ANDREW In that case.
WOMAN What did you want?
ANDREW What?
WOMAN What did you hope for, when you pressed the button and all that information trickled or flooded out of the Pentagon what did you hope would be the result?
ANDREW That people would know the truth.
WOMAN What truth? What people? The truth that they were being spied on. They don’t care. They like it. It makes them feel safer. If it keeps the war out there and not in their homes they don’t mind. They wilfully would rather not think about it. You mean people like you. Thinkers. Theorists. Warriors for the good and proper. There aren’t very many of you.
ANDREW Courage is contagious.
The WOMAN smiles, patronisingly.
WOMAN Aw.
Not really.
Not when there’s free wifi and Netflix.
We’re left in a large empty space.
ANDREW There are people who want progress. Like you said –
WOMAN But the documents you leaked all the files I mean fine it revealed that the government was lying on a massive scale to the people and it made us think that possibly everyone is lying all the time. But that’s not the revelation is it? That’s not the unexpected thing.
The unexpected aspect in all of this, and Facebook are surprised, the government is surprised, in fact everyone in power is surprised, is how much of this the people are prepared to take. All the information of where you go and who you are and what you do and who you love and what you eat and what you look like what you think what your body does or doesn’t do, your experiences and photos and history and dreams are all given away in an instant as long as the product is supposedly free. Well no one saw that coming. The shoppers will take off their clothes and shred every last piece of their dignity if it means they can get something free. Who knew?
And in that context you releasing these files, is it any wonder the response is going to be a big shrug?
You think you’re revealing how you can’t trust anyone? We know. But we do it anyway. Why? It’s easier.
MAN Suddenly you don’t own your music, you have to hire it. Has anyone complained?
WOMAN That’s actually the thing that bothers him most. Spotify. He’s really shallow. You can’t trust anyone Andrew that’s absolutely right. And you can’t trust anything. Any system of ownership or rights is totally contingent on forces that nobody understands, not really, so the whole world is just… tilting at the moment. Just rocking on the edge… And what you did?
ANDREW I tipped it over.
WOMAN No. You merely pointed at it.
Pause.
We’ve been having fun and games with you.
ANDREW Why?
MAN So you’re just like everyone else.
ANDREW What do you –
WOMAN To get you to the point where you don’t know which way’s up.
The whole room suddenly tilts ninety degrees.
ANDREW’s gravity stays on his floor.
The MAN and the WOMAN walk round so their floor is the old wall.
ANDREW How are you doing this?
WOMAN You want to know the mechanics?
MAN He actually does.
WOMAN It’s all about perception. You want more detail?
I can tell you exactly if you like but it’s really not the point.
ANDREW sits down.
Long pause.
ANDREW Can I leave?
WOMAN Andrew, I’m not sure you get this. Your passport has been revoked. You have no papers whatsoever.
Until you join something, sign up to something, it’s not a question of can you leave, it’s a question of that you don’t exist.
Pause.
MAN Do you want us to try and get you a Russian passport?
ANDREW The Russians are more corrupt than us, if I was to become a Russian citizen that would be –
MAN But you’ll be able to stay here, under our protection.
ANDREW Under your control.
MAN Yes.
ANDREW But I don’t know who you are.
WOMAN Anonymity is a luxury granted to those in power.
You don’t know who anybody truly important is. And they will keep it like that.
MAN Look do you want a passport or not? We’ve got a deal?
Long pause.
ANDREW Okay. A Russian passport. Fine.
MAN Alright. Good. No thanks is there? No gratitude. You should come down from there by the way. The floor’s over here.
He goes.
Another long pause.
Everything’s spinning.
WOMAN You must feel better.
Now you’ve joined something.
Pause.
You know you were talking about war?
I’ve seen war.
And if I had to describe what it was like?
If I had to say what it actually feels like. Leaving aside the pain and the blood and the kind of aesthetic of it – I mean if I tried to describe what it does to your mind and your experience…
She gets a safety pin out. Undoes it.
It’s like this.
It feels exactly like what you’re feeling now.
Utterly wild.
She holds the needle out, then presses it against herself and this time…
…she pops, like a balloon.
ANDREW is left on stage alone.
Staring.
For slightly longer than we expect.
Then blackout.
End.
About the Author
Mike Bartlett’s plays include Game (Almeida); King Charles III (Almeida/West End/Broadway); An Intervention (Paines Plough/Watford Palace Theatre); Bull (Sheffield Theatres/Off-Broadway); Medea (Glasgow Citizens/Headlong); Chariots of Fire (based on the film; Hampstead/West End); 13 (National Theatre); Love, Love, Love (Paines Plough/Plymouth Drum/Royal Court); Earthquakes in London (Headlong/National Theatre); Cock (Royal Court/Off-Broadway); Artefacts (Nabokov/Bush); Contractions and My Child (Royal Court).
He was Writer-in-Residence at the National Theatre in 2011, and the Pearson Playwright-in-Residence at the Royal Court Theatre in 2007. Cock won an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre in 2010. Love, Love, Love won the TMA Best New Play Award in 2011. Bull won the same award in 2013. King Charles III won the Critics’ Circle Award for Best New Play in 2015.
Directing credits include Medea (Glasgow Citizens/Headlong); Honest (Northampton Royal & Derngate) and Class (Tristan Bates).
He has written seven plays for BBC Radio, winning the Writers’ Guild Tinniswood and Imison prizes for Not Talking. His three-part television series, The Town, was broadcast on ITV1 in 2012 and nominated for a BAFTA for Breakthrough Talent, and his five-part series Doctor Foster premiered on BBC1 in 2015 and won Best New Drama at the National Television Awards.