Title: Untitled
by Sian from Derbyshire | in writing, fiction
This play can be set anywhere but probably a street, park or playground setting. It's important that the characters all have vastly different accents. Karla is very RP and speaks the 'Queen's English'. Asif can have a non-British sounding accent or be 'Northern'. Sean should be cockney or another very recognisable accent.
Karla comes out of a busy, expensive girls' school, miming animated talk with a group of girls. She is dressed very smartly in uniform.
Sean strips off the top half of some oil-stained overalls, revealing a football shirt underneath, he yells incoherently and gestures a rude insult offstage.
Asif is strolling along, his head in a very large, intellectual-looking, book. Listening to LOUD Asian influenced music on a music-player.
All three check that the coast is clear of their normal friends before joining the other two and pick up a conversation that they'd been having another time.
Karla: (swings down from something to ground level) What did you say?
Asif: ('gangster' style gesture) Sick!
Karla: (frowns, confused) Meaning?
Asif: Good. It's new street-talk. Like Wicked!
Karla: Absurd.
Sean: (jumps onto wall, starts trying to balance) Na it's well good!
Karla: Someone with English as a second language wouldn't understand.
Sean: INNIT! (snaps fingers - falls off wall)
Karla: (sighs) I'm never going to get through to you am I?
Asif: Not him man! (lounges against wall, blowing bubblegum)
Karla: (to Sean) You realise you're almost racist!
Sean: Am not! (begins to bounce tennis ball against wall)
Karla: Well at the very least you're ignorant.
Sean: Stop being gay Karla.
Karla: You just proved my point. Why don't you use proper meanings for words? (she sits cross-legged on the floor)
Asif: Calm it Karla! Gay means stupid. Sick means good. I get it, I'm not born-British.
Karla: Fine. (she sulks)
Sean: Let's go get fish and chips! (holds out a ten pound note)
Asif: SICK! (snaps fingers, snatches ten pound note and runs off Sean chases)
Karla: Wait (scrambles to her feet) Sorry for verbally assaulting you!
Asif laughs at her attempt at a joke and Sean looks confused. They all run offstage.
INSPIRATION/JUSTIFICATION: I live in the High Peak in North Derbyshire, this could be one of the most cut-off areas of the country and cultural divide is very obvious here. There aren¿t that many people from other places, so even moving from secondary-school to sixth-form in a different county I noticed the accent change. The two inspirational themes of this piece are 1. Our dialects are dying out and 2. What is the affect of different accents and slang-terms on cultural divides in our crazy politically-correct world? SYNOPSIS Three unlikely friends of different ¿cultural-localities¿ are hanging out together on a weeknight, like teenagers do. They are arguing about language and cultural difference. The piece is very slick in movement and should be a stylised representation of the fidgety nature of adolescents.
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