Chequered Flags to Chequered Futures. Mark Wheeller
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Chequered Flags to Chequered Futures published by Zinc Communicate in 2014
ISBN 9781902843339
This edition first published in 2020 by Salamander Street Ltd.,
272 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 4JR ([email protected])
Chequered Flags to Chequered Futures © Mark Wheeller, 2014
All rights reserved.
All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application for performance etc. should be made before rehearsal to MBA Literary Agents Ltd, 62 Grafton Way, London W1T 5DW (attn: Sophie Gorell Barnes).
No performance may be given unless a license has been obtained.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or binding or by any means (print, electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
PB ISBN: 9781913630355
E ISBN: 9781913630348
Cover and text design by Konstantinos Vasdekis
Printed and bound in Great Britain
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CONTENTS
From Page to Stage with Matt Russell
Chequered Flags to Chequered Futures
Acknowledgements
Chris, Lucy, Bryoni, Ann & Roy Gilfoy. Jane and Shelley Halsey. Graham Ings for their words and permission to use this emotive story.
Rachael, Ollie and Daisy, my family, who have to put up with my commitment to writing and then developing these plays.
Joanna Crimmins, Jeremy Otto, Richard Parker from Victoria Shanghai Academy who gave me the opportunity to “get on with it”.
ISTA (International Schools’ Theatre Association) for basing a whole conference around the premiere of this play.
Thanks to Ten Alps Communicate (later known as Zinc Publishing) who originally made this play available to schools when others would not have done so.
Thanks to George Spender and those in the Salamander Street team for their efforts to extend the reach of my plays.
Sophie Gorell Barnes and all at MBA for their continued support and belief.
Introduction
I was certain Driven to Distraction (2009), my would also be my final one road safety play. Arguably it was, as this is no message laden “road safety” play at all. It uses an avoidable Road Traffic Accident (RTA) as the tragic centrepiece to true story of three young lives suddenly torpedoed into a different trajectory.
The huge impact Too Much Punch For Judy had, led to my being commissioned to write all of the others. Driven to Distraction was no exception but was commissioned for a professional cast, unlike the others which were, initially, written for school age students.
I wanted to write a more naturalistic play and came up with an interesting structure counterpointing two time frames and two accounts of different parts of one story. Both parts collide at the end in the accident scene. The structure of Driven to Distraction inspired the one I use in Chequered Flags a few years on, where Chris’s back story is longer and therefore faster but, once in hospital they catch up with each other.
I remember thinking…
“I will never write another play with a road accident in it!”
(Just for the record… there was another one after this, as one of the characters referred to a horrific accident in my David Bowie tribute play Can You Hear Me Major Tom?)
A few years after I made that private pledge, I heard that an ex student/OYT member Chris Gilfoy (with whom I’d remained vaguely in touch), had been seriously injured in a tragic, real life car accident. Chris returned to OYT as part of his recovery. We came to know one another again and more than once, the idea of using his story as the basis for a play crossed my mind. I dismissed it and certainly didn’t tell Chris my private thoughts (he will only discover them as he reads this!). I was concerned it might appear like I had some sort of weird obsession!
One day, I heard some students raving about a powerful talk they’d heard in a PSHE lesson from… yes you’ve guessed… Chris Gilfoy. They were saying what a powerful impact his story had made on them and, at that point, the weird obsession (I do clearly have) surfaced and I approached Chris. He told me the full story. It had inherent drama and was very different from all the other RTA “message” plays I’d written before.
I had begun to question the validity of propaganda plays since “Judy”, the subject of Too Much Punch for Judy, had gone on to drink/drive (and kill another driver as a result) again. This situation raised the question:
If the person who perpetrated the offence doesn’t learn from it how can I expect an audience watching the play do so?
I would write Chris’s story without any pressure to adhere to pre-defined road safety messages. I would write it as the human tragedy it had been for all of those involved.
Chris had been involved as a twelve-year-old in developing Chicken! (giving his name to the lead character and his mum’s (Ann) to his character’s mum), so he was well aware of my back catalogue but was still surprised when I approached him:
When Mark first approached me about the possibility of our story being written as a play I was shocked. I didn’t think it would be of interest to anyone else, but I knew that if it was going to happen then Mark would do a good job of it!
After securing Chris’s consent I made contact with Shelley, the driver and Jane, Shelley’s mum, and was relieved to learn they were also willing for me to develop a verbatim play.
I conducted interviews with Jane and Shelley, Chris, his wife Lucy, his mum (Ann) and Dad (Roy). Then the problems began. I found it so hard to make time to transcribe the interviews. I had hours of tapes but the prospect seemed like a never-ending job. I delayed. More than a year passed and I had made no real progress. There was always another project for me to complete.
Then something utterly incredible happened. A fairy godmother landed. A fairy godmother from the other side of the world!
I went to Hong Kong to conduct a series of workshops in a school where my plays are studied. (Unbeknown to me, it seems my plays are used a lot in International School Drama Departments.) During the visit I was invited to a meal with two drama teachers from the Victoria Shanghai Academy. By the end of the meal they had invited their Principal, Richard Parker, to the meal and he asked me to think of a play I had always wanted to write… adding that their Academy would commission me to write it! I suggested Chris’s story and said what an impact premiering this story would have on everyone… especially if