Mike Bartlett - Wild

I think maybe you craved some kind of true adventure.

ANDREW That’s trivialising it – you know I am at risk of death either by an assassin or my own country –

WOMAN My grandmother was Jewish, lived in Poland, she had to escape from the Nazis across Europe, her family died, and then when she got to Britain she had to learn another culture and language, and still she was being bombed, and attacked, and then bring her family up with a second husband, then emigrate to Australia, a country she knew even less about, then come back, and in the meantime she published twenty-three books and met an unfeasible number of famous and important people. I mean lives like that don’t happen any more not in that kind of continent-crossing, life-and-death, history-making, autobiography-busting way. I’m not saying they wanted it but that generation’s lives were eventful. To say the least.

ANDREW Right.

WOMAN Compare that to you, and Cindy, in Kentucky Fricking Chicken –

ANDREW Look –

WOMAN I’m not being facetious it’s a fact that with the homogenisation of branding, with the transfer of information from continent to continent the possibility for mystery and real travel and adventure has actually lessened. All countries have a McDonald’s, the vast majority of places can be looked up on Google Maps, what are the chances of truly exploring? A man finds a twelve-metre waterfall in Canada that no one’s bothered to write down, it makes headline news these days around the world? So what are the chances of truly exploring, truly changing. Zero. Unless. Andrew. You’re you. You changed the world three days ago.

ANDREW You think that.

WOMAN I do.

Actually?

I think you may have brought down the United States of America.

ANDREW Right.

WOMAN Not overnight. But China is laughing at them. The last remaining high ground they occupied, that of freedom, has been taken from them. Turns out, from what you’ve shown us, they spy on their people exactly the same way the party does in Shanghai, exactly the same way the KGB or whatever you want to call it does in Russia – you, Andrew, have proven this as a fact. The USA is not free, and it’s worse than anywhere else, because unlike China, or Russia, that was the whole point of that country. That was its USP. Its raison d’être. The primary principle upon which the fathers did the founding. To be free, from the governments, the masters, the rules of oppressive regimes and churches. That was the high ground it should have occupied, and so far has your country fallen Andrew. So far now.

ANDREW I don’t want to destroy it. I want to restore the balance between the elected and the electorate. I want the country to get better.

WOMAN It can’t. It either is the thing it is, or it doesn’t exist. America has always used all the powers possible. It’s a torturing country, it’s a spying country, it’s a country that props up dictators, and funds terrorism. It does all the things it says it fights against, in service to some greater cause which it calls freedom. But if now, you say it never even had that… well…

It’s the latest icon to fall.

We find that nothing is noble.

Nothing is righteous.

Nothing is good.

ANDREW Whether you want to believe it or not I actually love my country, I did what I did in the hope that it will get better, that it will prompt action.

WOMAN It won’t.

ANDREW You don’t know.

WOMAN It will prompt proposals to action and the specific practices you uncovered will cease, for a while. But others will continue. The issue is that it’s either a technological problem or a governmental one.

ANDREW Can we talk about something else?

WOMAN Either you say the government is good but technology has got too powerful and has to be reined in somehow, or, you say technology is good but the power of government has to be reined in. No one can agree, so nothing happens.

ANDREW What about corporations?

WOMAN Well that’s a whole other thing.

ANDREW Do you have a boyfriend?

WOMAN Ah – well – oh – Not a boyfriend no.

ANDREW Girlfriend then?

WOMAN I have a relationship with a horse.

ANDREW OH!

WOMAN What?

ANDREW Okay – just – don’t –

WOMAN He fucks me like – wooah – Jesus you wouldn’t imagine, he goes out racing, I watch, then we go for dinner, you know somewhere classy like Burger King, then back to his, we lie on the straw, and… well it’s not to everyone’s taste but – talk about reining it in.

ANDREW You couldn’t have just said I can’t tell you?

WOMAN No because I can tell you, it’s not the army, we’re all, I can tell you what I want, I choose not to because I don’t know you.

ANDREW Right.

WOMAN So much like the government of your country, I prefer to remain in the shadows and distract you with whimsy.

ANDREW Isn’t that quite a contradiction for an organisation that advocates full disclosure?

WOMAN Yeah well absolutely and that’s not the half of it, we’ve got quite a lot of contradiction going on, as you’ll find out. I mean don’t for god’s sake look for a coherent set of values or a constructive way forward in us lot. I mean we’re not that far off a bunch of fucking anarchists, it’s like herding cats, like taming fucking I don’t know… plants. As far as I can work out, and there’s nothing really written down about this – which is a very contemporary way for a protest group to operate – in cells you know – the very definition of ‘wiki’ – so as far as I can work out, the only principle on which we operate is that governments cannot proclaim to be working for the people if they withhold huge amounts of information from the people. How can they be accountable if the majority of what they do that’s important is restricted? How do we know what really happened in Afghanistan or Iraq, or with the police, or Hillsborough or Stephen Lawrence, or phone hacking? Are these references too British for you?

ANDREW Some of them.

WOMAN Then Watergate, Union Carbide, Bush’s win in Florida, I mean we really want to allow these people to hide behind confidentiality laws? Which would mean that at the ballot box we’re just guessing? But yeah, when it comes to the actual people that do it – me or him, to take two examples, we’re both incredibly secretive. I suppose the difference is we don’t profess anything else. We’re not saying trust us. We’re saying just look at the information.

ANDREW Okay.

WOMAN You interested in any of this?

ANDREW Well you know I kind of think I’m done now, I’m not going to make a habit of it so –

WOMAN Well you can’t mate.

ANDREW No.

WOMAN You’ve shot your load.

ANDREW Yeah.

WOMAN So what now? That’s the question. That’s what’s of interest to us. What happens to you now?

ANDREW Do you have friends?

WOMAN Yes. Loads. Uni friends mostly. We’re a tight-knit group. Argue into the night issues of politics, society, high-level intelligent debate about actually no I don’t have any friends I work too hard.

You see? You just can’t tell.

Pause .

ANDREW I will have that drink.

WOMAN I thought you might.

ANDREW

WOMAN

ANDREW …

WOMAN Lonely.

ANDREW Right at this moment, I am. Yes.

WOMAN You don’t give a shit about any of all of that now do you? You just want a hug.

ANDREW …

She edges closer .

Then squeezes his shoulder, awkwardly .

WOMAN Is that okay? Thought a hug might be a bit… much?

So… just thought I’d give you a… squeeze ?

She does it again .

Then pats him .

It’ll be okay.

Her hand comes to rest on him .