1949 (excerpt)

Synopsis:

The Chinese Communists have just ousted the Nationalists from mainland China.  NATO has just been set up in order to contain the Soviet Union.

In the United States, the House Un-American Activities Committee has been convened with a view to rooting out the Communist menace.

The Soviets have blockaded Berlin, which is now at the centre of a massive Allied airlift.  It is rumoured that, any day now, the Russians will detonate their first atomic bomb.

The battle lines are drawn.  The world is a tinderbox.

In Britain, in a small hospital in the Cotswolds, two hours out of London, George Orwell lays dying of tuberculosis.

1984, the crowning achievement of his literary career, is about to storm the shelves.

Celia Kirwan, a friend who now works for the Information Research Department, has come to procure a favour.  As an anti-Communist, is he prepared to name names?

At the same time, Sonia Brownell, a friend of some years’ standing and former assistant editor of the literary magazine Horizon, is drawn to the ailing man’s bedside.  Orwell sees in her a woman who could become his wife.

Witness to all of this, Fredric Warburg, his publisher, has come to steer him through his meteoric rise to international fame.

Through the creatures that inhabit his fevered imagination, we glimpse the inner workings of one of the great literary minds of the 20^th century at a time when that century teeters on the very brink:  1949.

Character Breakdown:

Cast of four – two males, two females.

With the exception of the actor playing GEORGE, each of the other actors will double as an animal.

The second male actor also doubles as FRED and ANDREW, whilst one of the female actors doubles as SONIA and RICHARD.

GEORGE ORWELL 45
SONIA BROWNELL 30 / RICHARD BLAIR 6 – ORWELL’S adopted son / COW – one actor.
FREDRIC WARBURG  51 – ORWELL’S publisher / ANDREW MORLAND – ORWELL’S doctor / HORSE – one actor.
CELIA KIRWAN / PIG – one actor.

 Setting

Cranham Hospital, the Cotswolds, England, March 1949 – January 1950.

There are two basic lighting states:  ‘Normal’ and ‘Nightmare’, the latter having a lurid, unsettling, other-world quality.

As the narrative progresses, the two lighting states will approach one another until, at play’s end, they are indistinguishable.

Animal costuming will be minimalist, suggesting the creature by gestalt.

Elements of each animal costume will be reduced by small decrements throughout the narrative until, at play’s end, the actors are portraying these animals without the aid of specific costuming.

Snippets of evocative popular songs of the late 1940s are woven through the soundscape, sometimes with a nightmarish quality, sometimes as if in another room, sometimes far off.  Budget permitting, passages of Elgar may be played by a live pianist.

Production History:  Not yet produced.

Running-time: 95 minutes.

Excerpt available for download for free.