Little Things That Keep Us Together
A play in progress
“What would you do without Vietnam? Come on – you love that war.”
|
Eastbourne, autumn 1972. Jos and Patsy are lately arrived on the coast. He’s teaching art at Erasmus Prep School; she’s working at Bobby’s department store and having fun with her new friend Gloria. Jos doesn’t care for Gloria; she’s a bad influence, he reckons – and with Patsy, a little bad influence can go a long way. |
|
Meanwhile, on a continent far, far away, the Vietnam war rumbles on; so, therefore, does Jos’s own modest attempt to end it, through the influence of his radical magazine Napalm. A labour of love, is Napalm – and Jos resents the time he has to spend away from it, teaching art to what he regards as a bunch of spoilt posh kids. Even more does he resent being "invited" by Ed Fishley (aka Fishcake) to devote a load of his free time to painting sets for his school production of King Lear.
All Jos wants is to do the teaching he’s paid to do, and otherwise be left alone to end the war in Vietnam.
Somehow, though, things don’t go exactly to plan. Patsy, despite his advice, continues to plough her own furrow, while he, despite his own most surly efforts, somehow ends up being recruited after all to Fishcake’s Lear project. Against the odds, he gets kinda hooked, and things spin further beyond his control...
Inspired by the real-life obnoxiousness of his own prep school art teacher, Robert Cohen’s Little Things That Keep Us Together has lately reached third-draft level. There will be further work.
Watch this space, yeah?
All Jos wants is to do the teaching he’s paid to do, and otherwise be left alone to end the war in Vietnam.
Somehow, though, things don’t go exactly to plan. Patsy, despite his advice, continues to plough her own furrow, while he, despite his own most surly efforts, somehow ends up being recruited after all to Fishcake’s Lear project. Against the odds, he gets kinda hooked, and things spin further beyond his control...
Inspired by the real-life obnoxiousness of his own prep school art teacher, Robert Cohen’s Little Things That Keep Us Together has lately reached third-draft level. There will be further work.
Watch this space, yeah?
Like to know more about Little Things That Keep Us Together? Contact Robert Cohen at [email protected]
