TW: Intense Grief/Trauma, Gory Descriptions, Body Mutilation
SYNOPSIS
On December 21, 1988 flight Pan Am 103 was bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland while on route to Detroit. Seven years later on the anniversary of the bombing, Madeline Livingston has taken to roaming the hills of Lockerbie Scotland searching for the remains of her son who was seated directly over the bomb. Her husband, Bill, and Olive, a native Lockerbie resident, search for her but they’re interrupted by Lockerbie women bringing news that it’s been decided that the belongings of the bombing victims will be burned first thing in the morning by George Jones, who represents the American government, despite the women’s pleas to allow them to wash and return the clothes to the families that want them. Madeline appears and is in quite a state, talking to Adam and reliving the moment she heard the news, blaming herself, as she has for seven years. The women invite Bill to have private vigil and share their own experiences with the crash as the bodies and debris rained down with fire. Bill tries again to get his wife to let it go and she accuses him of not loving their son as much as she did, but Bill claims he had to be the one to hold it together. He shares how he had to return the Christmas presents and how devastating it was to lie again and again about why he no longer needed his son’s gifts. The women try to console him by saying there’s a reason for everything which he vehemently disagrees with before going after his wife again. His words shake the women’s faith, but they share with each other what they do to try to cope before leaving for the warehouse.
George enters trying to catch his breath from dealing with the reporters that’ve gotten word about the planned burning and the women’s disapproval, not to mention the 200 women outside the building protesting. We meet Hattie, another woman of Lockerbie that’s been spying on Mr. Jones as his cleaning lady. Bill appears and Hattie runs to him to avoid being arrested and George complains to Bill about the women and the mothers that are whining about their kids only for Bill to take out a picture of his son. The women return and Olive literally begs George to let them wash the clothes. He refuses because they’re bloody and gruesome and the women remind him that they were literally the ones picking up body parts and taking them to the morgue. George leaves and the women decide they’ll just have to break into the warehouse and steal the clothes to get the reporters and public opinion on their side as more than 200 women are arrested trying to wash clothes. Bill finds a ticket in his coat pocket from a baseball game he went to with his son, but Madeline rejects it as something of Bill’s not Adam’s. Olive tries to keep Madeline from pushing her husband away and when Madeline tries to bite back at her she reveals that the plane crushed her house killing her daughter and her husband and it triggers her anger at Americans to the point that Olive physically attacks Madeline, only stopped by the women’s return with the news that the clothes will be burned that night, instead of in the morning. Hearing about the clothes for the first time Madeline rushes to the warehouse, but Hattie returns and reveals that despite getting in, Madeline still wasn’t able to find anything of her son’s. She has a breakdown and mutilates her body to be her son’s tombstone. When Madeline returns with scratch marks all over her and seeming to have completely passed her breaking point, George returns with her son’s suitcase having decided to give in to the women. Madeline allows her husband to open it first and the two grieve together for the first time. The women have a bag of the clothes, but it’s Madeline who washes the first article and hands the women each a garment. The play ends as they wash the clothes in a stream.
CHARACTERS
Bill Livingston – Middle Aged, American
Olive Allison – Adult, Scottish
Woman 1 – Adult, Scottish, Can be Played by Multiple Women
Woman 2 – Adult, Scottish, Can be Played by Multiple Women
Madeline Livingston – Middle Aged, American
George Jones – Adult, American
Hattie – Elderly, Scottish
POTENTIAL MONOLOGUES
Bill has the first potential monologue if you string together a few of his lines with it to give context. He introduces the setting and Madeline’s grief. His next monologue is when Madeline accuses him of not loving their son enough. It’s long, emotional, and starts with how he had to send medical records and talk to reporters and goes in depth about how much it broke him to return Adam’s Christmas gifts. He has another soon after that when the women try to give him the these things happen for a reason speech, but it isn’t necessarily and angry monologue, just defeated by his own grief by the end. Bill finds the ticket stub and realizes that his numbness isn’t a healthy coping mechanism. The only downside to the monologue is that it centers around the ticket and most professional auditions don’t allow props.
Madeline’s first monologue is when she goes over hearing the news about her son. Give her Bill’s small lines that are spoken as the TV reporter to keep the flow. Her next appearance during the Second Episode is also a good monologue where she’s blaming herself for all the small decisions she could have made that would’ve kept her son alive if only she had known.
The women don’t have many passages that can work as audition monologues, but the Second Choral Dialogue can work as monologues, particularly Woman 1’s lines can be strewn together into their own monologue about the devastation she witnessed, but feel free to borrow some of the later lines to lengthen the monologue.
Hattie does technically have a monologue, but it’s a recounting of what happened when the women tried to get into the warehouse and ends with Hattie telling Bill about his wife scratching herself bloody. It’s more of a report than a monologue.
PERSONAL THOUGHTS
I was in a production of The Women of Lockerbie when I was in college. We watched documentary footage interviewing the actual women of Lockerbie, Scotland as dramaturgical work for the show and even got to meet Deborah Brevoort after a performance. We went out to lunch the next day to talk about it.
When the play was first written, many people didn’t have a way to relate to the characters. Trauma on this scale wasn’t accessible to the American public in 1998, but come 2001 and we as a country became all too familiar with it. I was only six years old on 9/11, but coming home to a dark and quiet house stuck with me. It was the first time I had ever seen my mother cry and she just wept watching the news footage. Although we were in Georgia, she’s a native New Yorker and since that day she’s cried every time the national anthem played until 2016.
The grief in the play is strong, even after Deborah decided to model the play after a Greek tragedy to give the audience distance from it. It’s been five years since I’ve picked up this script, but it still made my eyes water enough that I had to take breaks reading it in public to keep myself from crying. Madeline is only on stage in short bursts of emotions, while the bulk of the play is Bill reuniting with his own emotions as the women try to guide him through it. At the same time the women never claim to be over it themselves, they just share what’s helped them to manage. The action is broken up with Greek chorus moments, fulfilled through Woman 1 and Woman 2 and sometimes joined with Olive. In Valdosta State’s production we did choreographed movements through the choruses, not quite dancing, but very much a separation from action of the plan. We used props like caution tape rolled into roses to transition from the neighborhood gardens to the crime scenes of debris without actually showing any of the chaos.
The problem with letting the audience experience the full force of grief explored in the play is that they’ll go numb. Too much harsh emotion like grief can’t be processed in just one sitting and if you want the audience to stay with the story until the end, they’re going to need breaks, though the show is traditionally performed without an intermission.. I do think that this play is a good read for those that have given time to sit with their grief. The play walks through many of the feelings and cliched sayings and their arguments that go along with grief when the pain is no longer fresh.
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