Buddy......Ed Bishop
Imagine your husband
disappearing without trace.
Imagine walking on the moon.
Imagine never walking.
A cosmic thriller by TERRY JOHNSON
"This is the story of Jane and David who arrived on this bleak north western coast (England) a few weeks apart,
Jane looking for David, David looking for a story: someone else's, not his own..."
Cast (in order of appearance)
Buddy......Ed Bishop
Jane......Sylvestra Le Touzel
Brenda......Frances Barber
Sam......Daniel Evans
David......Douglas Hodge
Tom.....Nabil Shaban
Director......Richard Wilson
I stopped writing plays a while back; couldn't seem to find any original thoughts in my head. Kept myself busy and happy using what craft I'd developed to help interpret the work of other writers.
The characters in Imagine Drowning each crept up on me demanding their play. I decided to put them all in the same one. The result is diffcult to describe, but I think it turned out to be a sort of dream play about the pain we're all immersed in.
As the decade trundled on the world seemed to grow even less caring. Violence was surfacing all around us. The Left was taught to be ashamed of itself. Our obsession with the black and the bloody increased, as did our fascination with the bright, hopeful, and global.
So I've tried to look at how we survive the cold of the ocean. Something to do with our perception of its tides and the bodywarmth of others. The characters, like us, have just survived a decade of moral, political and sexual confusion. I have no idea what might happen to them in the next few years.
When I nearly Drowned...
From that day on, I became a confirmed Dualist.
When I had this "Near-Death" experience in 1971, and arrived at this conclusion,
© 1997 jinghiz@msn.com
by Nabil Shaban (1991)
calmness, the prospect of death in no way frightening.
....I was intrigued.
"Wow! So finally I shall find out what it's likely!"
Death, the Big Final Adventure!
And then a certain disappointment when an arm grabbed me to yank me to the surface.
And then to be told that, as I welcomed death, the horrified on-lookers saw
only a panic-stricken body thrashing the water, gulping the air, ashen-faced.
I had seen the light and yet my body had been dark with fear.
There is a Consciousness, which yearns to return to it's spiritual home .
And a physical Body, whose fierce life-instinct struggles with the Soul's death-wish.
I knew nothing of Descarte's philosophy of Dualism, nor Freud's concept of the perpetual conflict between the Libido (Life) Complex and the Thanatos (Death) Complex.
.....And when later as an undergraduate I read these great masters,
I was comforted to know that my personal discoveries were not unique.
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