer: Holly Rose Copy-editor: Rebecca Vaughan-Williams Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire
ISBN 978-1-84150-427-8
Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.
Contents
Red Sun : Dramatist s Foreword
David Rudkin
RED SUN
Red Sun and the Promise of Myth
Karoline Gritzner
Merlin Unchained : Dramatist s Foreword
David Rudkin
MERLIN UNCHAINED
Broken Magic? : A Director s Perspective on Merlin Unchained
David Ian Rabey
Only a Bard : The Theatre of David Rudkin
Robert Wilcher
About the Dramatist and Contributors
Red Sun : Dramatist s Foreword
W e were our own masters. And we had a sacred tree It was the tree of our life. And only one among us ever knew its name. Red Sun was written for the two-man touring company AJTC. I had first seen them on the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2000 in a somewhat head-driven play, and met them socially on that occasion. I felt very honoured when, some eighteen months later, they wrote to ask would I consider writing a piece for them to tour. Honoured - and challenged too, for I had discerned in these actors a visceral power, struggling to break free. So, although there s many a different sort of play I could have written for them, on many a different theme - and we did discuss several subjects - from the very beginning I was drawn toward a more mythic, primordial drama, that would release on the space that elemental potential that I had sensed. And soon there began to haunt me the private memory of a dramaturgical failure of mine, long years before. Red Sun tells an ancient tale. Mary Shelley s Frankenstein is one recent manifestation. Another is the Jewish popular legend of the Golem of Prague - and in the late 1970s I had been invited to write a golem play for Peter Brook. I had not risen well to this thrilling opportunity. I locked myself too respectfully into the legend s Hassidic universe: but the story is more archetypal than that; and I should have broken free of my immediate Yiddish sources, and dared, and been original. I did not; and Brook ruefully abandoned the project. Now had come a second chance, and occasion to make use of the lessons that that failure had taught me.
Behind any manifestations of this story-motif, in the West at least, there will always be the Creation myth as told in Genesis, in particular at chapter 2 verse 7, where God forms man from the dust of the ground and breathes life into him; and in my creature s name Ad mu is an acknowledgment of that. A more foreground source is the investigative work done by Roger Casement in the 1900s into atrocities committed by Belgian and Portuguese rubber companies against native peoples of the Congo and Upper Amazon. (I had researched these for a radio play, early in my career.) And in the interest of accuracy, I should emphasize that my creature s creator Wana-Apu is not, strictly speaking, a shaman - he is more an obi priest or a witch-doctor, whom I have endowed with some shamanic attributes ( With my own gut, I join my people to the dreams that they have lost ), and some further elements drawn from Siberian and Indonesian shamanism. The story of the tree comes from Zimbabwe. There are images too that echo a contemporary icon of catastrophe, the World Trade Centre attacks of September 11th - by an ironic coincidence the same date, two years later, of the play s first public staging.
David Rudkin
Red Sun was first performed at The Maltings, Farnham, on 11 September 2003, and subsequently toured, before a run at Croydon Warehouse, in March-April 2004.
Wana-Apu . Iain Armstrong
Ad mu . Mick Jasper
Design Maz Bullen
Music Dirk Campbell
Movement Becky Edmunds
Director Geoff Bullen
RED SUN
David Rudkin
a play for two actors on the space

Characters
WANA-APU
spirit-magician to a people oppressed
AD MU
his creation

Aux Dames des Mille Roses, Villequier
Act I
Scene I
Night, dawn near. A stricken tree. Pieces of metal or shell hang tinkling, faded rags sway silently. A few poor possessions. A figure enters in rage. He wears garb of a tribal sorcerer or magician-priest . WANA-APU.
WANA-APU:
No! No This is one horror too far our masters do. My rage spills over! Gods of our people, where are you now?

Silent. Nowhere in this night.

I dare it, then. Priest of my people, I take it on myself. I dare it

You.
He comes before a large form lying covered on the ground:

You here Time to be born.
He centres himself upon some fearsome deed .

Gather my rage. Gather my people s need. Gather my power

His spirit, come.

His Spirit, hear me. Wake.

His Spirit, draw near. Take on your coat of clay.
From deep within himself comes a VOICE, dark, struggling to speak:
VOICE:
No No
WANA-APU pauses. He hesitates. Then:
WANA-APU:
You are here.
VOICE:
Do - not - do - this
WANA-APU:
I do it.
VOICE:
Leave - me - sleeping
WANA-APU kneels, lifts his hand toward the clay thing s breast
WANA-APU:
Thing of clay, I burn into your breast the breath of life
He presses upon the clay creature s breast, his breath seething .
WANA-APU:
Breathe Wake
VOICE:
[bleak, childlike] Not - want - this !
WANA-APU:
[murmurs raucously into the clay creature s ear] I breathe into your head of clay your name of life. Ad mu Ad mu
AD MU lies breathing, a raucous sound as Wana-Apu s has been. WANA-APU looks Eastward .
WANA-APU:
Sun, lift above the earth. Cold gong of fire. Touch this to life. Live!
He claps his hands, to summon .
WANA-APU:
Ad mu?
The clay creature lies silent and still .

One touch of the light and you are gone again? I do wrong.
Desolate, he moves away. The clay form begins to raise a heavy hand
WANA-APU:
Ad mu ?
AD MU rises. The covering falls away. He looks at his hand; then at his arm. He discovers his body .
WANA-APU watches in joy. AD MU sways, all but falls. With almost a cry, WANA-APU would reach out to stay him; but must hold back
With more assurance, AD MU stands, breathes as Wana-Apu did in bringing him life. He claps his hands. He is reciprocating sounds and actions that gave him life and he still carries in him .
Suddenly, as though only now registering Wana-Apu s aborted movement of a moment ago, AD MU is aware of another presence. He looks about him. He sees WANA-APU. Their gazes meet; and hold
WANA-APU:
[carefully] Ad mu
Slowly not to alarm him, WANA-APU reaches a hand. AD MU backs away, wary as a horse. Slowly WANA-APU reaches to caress AD MU s head. With the merest turn, AD MU shies. WANA-APU ventures a careful step toward him; AD MU steps back .
WANA-APU:
[touching and pointing] Ad mu. Wana-Apu. Ad mu. [Touches AD MU s lips] I live .
AD MU:
[touches his own lips, and blankly repeats, brutish and dark] I live.
WANA-APU:
[gently touches him] Ad mu. [He points Eastward] The Sun.
AD MU looks yonder; then at WANA-APU, searching his face for something to understand .
WANA-APU:
[points about them] The world.
AD MU as before. Then:
AD MU:
[touching his own lips, repeats the sounds] I live.
WANA-APU:
That, you do. That, you do. I ll give you some food. You have come a long journey.
He reaches to bring him welcomingly with him, but AD MU is stone-still suddenly, listening keen as a beast to something very far away. Cocking his head this way then that, he utters what he hears there: soft chirrup of a forest bird; then another Then a sound somewhere else of a bird lifting from water. He makes these sounds not to mimic, but to reciprocate .
WANA-APU:
You hear further than I can.
He looks out, among his possessions, something to eat .

Food.
Mimes eating .
AD MU watches his movements, alert as a dog. Into a crock or bowl WANA-APU pours water from a plastic can. Suddenly AD MU is hearing something else afar:
AD MU:
Vroom !
WANA-APU:
What? Ad mu ?
AD MU:
[again, not imitating, but reciprocating what he hears] Vroom Vroom [He begins to shake with fear ]
Impulsively WANA-APU goes to hold him to assure him .
WANA-APU:
Sh sh Easy What do you hear, Ad mu?
He listens. Soon a distant sound of the revving of a truck as though climbing a rough steep track .

Yes. The transports. You do right to be afraid. [He sits away, starts preparing the food.] Food.
AD MU sniffs at the food; then at the water, starts scoffing from it like a dog. When the crock is empty, he tips it this way then that: no water: why, he doesn t understand. WANA-APU pours him more .
WANA-APU:
Wa - ter.
AD MU laps noisily .
WANA-APU:
[considers him] What have I done? Such joy I feel. Terror too - Ad mu ?
AD MU has paused. He listens, tense Soon sounds of more trucks, grinding up that track afar. AD MU is tremb