The Secret Game

By Anne Le Marquand Hartigan

Is killing ever justified? This gripping drama examines the terrible choices of a teenage terrorist and a young mother in an exploration of contemporary morality. On her way home from a traumatic weekend, Chris is seeking solace with her aunt near the Northern Irish border. Parking her car, Chris disturbs a terrorist hide-out in her aunt's b

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chiswick Books
• Release date: Apr 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9780992869212

Anne Le Marquand Hartigan

Anne Le Marquand Hartigan is a writer and artist. She is an award-winning poet, painter and playwright. She has had poetry readings all over Ireland and in several other countries, has exhibited art work in Ireland and England, and has had plays performed in Ireland and other parts of Europe, New Zealand and the US. Her work has been translated into German, Galician, Spanish and Russian. Brought up in England, by her Irish mother and Jersey Island father, Hartigan's parents and the cultures they stemmed from have been a significant yet subtle influence in her work. Dr Le Marquand read Shakespeare every night and imparted his passion to his daughter, along with his interest in wildlife and nature, astronomy and a sense of fun. Aside from the importance of the extended family, Hartigan's mother, an Irish Catholic, passed on the legacy of the rich language, rhythms, and drama of the church ceremonies and teachings, as well as Irish myths. Jersey features strongly in two of Hartigan's avant-garde plays, La Corbiere, and the Jersey Lillies Trilogy, and much of the rest of Hartigan's work is informed by the language, social history and environment of Ireland. After training in Fine Art at Reading University, (influences included the simplicity of the early renaissance artist Giotto, 'Moderns' such as Matisse, Chagall, Modigliani, de Stael, and sculptor Henry Moore,) Hartigan, her husband, and their five small children moved to Ireland in the early '60s to her mother's family farm near the river Boyne. There, the farmland itself, and the enigmatic megalithic landscapes nearby, augmented that air of mystery she was introduced to in her childhood. With the addition of a sixth child, family life was lively and Hartigan remembers this time as energetic and fun. While she continued to paint, and exhibit in group shows, Hartigan found herself increasingly drawn towards writing. She had always been interested in literature and poetry, recalling the profound impact of TS Elliot's ground-breaking work, The Waste Land, while still a schoolgirl; other early influences include Chaucer, Robert Graves, and Sylvia Plath - the latter being a close contemporary and someone who was exploring many shared themes and experiences. Hartigan played a part too in bringing other women poets to new audiences. Actively involved in the embryonic UCD Women's Studies Forum in the early 1980s she arranged a seminal series of poetry readings by women poets as part of the UCD women's studies program. Working predominantly in free verse Hartigan has also worked in different poetic disciplines. For instance she has written poetry in jig and reel time and performed this with renowned traditional Irish dancer, Jimmy Hickey. Her long poem Now is a Moveable Feast (1991), broadcast on RTE 1 as a full length programme with music specially composed for it by Eibhlis Farrell, was inspired by her mother's family history and the farm itself, stretching back over time across the previous 100 years. To date she has seven books of poems published, with her own illustrations and book covers, the most recent being Unsweet Dreams, 2011, published by Salmon Poetry. As Hartigan became established as a poet, winning awards, publishing collections, she also ventured into playwriting. Of considerable influence on her drama, was the innovative Polish Theatre of the 1970s. As a consequence some of Hartigan's early theatrical work such as Beds, performed in the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1982, and La Corbière, 1989, was highly experimental and avant garde. At present Anne Le Marquand Hartigan is working on an operatic version of La Corbière. Over the past two decades Hartigan has had her dramatic work produced by companies in Ireland and abroad, has had plays included in anthologies, and used as part of academic courses. Her work has also been the subject of several post graduate theses.

Book preview

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The Secret Game

A play in two acts

by

Anne Le Marquand Hartigan

CHISWICK BOOKS

LONDON

www.chiswickbooks.com

First published in 2014 by Chiswick Books, 2 Prebend Gardens, Chiswick, London W4 1TW.

www.chiswickbooks.com

[e-mail]

The Secret Game © Anne Le Marquand Hartigan 1995

Anne Le Marquand Hartigan is hereby identified as author of this play in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The author has asserted her moral rights.

All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application for performance etc. should be made before commencement of rehearsal to email: [e-mail]. No performance may be given unless a licence has been obtained, and no alterations may be made in the title or the text of the play without the author’s prior written consent.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to [e-mail].

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ISBN:978-0-9928692-1-2

Cover image from a painting by Anne Le Marquand Hartigan.

Also by the author

Plays

Beds, Chiswick Books, 2016

I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside, Chiswick Books, 2016

Jersey Lilies, Chiswick Books, 2016

La Corbière, Chiswick Books, 2016

Three Short Plays, Chiswick Books, 2016

Poetry

Unsweet Dreams, Salmon Poetry, 2011

To Keep The Light Burning, Salmon, 2008

Nourishment, Salmon Poetry, 2005

Immortal Sins, Salmon Poetry, 1993

Now is a Moveable Feast, Salmon Poetry, 1991

Return Single, Beaver Row Press, 1986

Long Tongue, Beaver Row Press, 1982

Prose

Clearing the Space, Salmon Poetry, 1996

Dedication

To Tim and our family, Dominic, Mark, Jerome, Marianne, Elizabeth and Hugh and their spouses Kirsty, Karen, Adriane, Brendan, Tim and Zelda.

Characters

aunt, Late sixties/early seventies, bright and young for her age. She has a dog (not seen on stage) that she talks to.

Chris, Mid thirties, niece to AUNT.

Noel, Late teens, a member of a terrorist organisation.

charlie, Late thirties, a member of a terrorist organisation and childhood friend of Chris.

Time and place

The action takes place from one evening through to the early morning, Ireland, just south of the Northern Irish border in the early 1990s.

Set

The main action of the play takes place inside an old barn, now unused for daily farming activities. It houses some bales of silage. The barn belongs to Aunt, whose home is a few hundred yards away down a hill. Front left of the stage is Aunt’s home. There are two different places on stage at the same time. (Details of Aunt’s place below at the beginning of Act One).

A small car is left of centre stage. Downstage right, there are huge black plastic bales of silage in a pile. Above this, from centre stage to stage right, is a loft with a ladder. This is a simple platform. There is one small window at the loft level. All the set is staged as simply as possible. Lighting is used to create the space outside the barn; and the light is reduced to make the interior claustrophobic. Objects that are particular to the characters are brought up and lit, very subtly, given just slight emphasis at times, e.g. for Noel: the gun, the walkie-talkie; for Chris there are childhood mementoes: a doll etc. The sound of rain continues all through the play from the end of scene one.

Note on the text

The Banshee is a mythical Irish harbinger of death.

Kuryakin is a character from the 1960s TV series, The Man From U.N.C.L.E, which Chris and Charlie would have watched.

Act One

Scene One

The stage is dark, misty. A circle of light comes up on AUNT. She is in her own pool of light as in an old photograph. Her place is stage front left. AUNT is on stage for the whole play. We see, or half-see her, when she is not in the action. She talks to her dog, Bono. Her face is bathed in rosy light as the sun sets. She is looking at a plant outside the door to her garden. A light comes up on the curving plant. She is comfortable in herself. It is peaceful.

AUNT

Bono. I thought it had had it. Touch and go though. It’s grown in such a beautiful curve over that archway, and honeysuckles usually are