ESCAPE SPEED
A play for young people
The drama of the streets and the cosmos converge.
Selected as a Playwrights’ Studio Scotland Writer’s Project.
Rehearsed reading performed at Lemon Tree Theatre, supported by the National Theatre of Scotland.
Written in collaboration with the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Professor John C. Brown, this play for young people centres on a teenage girl who escapes to the top of a city tower block to watch a comet in secret while below her brother starts a turf war with a rival gang.
How you s'posed to dream when dreaming hurts?
The Hare
The hare, I, Lepus sit under the sword
But I am not afraid. I leap with glee
Through matter dark, the stars Arneb and Nihal
My supergiant core, they keep me ahead
Of Orion’s bow. My ears a double star:
Kappa Leporis, never to be caught.
The Bull
A thundering creature, filled with grace
That’s me, the Bull or Taurus as I’m known.
Hunted by Orion, but I don’t flee.
Aldebaran the star my eye, I watch.
Protecting the Pleiades, a star cluster dying
Yet new life blooms, look up: the sun is rising.