1984 (NHB Modern Plays) E-Book

George Orwell

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 93

Beschreibung

Winston Smith is in prison, found guilty of Thoughtcrimes against Big Brother. As part of his reconstruction, he must re-enact key moments from his past life, with the help of other thought criminals, so that everyone can learn from his mistakes. Including his biggest mistake of all: falling in love with Julia. George Orwell's classic dystopia 1984 is a still-resonant vision of the tolls of living under totalitarianism. Constructed almost entirely from dialogue taken from the original novel, this bold and powerful dramatisation restores the blazing heart of Orwell's work: a doomed love story, with the lovers at its centre. This pre-eminently stageable version, adapted with an eye on economy by Nick Hern for a cast of five or more, is ideal for any school, youth group or amateur company looking to bring Orwell's chilling vision to life on stage.

Leseprobe

George Orwell

1984

adapted for the stage by

Nick Hern

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Introduction

1984

About the Authors

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Introduction

Several years ago Nick Hern Books published a dramatisation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm which has proved to be much in demand from schools and amateur drama groups. It is unusually faithful to the original, because, in adapting the play, Ian Wooldridge had gone through the book highlighting all the dialogue, then typed this up, and edited it into a play, subtly adding and amending as necessary. The result is a version of the original which hardly uses any dialogue that Orwell himself did not write.

In dramatising Orwell’s other great fable of totalitarianism, 1984, I have tried to follow the same principle: that the play should stick closely to the text and that the dialogue should all be drawn from Orwell’s original. I have seen and read several stage versions of 1984 over the years, and all of them wander quite a long way from the book, often overemphasising the futuristic element with a lot of high-tech stagecraft, which, it seems to me, might not only stretch the budgets of schools or amateur groups but is also fundamentally irrelevant. 1984 is predominantly a love story – in other words, it’s the human scale that is important, which is why I’ve kept Winston (and Julia) at the heart of the story, albeit that Orwell refuses to grant his lovers a happy ending. The Beatles were wrong: love in 1984 is very much not all you need.

I have, however, invented the ‘therapy’ sessions with which the play starts, as a way of dramatising and condensing the events leading up to Winston’s arrest, without having to stage them in a naturalistic manner. (I borrowed this device from After the Rain, a now largely forgotten play from 1967 by John Bowen.) But even so, those events and the dialogue within them are all Orwell’s. I recognise that there is an implausibility at the heart of this device – would a random group of ‘prisoners’ have the acting chops to give convincing performances and be word-perfect with apparently so little preparation? – but I hope that audiences will suspend their disbelief and allow themselves to be caught up in the unfolding story.

I have tried also to be economical with the setting. The three locations – institute, prison cell, café – are intended to fit within one set consisting of three walls and a door, windowless except in the café, where a previously hidden or boarded-up window could be opened for the last scene. The chief difference between the three will be the lighting: ‘institutional’ in Act One, blindingly white in Act Two, and sunlit in the Epilogue. I imagine all three with furniture more suggestive of 1948, when Orwell wrote the novel, than of some futuristic dystopia. Only the prison cell has had any money thrown at it, and even then there is nothing that would have struck the people of the late forties as outlandish: the rat cage used to terrorise Winston is more likely to be made of chicken-wire mesh than stainless steel, for instance. Despite the novel’s reputation as a ‘terrifying glimpse into the future’, Orwell’s only ‘futuristic’ invention was the telescreen, which was actually a combination of television and telephone, both of which already existed when Orwell was writing. His genius was to foresee its use as an apparatus of the surveillance state, of which Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union both provided him with prime examples. Otherwise, the London which Winston inhabits – dirty, run-down, bomb-scarred – would have been very familiar to his first readers in the wake of the Second World War. Without being the least bit retro-chic, it would be consistent if the costumes and settings in general had a whiff of the late forties. The story is about people rather than gizmos and about what living under a totalitarian state can do to them.

There is a maximum of fourteen characters (nine men, four women and one, the doctor, who could be either), but it is up to each production how many are doubled. Really rigorous doubling can bring the cast down to four men and one woman – see the list of characters (pp. 8–9) for how this might work. Another thought: O’Brien could be played by a woman.

My overall aim is that the play can be staged with a small cast and without great expenditure on sets, props and costumes, in the hope that it will be as attractive to schools, colleges and other amateur groups as Animal Farm has proved to be.

P.S. A word about the song that Winston and Julia hear the prole woman singing outside the window of their love nest. As far as anyone knows, the lyrics are Orwell’s own, but of course he didn’t need to write any music for them. My suggestion is that you make it up yourself – the words suggest a certain type of tune – or adapt an existing tune from the forties. A schoolgirl has recorded her version on YouTube – youtu.be/Tmx6jPRD-LQ – which may or may not provide inspiration…

Nick Hern October 2021

Characters

The descriptions in italics are Orwell’s

THROUGHOUT

WINSTON SMITH, thirty-nine, smallish, frail, fair-haired

O’BRIEN, burly, bespectacled, with a brutal but humorous face and a certain urbane charm

GUARD

ACT ONE

W2, male prisoner who plays Winston in the re-enactments

JULIA, twenty-seven, thick dark hair, freckled face, played by a female prisoner

CHARRINGTON, about sixty, played by a second male prisoner

MARTIN, played by a third male prisoner

ACT TWO

DRUNK WOMAN

PARSONS

ASHLEY

THIN MAN

DOCTOR

WAITER

REAL JULIA, played by either the female prisoner, suitably aged, or, perhaps better, by someone we haven’t seen before

Suggested Doubling

For four men, one woman:

WINSTON

O’BRIEN

W2/WAITER/GUARD (in which case, the GUARD would be cut from the top of Act One)

MARTIN/CHARRINGTON/PARSONS/THIN MAN/DOCTOR (if male)

BOTH JULIAS/DRUNK WOMAN/ASHLEY/DOCTOR (if female)

Note on Text

A forward slash (/) indicates the point at which the next speaker interrupts.

ACT ONE

Darkness. A door opens and a shaft of light illuminates WINSTON, who turns towards the light, startled and fearful. O’BRIEN is standing silhouetted in the doorway.

WINSTON (his voice hoarse and croaky). O’Brien! They’ve got you too!

O’BRIEN (with a mild, almost regretful irony). They got me a long time ago.

He steps aside. A broad-chested GUARD emerges from behind him, a long black truncheon in his hand.

You knew this, Winston. Don’t deceive yourself. You did know it – you have always known it.

The GUARD advances on WINSTON, his truncheon raised to strike.

Blackout.

* * *

In the darkness, a clock strikes thirteen. The lights come up on a bare, windowless, institutional room in which, seated in a semicircle, is a group of prisoners – two men and a woman – in the blue overalls of ordinary Party members. There is a telescreen on one wall; it remains blank throughout the scene. Also on the walls is a poster with the slogan: ‘Big Brother is watching you!’ The three slogans of the Party could also be on the walls: ‘War is Peace’, ‘Freedom is Slavery’, ‘Ignorance is Strength’. Presiding over the group is O’BRIEN, bespectacled and in the black overalls of the Inner Party. He has a folder of documents on his lap.

O’BRIEN. Good morning, Comrades. In today’s deconstruction exercise, we will work on the case of Prisoner 6079. Smith. Winston Smith. As part of your own reconstruction, you will be re-enacting significant episodes from his past life, so that, as Thought Criminals yourselves, you can learn from his mistakes. By re-enacting them, we can determine the exact moments that Smith committed each of his Thoughtcrimes. And we can see how one Thoughtcrime led to another. (Referring to the file.) How he flouted the principles of INGSOC. How he was half-hearted in his employment of the techniques of doublethink. How he tried to hide from the telescreens. How he failed to participate fully in the Two-Minutes Hate or in Hate Week. How he persisted in believing in the existence of a secret underground society. How he consorted unnecessarily with proles. How, above all, he placed the life of the individual above that of the Party. (Pause. He looks at the prisoners.) As is usual in our deconstructions, the prisoner will be present and will participate in your work.

The door opens and WINSTON is shoved into the room. He has come from a long spell in the cells, and his overalls have become worn and grimy. O’BRIEN indicates a chair. WINSTON sits. As he is questioned, the other prisoners occasionally take notes.

Name and number?

WINSTON. 6079 Smith W.

O’BRIEN. Age?

WINSTON. Thirty-nine.

O’BRIEN. Address?

WINSTON. 793F Victory Mansions.

O’BRIEN. Place of work?

WINSTON. Ministry of Truth. Records Department.

O’BRIEN. Hours of work?

WINSTON. Eight till eight, six days a week.

O’BRIEN. Nature of work?

WINSTON. Rewriting history.

O’BRIEN (after a heavy pause, falsely polite). Would you care to rephrase that?

WINSTON. Rectifying the official record.

O’BRIEN. Thank you. Example?

WINSTON (after a moment’s thought). In a back number of The Times which was about the war against Eurasia, Big Brother had predicted that the South Indian front would remain quiet but that the Eurasians would attack North Africa. In fact, the Eurasians had attacked South India and left North Africa alone. It was my job to rewrite…

O’BRIEN reacts.

It was my job to rectify the announcement so that Big Brother is seen to predict what actually happened.

O’BRIEN. Anything else?

WINSTON. Statistics.

O’BRIEN (wanting more). Statistics?

WINSTON (an inward sigh as he gathers his thoughts). A short time ago the Ministry of Plenty issued a promise – a ‘categorical pledge’, they called it – that there would be no reduction in the chocolate ration during the whole of 1984. Well, you know and I know that the chocolate ration was reduced – from thirty grams a week to twenty. So it was my job to remove the promise and turn it into a warning that ‘it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration’.

O’BRIEN (addressing the other prisoners). You see here, Comrades, the beginnings of Thoughtcrime. ‘You and I know…’ This is a clear and wilful misunderstanding of the principles of ‘doublethink’. The Party demands that we know and yet not know. That we are able to hold two opinions which cancel each other out, to forget what it is necessary to forget and then draw it back into memory when it is needed and then forget it again. And to apply this process to the process itself. In other words, to obey, as the Party demands, the principles of ‘doublethink’. (He turns back to WINSTON.) And yet you enjoyed your work?

WINSTON (after a pause). It was probably my greatest pleasure in life. Until… (He checks himself.)

O’BRIEN. Until…?

WINSTON says nothing.

‘Until you met Julia’, you were going to say?

WINSTON stays silent.

(Briskly.) But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Tell us about your diary.

WINSTON (hesitantly at first