Rehearsing for performance- Debbie Tucker Green - Nut
Debbie Tucker Green
Q1 Debbie Tucker Green is a playwright, screenwriter and director, who wrote a variety of plays for example dirty Butterfly, Two women, Born bad, Nut and many more. She wrote and directed a film called Second coming and it was set in London, the people that were cast in the movie was Nadine Marshall and Idris Elba, she was nominated for the BAFTA award for the film. Most of her stage play have been produced at the royal court theatre, Soho and young Vic.Debbie has an interest in a writer called Ntozake Shange, who wrote a play called Coloured Girls which began a series of poems.
Q2 Debbie Tucker Green style of theatre is more of naturalistic and politic and poetic. The theatre is the type that comments on politics and she only cast black people because she believes that they're don't really show, what's happening in black culture in social media and news. Her prolific output is widely recognised in discussions of contemporary black British theatre,"I'm a black woman," says Tucker Green. "I write black characters. That is part of my landscape. For naturalism, she tackles challenging issues in everyday life for example, depression, separation and mental health and uses it within the characters.
Q3 Themes of the play has madness and conflict, domestic interior, worldliness well beyond the usual confines of 'minority ethnic' theatre but with a very definite black sensibility.
Q4 Tucker green's Nut play is about a young black woman Elayne, who is an obsessive, list-making semi-recluse, she refuses to replace the batteries in her non-working doorbell. In the play's first part, Elayne has a decision with her friends, Aimee and Devon, on the subject of funeral eulogies and door bell. The action then abruptly switches to a highly plausible spat between a separated married couple over the husband's one-day-a-week custody of their 11-year-old daughter.
Elayne - Elayne is the main character, who doesn't involve herself with the society, she makes sure that her doorbell hasn't got batteries because people to knock on her door. she obsessive,list-making semi-recluse.
Q5 The play was first performed in the Shed at the National Theatre, London, on 30 October 2013.
Characters: Elayne-Nadine Marshall as the self-harming heroine
Aimee and Devon - as her friends
Ex-wife and Ex husband - as the divorce married the couple.
Trey -present
Maya - Daughter/niece
Q6 Review 1: Charles Spencer- After the unalloyed pleasure of the National Theatre’s Fifty Years on Stage celebration it is back to the grim coalface of drama with Debbie Tucker Green’s exceptionally punishing Nut. Or rather Debbie tucker green’s nut, as she tiresomely eschews capital letters in both her name and her play titles. The piece only lasts 70 minutes, but it is so remorselessly depressing that it feels twice that length.
Review 2: Michael Billington- I've always admired the distinctive voice of "Debbie tucker green" (her choice of lower case is deliberate). Yet, whereas in earlier plays like Stoning Mary and Dirty Butterfly, I thought her talent was more poetic than dramatic, this new, emotionally charged 75-minute piece achieves a synthesis of style and content: it's a cry of anguish, in which the verbal reiterations denote an evasion of truth.
In my opinion, I think Debbie message is that it's difficult to fit into the society and there's so much in this world that we don't pay attention to.
Q1 Debbie Tucker Green is a playwright, screenwriter and director, who wrote a variety of plays for example dirty Butterfly, Two women, Born bad, Nut and many more. She wrote and directed a film called Second coming and it was set in London, the people that were cast in the movie was Nadine Marshall and Idris Elba, she was nominated for the BAFTA award for the film. Most of her stage play have been produced at the royal court theatre, Soho and young Vic.Debbie has an interest in a writer called Ntozake Shange, who wrote a play called Coloured Girls which began a series of poems.
Q2 Debbie Tucker Green style of theatre is more of naturalistic and politic and poetic. The theatre is the type that comments on politics and she only cast black people because she believes that they're don't really show, what's happening in black culture in social media and news. Her prolific output is widely recognised in discussions of contemporary black British theatre,"I'm a black woman," says Tucker Green. "I write black characters. That is part of my landscape. For naturalism, she tackles challenging issues in everyday life for example, depression, separation and mental health and uses it within the characters.
Q4 Tucker green's Nut play is about a young black woman Elayne, who is an obsessive, list-making semi-recluse, she refuses to replace the batteries in her non-working doorbell. In the play's first part, Elayne has a decision with her friends, Aimee and Devon, on the subject of funeral eulogies and door bell. The action then abruptly switches to a highly plausible spat between a separated married couple over the husband's one-day-a-week custody of their 11-year-old daughter.
Elayne - Elayne is the main character, who doesn't involve herself with the society, she makes sure that her doorbell hasn't got batteries because people to knock on her door. she obsessive,list-making semi-recluse.
Aimee- Aimee is one of Elayne good friend and she comes across as strong and rooted.
Devon- Devon is also Elayne good friend and he love to get on Aimee and Elayne nerves, he always a sarcastic person.
Trey-T Trey is a young boy, who is ignored by other characters and always singing silently.
Ex-wife- Ex-wife is Elayne young sister, who doesn't hardly see Elayne but when she does, they argue more than having a normal conversation, the ex-wife doesn't want her daughter to visit Elayne because she know's there something wrong with her. She has problems with her ex-husband but at the same time, she can't help but give in to the cigarette, whenever he gives her it.
Ex-husband (Tyrone)- Tyrone is Elayne sister, the ex-husband, who influences Elayne sister to smoke and doesn't get along with her and wants to take Maya his daughter with her because he feels that his more stable.
Daughter (Maya)- Maya is 11 years old and her parents are separated and trying to keep it civil for her, her dad(Tyrone) tries to get her to live with him.
Devon- Devon is also Elayne good friend and he love to get on Aimee and Elayne nerves, he always a sarcastic person.
Trey-T Trey is a young boy, who is ignored by other characters and always singing silently.
Ex-wife- Ex-wife is Elayne young sister, who doesn't hardly see Elayne but when she does, they argue more than having a normal conversation, the ex-wife doesn't want her daughter to visit Elayne because she know's there something wrong with her. She has problems with her ex-husband but at the same time, she can't help but give in to the cigarette, whenever he gives her it.
Ex-husband (Tyrone)- Tyrone is Elayne sister, the ex-husband, who influences Elayne sister to smoke and doesn't get along with her and wants to take Maya his daughter with her because he feels that his more stable.
Daughter (Maya)- Maya is 11 years old and her parents are separated and trying to keep it civil for her, her dad(Tyrone) tries to get her to live with him.
Q5 The play was first performed in the Shed at the National Theatre, London, on 30 October 2013.
Characters: Elayne-Nadine Marshall as the self-harming heroine
Aimee and Devon - as her friends
Ex-wife and Ex husband - as the divorce married the couple.
Trey -present
Maya - Daughter/niece
Q6 Review 1: Charles Spencer- After the unalloyed pleasure of the National Theatre’s Fifty Years on Stage celebration it is back to the grim coalface of drama with Debbie Tucker Green’s exceptionally punishing Nut. Or rather Debbie tucker green’s nut, as she tiresomely eschews capital letters in both her name and her play titles. The piece only lasts 70 minutes, but it is so remorselessly depressing that it feels twice that length.
The play is set in what I take to be a flat on a grim London council estate though it is hard to be sure from Lisa Marie Hall’s design which consists of huge rusty girders, doubtless signifying the grim oppression of the characters’ lives, and a huge mobile device made out of what look like giant-sized coat hangers. What these signify I’m not sure – somewhere convenient to hang yourself perhaps.
Elayne, who rarely leaves her flat, and her friend Aimee are discussing funeral arrangements, each insisting that their own laying to rest will be the classier and better-attended of the two. They are joined by another friend, a man called Devon, and there is a good deal of smoking as they get on each other’s nerves. By this time, having given up fags six months ago, I was beginning to feel in urgent need of a cigarette myself – anything to relieve the terrible tedium of non-stop moaning and bickering. There is also a young boy on stage, Trey, who sings but otherwise remains silent and doesn’t interact with the other characters. I may be wrong, but I got the impression that he might be Elayne’s dead son, and that this could be the cause of her deep, agoraphobic gloom, but this is no more than conjecture. Like Pinter, Debbie tucker green creates an aura of mystery by withholding information. Later in the play, we learn that Elayne has taken to self-harming, burning her arms with lighted cigarettes.
Much of the dialogue is dull and desultory, but the play does briefly blaze into dramatic life with a furious row between Elayne’s younger sister and her former husband Tyrone over their 11-year-old daughter and which one of them has the closer relationship with her. And there is a powerful mixture of resentment, pain and the almost extinguished embers of love and concern in the final scene between the two sisters.
Review 2: Michael Billington- I've always admired the distinctive voice of "Debbie tucker green" (her choice of lower case is deliberate). Yet, whereas in earlier plays like Stoning Mary and Dirty Butterfly, I thought her talent was more poetic than dramatic, this new, emotionally charged 75-minute piece achieves a synthesis of style and content: it's a cry of anguish, in which the verbal reiterations denote an evasion of truth.
The focus is on a young black woman, Elayne, who is an obsessive, list-making semi-recluse: a fact symbolised by the way she refuses to replace the batteries in her non-working doorbell. In the play's first part, we see Elayne speculating with her friends, Aimee and Devon, on the subject of funeral eulogies. The action then abruptly switches to a highly plausible spat between a separated married couples over the husband's one-day-a-week custody of their 11-year-old daughter.
Only in the final section does the connection between the two scenes become clear and we grasp the significance to Elayne of the burning cigarettes that conclude each segment. I was reminded more than once of Sarah Kane; there is a similar emphasis on language as both a weapon and a shield and on the damage, we do to ourselves and others.
Behind Elayne's pain there is also a sense of the lost innocence of childhood, here registered through song: for the grownups, singing is a source of contention, whereas for a young boy who floats into the action and for the off-stage daughter of the warring couple, it is something instinctive. I still wish there were more explanation of the causes, either social or psychological, of Elayne's desperation.
But this is a humane, accessible piece deftly directed by the author and intriguingly designed by Lisa Marie Hall with strong, Anthony Caro-like iron girders suspended above the action.
In my opinion, I think Debbie message is that it's difficult to fit into the society and there's so much in this world that we don't pay attention to.
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