The Plant

The Plant, a play with traditional music and songs, explores the run-up to and aftermath of the 2016 referendum on UK membership of the EU and the issues it inflames in an imagined community somewhere in England. In the ongoing public debate and the sharp divide it has created in England, something crucial seems to have been forgotten: the quiet, ordinary lives that have to go on in its shadow. The Plant dramatises these lives, exploring the impact of the referendum and the divisions it continues to intensify. Crucially, the project draws upon the real-life experiences, views and personas of the creatives involved and, more broadly, their community. The narrative centres on a young couple, Niall and Maddie, and their attempt to build a life together in this period of turmoil and the relationship between Niall’s parents, Jane and Gary. The traditional songs and music represent the voice of the community as a whole: its past, its industrial heritage, its sense of identity, its changing fortunes. By extension, this is also a play about contemporary conceptions of Englishness.

This second phase of the project follows a highly successful tour of Kent and South London in November 2021, and will involve new community-centred research in London, East Anglia and the so-called ‘Red Wall’ areas of the English North and Midlands, building on our previous practice in the local area in Kent. At each of the selected venues, we will, well in advance of the performance, send a researcher to the community in which the venue is based to conduct targeted and tailored interviews with local people about their views on the aftermath of the EU referendum and the divisions it has created, and more widely, any personal narratives they have to relay that embody these divisions. These interviews will be transcribed and then used as the basis of a short film which dramatises and re-tells these stories, with verbatim scripting techniques, using the actors who appear in the main play. The films will be soundtracked by local music from the area (traditional and contemporary, and capturing the areas’ diversity), and filmed using well-known backdrops and landmarks around the community – urban and rural. The films will be screened before the performances of The Plant, ‘framing’ the play to make it directly relevant to the area in which it is being performed, and hosted on our project website, adding wraparound and legacy to the project as a whole. Our audience will be members of the local community, especially those not used to engaging with the arts; the use of verbatim techniques in the films will give audiences ownership of the project. We want to our audiences to be clear that this is both for and about them.

Synopsis

‘The Plant’ is a car factory in an unnamed town in England, the main employer in the area. The upcoming referendum on membership of the European Union has divided the workers there and the wider community. Many feel that jobs will be jeopardised. Others see exit from the EU as an opportunity to be grasped: free trade, autonomy and a re-assertion of national identity, a redress to decades of neglect and marginalisation. Against this backdrop, Niall (unemployed, an amateur pub singer) and Maddie (leading a project at The Plant to build a new electric car) meet and begin a relationship, a scenario which is complicated by an affair between Maddie and the managing director of The Plant, Geoff, which has ended before the play begins. Matters become strained even further as it emerges that Maddie is for ‘remain’, and Niall for ‘leave’.

Gary, Niall’s father, is the main union rep at The Plant. He is caught in two minds as to the best outcome for the factory, and caught too between the demands of the workers and the demands of Geoff and the management. His wife, Jane, is seriously ill (with what, we never know), and Gary is struggling to cope without her support. Niall is terrified by his mother’s illness, by the prospect of losing her, and feels unable to face up to this by visiting her. This causes a rift between him and his father, which deepens further because of Niall’s relationship with Maddie, which Gary feels can never go anywhere. When one of the cleaning staff at the factory leaves to return to the continent, Niall takes her job, enraging his father still more. Into the middle of these family dramas, the result of the Referendum is announced. The community has voted to leave the EU.

The result sends The Plant and its workers into turmoil. In the background, the Japanese owners visit and meet the management behind closed doors to decide the future of the factory. However, Geoff and his wife Gemma, the local MP, are both excluded from negotiations. After Josef, one of the Polish workers at the factory, also returns home in the wake of the referendum result, Niall eventually secures his job. Fractures begin to appear in Maddie and Niall’s relationship. Maddie is offered a job in Spain and decides to accept it. She leaves, begging Niall to come with her. Niall’s loyalty is split: to his job and family, or to Maddie. For better or worse, he chooses the former.