Fat Souls
The Play
Subtitled A Play with Masks and written in rhythmic verse full of muscular language & flights of poetic fancy, Fat Souls won JMC the International Playwriting Festival and was produced to great audience and critical success at the Warehouse Theatre, Croydon in 1993.
Fat Souls tells the story of a social misfit and long-time jobseeker, Fat Mags, who finds dead-end employment doing routine dogsbody work in an office. In the workplace, she meets Lamb, a youth with a whole other way of looking at things, and his vision transforms her previously gloomy outlook on life.
Usual grey streets of stumble down hopeless.
Cracks in the pavements, as stone as the faces.
Stagger down twisting old roads, streets and alleys.
On past the station. Birds in the bridge beams,
Shit on some prat’s hat. That makes me laugh that.
On down the high street. Rents are too high there,
Shops are all closing. Wade through the market.
Stink of the fish stall. Shouts from the traders.
Laughter from kids, call me fat as I pass.
Lived here all life long and I don’t know no one.
I’ve just known piss-take and loneliness, jeering
And jokes about fatness. Can I go through this?
Must or they’ll stop dole. My life starts today.
Squeeze into the hole that is waiting, okay!
All of the characters bar Lamb wear masks which partially and totally conceal their faces during the action. At times, the mask slips, and we see the truth behind the façade - and it ain't pretty.
No! No, its not okay. I thought I could face them.
On my own terms, eyeball to eyeball.
Showing myself, unmasked.
But it's horrible here. I really need it.
I promise I’ll take it off for friends.
I’ll take it off if I find a boyfriend.
I just need this. Just for now.
For now I need my mask.
The office is peopled by a colourful array of characters: the office boss, Paterman, is a neurotic authoritarian whose mask conceals a closeted homosexuality lived vicariously through the promiscuous encounters of his more daring friend Froppage; Roar, the leonine cock-of-the-office whose sexual prowess sports hero glory conceals a heart all too easily given, and ripped out; Luce, the flighty office secretary who hides a machinating ambition to succeed at any cost; Thumb, a nerd who hero worships Roar to the extent that his own self is scarcely existent; and Barry BJ, the office bully whose intimidation of Fat Mags masks personal insecurity and a tragic past.
I still see you fighting for life on that bed,
Gasping for breath but you couldn’t get none.
The cancer had eaten away your lungs.
Death chewed and ate you. I saw your pain, Mum.
I’m sorry there was nothing I could do.
In the midst of all of these masked figures crying "Me! Me! Me!" walks the gentle Lamb, quietly determined to get through his workdays doing no harm to anyone, bringing home the money needed to keep the garden he cultivates alive. To this garden, bequeathed to him by his late Father, he brings the long-suffering Mags, takes off her masks and reveals to her his way of life.
We’ve got some funny way of doing things out there, ain’t we?
Life on the Moon.
Shivering in a sea of cold.
Trapped in a sea of crises.
Lost on the lake of dreams.
Blown and soaked on stormy, rainy seas.
Feel your way to the Central Bay of it
And back to garden Earth.
Lunatics. Listen to us.
As if life was just a talking point,
Something to laugh at. No.
Take a deep breath,
Open your eyes wide
And see the beauty.
You’re in the middle.
Rose in the garden,
Beginning to bloom,
Unbothered by weeds, by cares
And things that matter, and Matter,
And needs. You’ve got what you need,
Here with me, in this garden.
I don’t expect anything more
Than your presence and your smile.
But can such a fragile and idealistic vision of the world survive in a jungle where each man is hunting for himself, and the lion roars in the rain in pain and rage?
Casting Requirements
3 f, 5 m (with doubling)
