You, Me and Wii (NHB Modern Plays)

By Sue Townsend

A play set in a council house in a small Leicestershire town. Vincent's skiing on the Wii, Sheila's feeding her great-granddaughter McKenzie, and Kerry's getting on with the ironing. None of them are planning on voting in the election, but when Selina Snow rings the doorbell to canvas, perhaps she can change their minds, or they can change hers.
This play was first staged at the Traverse Theatre, in 2010 as part of the Women, Power & Politics season.
'Sue Townsend returns to the theatre on glorious form with a gruesome canvassing comedy' - Whatsonstage.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Apr 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781780016009

Sue Townsend

Sue Townsend was born in Leicester, England, in 1946. Despite not learning to read until the age of eight, leaving school at fifteen with no qualifications, and having three children by the time she was in her mid-twenties, she managed to be very well read. Townsend wrote secretly for twenty years, and after joining a writers’ group at the Phoenix Theatre, Leicester, she won a Thames Television Award for her first play, Womberang, and became a professional playwright and novelist. Following the publication of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾, she continued to make the nation laugh and prick its conscience with seven more volumes of Adrian’s diaries, five popular novels—including The Queen and I, Number Ten, and The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year—and numerous well-received plays. Townsend passed away in 2014 at the age of sixty-eight, and remains widely regarded as Britain’s favorite comic writer.  

Book preview

Sue Townsend

YOU, ME AND WII

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Introduction by Indhu Rubasingham

Original Production

You, Me and Wii   Sue Townsend

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Introduction

Indhu Rubasingham

Women, Power and Politics is a season of nine exciting new plays presented in two parts, Then and Now. Creating it has been an important journey where theatre is reflecting, amongst other things, the immediate politics of today. This journey started a year ago.

In May 2009 the Tricycle had just opened The Great Game: Afghanistan. I co-directed it with Nick Kent, who produced the project at the Tricycle in North London, where he is the Artistic Director. It was a day-long event featuring a series of twelve new plays looking at Afghan history from the first Anglo-Afghan War up to the present day. It was proving to be a huge success and a very special production. Two days after the press ‘day’, whilst I was lying in a darkened room recovering from this enormous endeavour, Nick called me to say that he had a great idea he wanted to discuss. I was amazed by his unstoppable energy. He had just read an article in The Times where there was a picture of David Cameron presiding over the then Shadow Cabinet, which consisted entirely of (white) men. The article was discussing where the women were in the Tory Party. Inspired by this, Nick offered me the opportunity to direct and produce a project looking at and titled Women, Power and Politics on a similar template to The Great Game.

It was a unique opportunity to conceive and produce a project on this scale. Where do you start? To begin with I thought about international politics, working with