PRISONER (cont.) Mother, I’m speaking to you. You see? We can speak. You can speak to me in our own language.

She is still.

PRISONER (cont.) You can speak.

Pause.

PRISONER (cont.) Mother. Can you hear me? I am speaking to you in our own language.

Pause.

PRISONER (cont.) Do you hear me?

Pause.

PRISONER (cont.) It’s our language.

Pause.

PRISONER (cont.) Can’t you hear me? Do you hear me?

She does not respond.

PRISONER (cont.) Mother?

GUARD Tell her she can speak in her own language. New rules. Until further notice.

PRISONER Mother?

She does not respond. She sits still.

The Prisoner’s trembling grows. He falls from the chair onto his knees, begins to gasp and shake violently.

The Sergeant walks into the room and studies the Prisoner shaking on the floor.

SERGEANT (to Guard) Look at this. You go out of your way to give them a helping hand and they fuck it up.

Blackout.

The Disappeared

THE DISAPPEARED

Lovers of light, the skulls,

The burnt skin, the white

Flash of the night,

The heat in the death of men.

The hamstring and the heart

Torn apart in a musical room,

Where children of the light

Know that their kingdom has come.

1998

The New World Order

THE NEW WORLD ORDER

The New World Order was first performed on July 19, 1991, at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London. The cast was as follows:

DES Bill Paterson

LIONEL Michael Byrne

BLINDFOLDED MAN Douglas McFerran

Director Harold Pinter

Designer Ian MacNeil

Lighting Kevin Sleep

A blindfolded man sitting on a chair. Two men (DES and LIONEL) looking at him.

DES Do you want to know something about this man?

LIONEL What?

DES He hasn’t got any idea at all of what we’re going to do to him.

LIONEL He hasn’t, no.

DES He hasn’t, no. He hasn’t got any idea at all about any one of the number of things that we might do to him.

LIONEL That we will do to him.

DES That we will.

Pause.

DES (cont.) Well, some of them. We’ll do some of them.

LIONEL Sometimes we do all of them.

DES That can be counterproductive.

LIONEL Bollocks.

They study the man. He is still.

DES But anyway here he is, here he is sitting here, and he hasn’t the faintest idea of what we might do to him.

LIONEL Well, he probably has the faintest idea.

DES A faint idea, yes. Possibly.

Des bends over the man.

DES (cont.) Have you? What do you say?

He straightens.

DES (cont.) Let’s put it this way. He has little idea of what we might do to him, of what in fact we are about to do to him.

LIONEL Or his wife. Don’t forget his wife. He has little idea of what we’re about to do to his wife.