From the Story and Text group

Where we've got to...

It’s a story for adults and children set in a future time when society has broken down, there’s an underclass which doesn’t have access to pure running water. Water is privatized and expensive beyond the reach of most people. The concept of the water tap has gone. There is inbalance between management of natural resources and nature.

Things to show:
Projections that reflect ideas about the state of the world’s water
Projections people talking about water or using it
People washing hands, scooping water, washing faces
Pouring water
A tap

We wanted to reconsider the idea of splitting the audience so began to think whether it would be possible for group 1 and 2 to travel to different locations but end up at the same place.

Room 1
Play could either start here or Green Tank room. We like idea of finishing in the big room, where the tap will be lowered to the bore hole and the whole thing fired up.
The bore hole being the heart of the building, reason for it.

A group of adults and children arrive at the building – they don’t know what they’re looking for but know the building was once many years ago important in terms of water. It’s long been boarded up, disused, there are stories of ghosts, sounds.

The Engineer climbs out of the hatch. Has been living/imprisoned below for years. Waiting for:
1 The tap to be returned to a particular pipe so the water source can be activated?
2 ?

The Engineer leads them to his laborartory. Some go down the hatch - others by another route. Or all

They hears sounds and find the next hidden room.

Room 2
In the hold of a ship. Some are asleep. SFX/LFX
They are refugees who have escaped the world’s floods and droughts by sailing on the poisoned rivers to arrive in Wimborne, but are kept in detention by a security guard.

This scene could be plotted by Allenbourn Drama Group with Tony.

Group 1 help them escape to Room 3


Room 3- Green Tank room
Contains the Engineers laboratory – in a shed, or under the ground or just there?
He shows them things. . . pumps, old inventions that have changed the world, dowsing rods.
They use the dowsing rods to lead them back to the bore hole heart of the first room. That’s where the river spirt is. They hear her cries coming through the pipes and these lead them on.

Room 1
The rivers spirit comes up out of the bore hole – her cries are heard. She is dying.
How is she revived? How is the tap placed on the pipe.
What is the future?

The room becomes activated. Buttons pressed. Lights on.