This Is Not America
Play | 2017 | Written by Joshua Val Martin
Bruntwood Commendation Prize | Royal Exchange Theatre & Bush Theatre development
When Royal Exchange dramaturg Suzanne Bell asked, “What would you give up to be true to yourself?”, Joshua’s answer was: the world.
THE PLAY
Idris was let go by the RAF… after much trying he gets a job offer: to go on a one-way trip to Mars.
During the ten second countdown to launch, we encounter ten of Idris’s memories.
THE FORM
Ten seconds. Ten memories. One choice.
The memories begin to misbehave, as we jump from a job interview, to a childhood holiday at Pontins, to the shared accommodation his more affluent girlfriend wishes Idris would move out of… the memories that remind Idris why he’s leaving, begin to ask what he’ll be missing on earth.
Recognition & development
In 2017, This Is Not America was one of ten plays shortlisted from 1,898 submissions to the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting and received a Bruntwood Prize Commendation Award.
Development at the Bush Theatre was directed by Matthew Xia. A professional script-in-hand reading at the Stephen Joseph Theatre followed in 2022, directed by Kash Arshad.
read an Extract
By ‘Five’ of the countdown, Idris has realised that he is strapped into the spaceship destined for Mars, and that all around him isn’t real, but memories.
With this awareness, he takes control of which memory he’ll inhabit for the next second of the countdown.
Idris chooses to return to the moment he met Esther, beneath a smoking shelter, in the rain.
The text below comes from the scene’s final moments, when the remembered encounter is reimagined as more magical.
IDRIS.
We’re not that different -
Two people -
It’s all about the Venn diagram -
Finding the bit in the middle.
ESTHER.
So our Venn diagram? Paper Mathematician and-
You?
As we enter the ridiculous, it stops raining water and starts raining paper.
IDRIS.
Because paper’s for, like, IOUS –
Christmas cards recycled as to-do lists, and
Small hills of debt and unpaid bills –
Certificates of births and deaths and education –
The last will and testament of a man, forgotten –
Paper’s for money – it tells us how much we’re worth –
For flyposting and billboards, adverts on busses and banners,
For graffiti and placards, sticking it to the man –
For worn out café menus and stained magazines,
Cinema tickets and receipts we forgot to keep –
Paper is for karaoke slips to sing the songs that say the things
That I’d never dare –
Or for messages on the fridge door
Asking you to stop using my fucking milk –
It’s a note to say life wasn’t easy –
We give paper to children for them to
Scribble on,
To colour on,
To read on and write on –
Until they know the difference between our wrongs
And Rights –
A shaft of light.
A rainbow.
Look at pictures and it doesn’t matter
If they’re portrait or a landscape in colour or surreal
Because that piece of paper is a portal
Into how someone else sees it all – how they feel.
Shape paper into ducks, and hats, and cocktail umbrellas,
And paper boats for a day down the reservoir –
It’s for wiping your arse with –
Wiping the tomato sauce from the side of your face with –
Wiping the love away when the chore is done with –
Later used as paper mache
Or something to hold your chips with –
Paper is used to tell stories with...
But isn’t paper going out of fashion? Doesn’t paper burn?
Paper cuts.
Paper takes up space and needs buildings in which to store it.
It’s unsustainable – like our smoking habit – it isn’t clean.
And neither’s plastic.
What you’re doing isn’t just paper maths –
Your work is the mathematics of life
ESTHER takes IDRIS and passionately kisses him.
It stops raining paper. It starts raining water.
PERSON returns to as before, stubs their cigarette, and flicks it away.
I said something a bit like that? Didn’t I?
ESTHER.
I’ll tell you what.
I get this job?
And we’ll go for a drink.