Papatango Plays (NHB Modern Plays): Three Prize-Winning Plays

By Nkenna Akunna, Tajinder Singh Hayer and Tom Powell

Three urgent and compelling plays, joint winners of the 2021 New Writing Prize awarded by acclaimed theatre company Papatango, in partnership with English Touring Theatre.
Some Of Us Exist In The Future by Nkenna Akunna
Fresh off the plane from the UK, Chiamaka is new to Brooklyn and its extremes. She's new to queer dating, to the realities of being an immigrant. Most of all, she's new to the voices of the gods… Utterly original, wryly funny and always gripping, Some Of Us Exist In The Future follows one woman's search for a place to belong in a world that's not all it seems.
Ghost Stories from an Old Country by Tajinder Singh Hayer
Amar's older brother Dalvir has always told a good ghost story – properly unsettling, dark tales that send a chill right through Amar's soul. But now Dalvir's almost a ghost himself, cloistered and secretive. Amar desperately wants his brother back, but can he unravel Dalvir's stories to reconnect with the only family he has left? Ghost Stories from an Old Country is a riveting and poignant exploration of the ties that bind us, threaded through with captivating fables.
The Silence and The Noise by Tom Powell
Every teenager knows what it's like to be stuck between things: childhood and maturity, innocence and experience, hope for the future and uncertainty about what it might bring. But Daize is torn between even greater challenges: her love for her vulnerable mother and her dangerous friendship with Ant. An outsider with knockout trainers, Ant has just appeared on her doorstep, bringing with him a whole world of trouble. The Silence and The Noise beautifully captures the story of two young people on the edge.
All three plays were produced and premiered by Papatango and English Touring Theatre in 2021 as audio plays, presented to audiences via specially designed audio stations that toured UK theatres.
'Remarkable unearthers of new talent' Evening Standard on Papatango
'Astonishingly brilliant… one of the best debut plays I have ever seen' BBC Radio 4's Saturday Review on Shook by Samuel Bailey, winner of the 2019 Papatango New Writing Prize

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Oct 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781788504768

Nkenna Akunna

Nkenna Akunna is an Igbo writer, performer, and lecturer from London. Her plays include Some Of Us Exist In The Future (Papatango New Writing Prize, 2021).

Book preview

SOME OF US EXIST IN THE FUTURE

Nkenna Akunna

Characters

CHIAMAKA, Black, femme, British

BLACK MASC, Black, masc

DAD, 60s, Nigerian accent

NEIGHBOUR, Black

YOU, Black

ISATA, Black, femme, North American

COE, White, not a man, North American

Location

Brooklyn, New York. Lenapehoking soil.

Notes

Speech in parenthesis is speech we shouldn’t hear. But we do. Speech in bold is spoken/projected from somewhere in space. Lines without full stops should sound unfinished

Cultural accents should not be approximated, and so parts should be cast with input of someone who has intimate or first-hand knowledge or experience of these accents.

1.

A space in darkness.

A TV switches on. A sigh-cough, the unconscious or habitual kind. The welcome tone of a video-on-demand streaming service plays. A sharp inhale at the shock of its loudness.

Scrolling through. Shows and films. Shows and films. A deep inhale, the sound of a spliff burning. Scrolling pauses, spluttering coughs.

Button click. The opening scene of a show or film. A jingle.

Speech coming from inside the TV should sound different than from the rest of the room.

BLACK MASC. A beautiful daaay to be a Bla(ck–)

Button click, fast-forward.

on my own land

Button click, fast-forward.

Free! Yessir!

Free. You hear me?

But do you hear me, though?

YOU. I hear you, though.

CHIAMAKA. Hmm.

BLACK MASC. Everybody hears me, though. Everything can hear me if they really want to.

YOU. Because you free.

BLACK MASC. You too, baby!

YOU. Uh huh.

BLACK MASC. For real for true.

YOU. I know it. I know it, I know it.

BLACK MASC. What the crystal ball say today, baby? What we getting on today?

YOU. We kissing the sky

BLACK MASC. Uh huh

YOU. Crumbling time

BLACK MASC. That’s right

YOU. Making it right

Bussin’ a whine

BLACK MASC. Buss a whine buss a whine for the girl made flesh

Bussa whine buss a whine

YOU. Ay!

BLACK MASC. Girl made flesh!

YOU. Girl in the city!

Human girl.

BLACK MASC. Home away from home, girl.

YOU. Uh huh.

CHIAMAKA (quietly). Uh-uh.

BLACK MASC. Beautiful day.

The jingle plays.

She can’t hear me, though.

YOU. She can. She just don’t know it yet.

Listen.

Sound disconnects.

(Whispers.) I think she went under…

Pause.

(Nervous.) I’m not nervous.You nervous?

BLACK MASC (nervous). Why would I be nervous?

YOU. Exactly.

BLACK MASC. No need to be nervous.

YOU. No need.

It’s late.

After dark, while the world is asleep.

So she’s open.

She’ll do it.

Pause.

BLACK MASC. What if

YOU. It’s a beautiful day, right?

BLACK MASC (impatient). I don’t know what a day is! Never felt that! I just be sayin’ shit. Hoping she’ll hear. Hoping she’ll feel us.

TV show stops.

Something like being underwater, though we are not.

Something like falling through a tunnel, though we are not.

YOU (inhales in recognition). You feel her?

BLACK MASC. Course I do.

YOU. Then you’ve felt time.

CHIAMAKA takes in a sudden, grasping kind of breath.

BLACK MASC. She’s slipping away.

YOU. She’ll come back. You know she’ll come back.

BLACK MASC. Yeah, yeah for sure.

The TV show returns, and in it, someone is knocking on a door.

CHIAMAKA, disconnected and confused, returns to herself.

CHIAMAKA. I’m in the middle of something when I forget what I’m doing.

What I came here for

When I’ll be leaving.

I forget where here is, how I even got here.

I listen for something that might seem familiar.

Something that might remind me of reality before I’m caught outside of it.

Faint haunting of steel pans.

Life outside these walls. Walls.

I’m somewhere on the inside.

I’m in a building.

The knocking continues.

I can feel heat

so I have skin

so I must be in a body.

But the body I’m in is around me.

floating

in circles and squares dots of light and blinking waves

I’m a body.

Some body.

This body that’s mine

is blinking all over this place

I wait to come back together.

The heat.

Sweat. My sweat.

A textured ridge.

Tongue to lip.

Hairy top lip.

I have skin and I have hair.

Okay.

Exhales.

In a room, in a building.

A house? Flat?

Mine?

Knock sounds louder.

Chi!

A jolt.

Prickling across space

prickling condensed

prickling

intensifying

prickling against

soft.

The TV switches off.

Wh–?

I am coming together again.

Skin to skin,

All of me around the room, remembering.

The rush of coming together, embodied again,

it hurts!

The knocking increases in volume and urgency.

CHIAMAKA’s sharp inhale.

Quick welts ripping open on the inside.

Muscle envelopes. Tape. Wrapping.

(Guttural.) Uhhhhh!

Sound reconnects. CHIAMAKA’s front door slams open.

Time unwarps, moves.

I remember the body I’m in.

I remember the body I’m in.

2.

The room, lifeless and dark.

A US ringing tone.

Hello, this is Chi. Sorry I can’t make it to the phone right now, but if you leave a message I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Beep.

DAD. Hello Chiamaka, I have tried texting you and calling on WhatsApp since morning, but it is not going through. Maybe you are sleeping. Or maybe your phone is dead. Did you arrive safely? Is today not the day you move in?

I am just here at home. It is very quiet.

I woke up early. Around 4 a.m., and I couldn’t fall back asleep.

So I got up, prayed, had my shower, and I made my breakfast.

I had to go to the post office this morning. To send the last of the documents back home.

Your mummy is stable. We are all praying.

The house is very quiet.

The car was giving me some trouble. So I went to the mechanic and he told me there was a problem with the exhaust and it may cost up to one thousand. I don’t know where I will find that money now.

But anyway

Please call me as soon as you’ve heard this message. Thanks. Goodnight. Your dad.

Beep beep.

3.

An empty space. Far-off voices, two inside, most outside.

Outside: rhythms boom out of sound-checking sound systems and steel pans.

Inside: wheels of a large suitcase pulled against a hard floor in the distance, two voices travelling along with it.

CHIAMAKA (approaching). No worries no worries! I’m in now. That’s what matters.

The door to the room squeaks open. Footsteps and suitcase wheels against the floor.

ISATA. Here it is. I know it’s small but

CHIAMAKA. I’ve seen smaller all over Brooklyn. It’s perfect.

ISATA. Good!

CHIAMAKA. Abi would talk about you all the time at uni. Literally all the time.

ISATA (laughs). I hope not all the time.

CHIAMAKA (puts on American accent). ‘You need to meet Isa, you need to meet Isa!’

ISATA. And now you live with Isa.

CHIAMAKA. Now I live with Isa! Can I call you Isa? Or do you prefer Isata?

ISATA. Either is cool.

CHIAMAKA. Cool. I like Isata.

Soca from outside fills the silence between them.

I didn’t know they had carnival here, too.

ISATA. They have J’ouvert in London?

CHIAMAKA. Yeah, around the same time as well! Walking down the parkway was mad. Seeing all the floats and that. Smelling the jerk. And those metal railings that separate the pavement from the street?

ISATA. You walked all the way from Eastern Parkway?

CHIAMAKA. From the A Train.

ISATA. Oh shit. You should have got the 2. Sorry, I should’ve mentioned that.

CHIAMAKA. It’s fine! It’s my fault, I got a shit phone plan with no internet so I couldn’t call you like I should’ve. I just used the maps on the train from the airport.

ISATA. Damn. You must be tired. I can leave you to rest? I know there’s not a lot in here…

CHIAMAKA. I’ll figure it out, it’s cool! Do you want to go up to Eastern Parkway with me later? Shake a leg at carni?

ISATA. Uh, maybe! I was gonna head back to Keisha’s and snooze a little longer…

CHIAMAKA. Oh, yes. Sorry for waking you!

ISATA. All good! Um, so I’m pretty sure Daphne has an air mattress and wouldn’t mind you borrowing it.

CHIAMAKA. Daphne is…?

ISATA. The Black one. Her room’s to the right. Adrianna’s the white one, whole top floor