Quartz

By Catherine Czerkawska

Michael is a young man, living in contented isolation on a West of Scotland beach and making artworks with the pebbles and shells, the flotsam and jetsam he finds there. He is perfectly happy, but the people around him find his isolation disturbing, and when he comes upon an object washed ashore that may or may not be man-made, the world outside threatens to invade his solitude, with potentially disastrous consequences.

Quartz, a full length stage play by award winning writer Catherine Czerkawska, was first performed at Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre on Friday 4th February 2000, with Liam Brennan as Michael, Maggie McCarthy as Teresa, Alice Bree as Claire and Paul Nivison as Father Sweeney. The production was directed by Roxana Silbert.

 

What the critics said: 

 

'The story of a man living in serene, solitary communion with the sea and its shoreline, his idyll threatened only by the outside world's refusal to leave him alone, could easily lead to all manner of quasi-mystical woolliness. Instead, Catherine Czerkawska's new play offers a moving, poetic and quietly provocative meditation on contrasting values and belief systems, and on the destructive potential of love, while keeping its feet firmly on the ground in terms of attention to plot, character and dialogue.
Sue Wilson, The Independent, February 2000.

'THE central icon in Catherine Czerkawska's new play is a lump of flotsam. Standing upright, it has the look of a woman's body. It is rough-hewn and uneven, but in certain lights quite beautiful. This is much the same as the play itself. Set on a West Coast beach, it's about Michael, a young man earnestly seeking solace and solitude among the elements as he works the precious stones the tide brings him. His mother, a devout Irish Catholic, has other ideas, not least when she decides his latest driftwood find is prime shrine material. In the character of Michael, Czerkawska has hit upon a fascinating conundrum: what is it about our herd instinct that makes us so distressed by other people's isolation?'
Mark Fisher, The Herald, February 2000

• Language: English
• Publisher: Catherine Czerkawska
• Release date: Sep 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781502296078

Catherine Czerkawska

Catherine Czerkawska is a critically acclaimed writer of long and short fiction, non-fiction and plays. Her novels include The Curiosity Cabinet, The Physic Garden, Bird of Passage and The Jewel, about the life of Robert Burns’s wife, Jean Armour.  In 2019 Contraband published A Proper Person to be Detained, an intriguing exploration of family history that takes us from 19th-century Ireland to the industrial heartlands of England and Scotland. Following on from this, The Last Lancer is a personal account of loss and survival in Poland and Ukraine, a book with a tragic resonance, given the current situation in that country.  Catherine's stage plays include Wormwood, about the Chernobyl disaster, and Quartz, both commissioned by Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre. She has also written more than 100 hours of drama for BBC Radio 4. She spent four years as Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of the West of Scotland and when not writing, collects and deals in the antique textiles that occasionally find their way into her fiction.

Book preview

QUARTZ

CATHERINE CZERKAWSKA

Contents

ABOUT THE PLAY

CHARACTERS

QUARTZ

ACT ONE

ACT TWO

ACT THREE

ABOUT THE PLAY

Quartz was first performed at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in February 2000 with Liam Brennan as Michael, Maggie McCarthy as Teresa, Alice Bree as Claire and Paul Nivison as Father Sweeney.

It was directed by Roxana Silbert.

All material copyright Catherine Czerkawska All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved. Requests to reproduce the text in whole or in part must be addressed to the author.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID ABOUT QUARTZ

‘The story of a man living in serene, solitary communion with the sea and its shoreline, his idyll threatened only by the outside world's refusal to leave him alone, could easily lead to all manner of quasi-mystical woolliness. Instead, Catherine Czerkawska's new play offers a moving, poetic and quietly provocative meditation on contrasting values and belief systems, and on the destructive potential of love, while keeping its feet firmly on the ground in terms of attention to plot, character and dialogue.

Sue Wilson, The Independent, February 2000.

‘THE central icon in Catherine Czerkawska's new play is a lump of flotsam. Standing upright, it has the look of a woman's body. It is rough-hewn and uneven, but in certain lights quite beautiful. This is much the same as the play itself. Set on a West Coast beach, it's about Michael, a young man earnestly seeking solace and solitude among the elements as he works the precious stones the tide brings him. His mother, a devout Irish Catholic, has other ideas, not least when she decides his latest driftwood find is prime shrine material. In the character of Michael, Czerkawska has hit upon a fascinating conundrum: what is it about our herd instinct that makes us so distressed by other people's isolation?’

Mark Fisher, The Herald, February 2000

CHARACTERS

Michael Flynn

Teresa, his mother.

Claire, a woman in her late twenties.

Father Colum Sweeney.

QUARTZ

The play is set in a space that should lie somewhere between land and sea: part cottage interior, part cave, part beach. It should have a magical, mystical quality to it with blues and whites and greys in the sky behind, layered like the interior of a stone. Besides that you should almost - or perhaps literally - be able to smell it. Just about everything in the scene comes from the sea; even the furniture is made of driftwood. There are nets and floats and shells and fish boxes. Also a small outboard motor and can of petrol.  In the ‘cottage’ area, there is a hearth, with driftwood kindling. Among the things on stage, and in the cottage area, is a large object, woman sized and roughly female shaped, sea polished and apparently made of stone. It is deliberately placed upright, but surrounded by driftwood and other stones, a part of Michael’s collection.

The light which changes according to the time of day, is very important.

Michael has been here a long time - several years – and it is emphatically his place. This is a world which he has created, building up layers over the years that he has inhabited it. He has made this space for himself  like a hermit crab decorating its borrowed shell, or like a small world within a world, which is what has happened within the stones that he gathers and works with. The layers of agates are built up, and achieve their beauty and a kind of perfection under pressure. 

Michael lives and works in this ‘Pebble House’ as the local people call it,  finding stones, polishing them and creating works of art with them, using rope and driftwood too. He is contented with his life. When we see Michael working at the beginning of the play he should be sure of himself, absorbed, confident. But as the play progresses even his working methods begin to disintegrate so that he is increasingly hesitant, and unsure of himself.

Michael speaks with a Scottish accent but his mother may have a slight Irish quality to her voice.

Throughout, to a greater or lesser extent, we should be aware of the constantly shifting sound of the sea.

ACT ONE

Scene One.

Scene, as above. Springtime.