dirty butterfly by debbie tucker green
Part of an ongoing series examining the beginnings of plays.
Modern playscripts typically start fairly differently from other writing art forms.
Today, the play has to grab a reader (to bother reading on, probably a director or aspiring director before you find an artistic director or producer) but also an audience. A bad start is hard to recover from.
While a good start is important in the poem, pop song, journal article, novel etc. I think a play has a unique challenge matched only by its sibling the film script.
Review (Lyn Gardner, Guardian) of dirty butterfly. The wiki on debbie tucker green.
You know the playwright is making a confident statement straight up by her use of lower case, where one might expect upper case letters. There's an immediate sense of rhythm and an ear for language, out of the ordinary.
From the review: " Debbie Tucker Green's debut play will not suit everybody, especially when the playwright has a distinct way of saying things. In particular this play will not suit those who are weary of tales of urban fragmentation, think that dramas using monologue and giving voice to the internal should be restricted to radio, and get irritated when characters stand around discussing their relationship rather than dialling 999 for the ambulance that is so clearly and urgently required.
For the rest of us, this play, set in an all-too-familiar world, in which lives interlock but never connect, will do just fine. I cannot say that I enjoyed it very much, but I liked it a great deal. And now I cannot get it out of my head."