What S Happening on Starling Street? a Collaborative Play About the Lives and Dreams Of

What’s Happening on Starling Street?
a collaborative play about the lives and dreams of the inhabitants of Starling Street
Introduction
‘What’s happening on Starling Street?’ is a collaborative play produced by participants of the ‘On the Write Wavelength’ project, hosted by Phoenix FM and funded by The Big Lottery Fund.
The project ran weekly sessions during which the students explored different literary styles and techniques to create poetic character portraits of the people that live on Starling Street, a fictional street in West Yorkshire. At the end of the project, these character portraits were all woven together to create a play for radio broadcast which used Dylan Thomas’s play ‘Under Milk Wood’ as a model.
The authors of ‘What’s Happening On Starling Street’ are as follows:
Ross Kightly, Faye Lockwood, Marion Oxley, Julie Rose Clark, Daniel Bickerton, John Ling, Joel Duncan, Robyn Wells-Eldredge, Nuala Robinson, Gaia Holmes, Winston Plowes, Turner Cockroft.

Prologue
1st Voice: Welcome to Starling Street, a street in West Yorkshire, a street with terraced houses. Some of the houses have wheelie bins in the gardens, some have precarious mounds of bulging bin bags, some have barking dogs tied to drainpipes with fraying ropes, some have bald, clean concrete yards that are scrubbed with hot water and fairy liquid once a week, some have tangled forests of weeds, some have neat flower beds full of big, red well-tended roses and pots of mint and basil, some have rotten washing lines full of broken plastic pegs, some have bleached white washing lines full of tea towels or jeans or bright kurtas and dupattas.
Imagine a street where, at 6 o clock, the air is a fusion of smells, a fragrant chorus of gravy and masala and chips and beef and hot paratha and pizza and cumin and toast and cinnamon and there are different worlds in every kitchen. There is hot sesame oil smouldering in woks, stacks of roti snug in ovens, pierogi puffing up in pans, ready meals bubbling under their cellophane lids, dhal simmering on hobs, yoghurt thickening on the pipes, chips crisping in deep-fat fryers. There are seeds and spices being pulped and ground in pestles. There is dough proving in airing cupboards. There are tables being laid with bread and salt and bowls and knives and forks and bottles of wine and steaming plates of chapattis and chopsticks and pudding bowls and jugs of water…
Imagine you can hear the dreams, the hopes, the fears and the wishes of all the people who live on the street.
Come with us…Join us now. Stay with us. We will let you listen to their lives…
Night falls on Starling Street
2nd Voice: It’s night on Starling Street.
There is the distant humming that comes from the pub down the road. You can hear out-of tune singing, glasses smashing, fights breaking out.
The street is lit up by a row of street lamps that give off on orange glow. A fly has made its way into the top of one and is hitting itself against the glass, is buzzing, buzzing…
It’s an autumn night and the moon is on full display. It is brighter than any light from the street lamps.
The wind sweeps its way from one end of the street to the other, knocking little stones against the walls, swirling leaves around in circles.
Hushhhh...
You can hear the clouds racing over in the dark sky, trying to fight the brightness of the moon.
Listen…
Listen, you can hear their restless shifting, the creak of their beds, their heavy night time breathing, the whisper of their sheets. You can hear their dreams…
1st voice: At number 1,Sharon Shaw, tucked in to bed, neat as origami, is trying not to think of the little silver and blue box of Lambert & Butler cigarettes she keeps in her sock drawer, just in case. She is trying not to think of the calm that enters her body with each drag, the way the smoke seems to click her bones in to place. Non-smoker for a month now. She’s tried gum and patches and e-cigarettes but what’s been working for her is origami.
She has folded her way through the withdrawal symptoms. She has folded her way through 28 days without the click and flare of lighting up in the cold rain outside the school gates. She has folded her way through bad news and boredom. She has folded her way through awkward parents’ evenings.
Her house is full of her creations: swans and rabbits, cats and parrots sculpted out of squares of bright, thick origami paper. They’re everywhere: on the book shelves, on the TV, in the fruit bowl on the kitchen table. Crushed elephants in the bottom of her handbag. Parakeets flying from the hand rail on the stairs. Orange paper foxes lurking on the top of the bathroom mirror. Green paper frogs in the cutlery drawer. Sharon Shaw, trying not to think of the little silver and blue box of Lambert and Butler cigarettes she keeps in her sock drawer is falling asleep and dreaming of folding…
Sharon Shaw: Folding a life in half could be a good thing or a bad thing. It could hide half a person or cover them. Folding a memory is like storing it away, to one day be re-opened, without blocking or removing it. Logic can be folded to create a neater version that makes half the sense but is twice as much fun.
When you fold love in half you get half a heart that cannot be fully given. You could fold anything in half but it wouldn’t disappear, it would be the same on the inside still. Inside a lie is the guilt, betrayal and truth, only covered by falseness folded up.
Happiness can only be folded a limited number of times before you realise it can’t get any smaller, it is only being compressed.
When you fold a direction, it can go anywhere but the destination will be different. If you fold your dreams they could change shape but they may still come true.
Folding death in half would be just as dark, covered by denial and the stubbornness of letting go. Folding the pages of life, or closing the chapter, can lead to new things and new beginnings
1st voice: In sleep.Sharon Shaw is thinking of her 7 year old daughter snoring gently in the bedroom next door. She is thinking how she’s a bad mother, how she disappoints her with her bad habits, her clumsy packed lunches, her short temper, her fag-ash-Lily stink…
Sharon Shaw: Oh let me be a calm and silky mother, all reason, good bread and punctuality. Let me fold her lunchbox sandwiches into doughy angels who will keep her safe.
1st voice: She is thinking about the man-sized space in her double bed, the gap in her daughter’s life.
Sharon Shaw: Let me fold her a sturdy new father out of expensive ivory paper.
2nd voice: Sunlight strikes the darkness with its last rays of light. Dexter walks to his home on Starling Street. A cold breeze hits his face as the night winds get stronger. He looks up, sees Jupiter overhead. He goes into his house, climbs up the stairs and goes to the telescope in his bedroom. Whilst almost everyone else on the street is fast asleep, blanketed beneath their thick, heavy dreams, Dexter is wide awake, stargazing and thinking...
Dexter:There is one thing we all dream of and that is going into space to see all the stars and planets. Just imagine the feeling of discovering something new. Just imagine that sense of adventure. Stepping off this planet and looking down on earth from above would be brilliant, the stars shining and us, one step closer to standing on a different world, breathing in alien air , dreaming of new worlds inhabited by humans. A new beginning.
Listen everyone! Stop what you’re doing and listen to me! Get off the sofa or out of bed. Go outside! Look up! Look beyond the light pollution! Looking at the night sky can be fascinating. Just looking up as the moonlight shines in your eyes and the many billions of stars sparkle and glide across the night sky. Just think about how special you all are and how impressively smart you all are to dream of such things as the many options and possibilities there are out there!
I believe that every single star up in the night sky is an angel guiding us through life’s many possibilities and impossibilities, but my other belief is that those stars out there stand for dreams people need to catch. It’s never too late to follow your dreams. Reach up and catch those dreams…
1st voice: At number 3, Fred’s head, starved of stars, is full of the spark and crack and grind of the day-in, day-out racket of the merciless production line…
Fred: The spanner on nut, the bolt locked tight, steel on steel, cold on cold. The spanner on nut, the bolt locked tight, steel on steel, cold on cold. The spanner on nut, the bolt locked tight, steel on steel, cold on cold. The spanner on nut, the bolt locked tight, steel on steel, cold on cold. The spanner on nut, the bolt locked tight, steel on steel, cold on cold…
2nd voice: At number 4, Asma Akhtar, usually asleep by now, is thinking about her cousin’s wedding in Pakistan in two week’s time, hoping the presents she sent have arrived. Asma Akhtar is listening to the gentle, whispery snore of her husband and remembering the excitement of her own wedding twenty years ago and the delicious fizz and frenzy of preparation- all the choosing of fabrics, the sheen of silk, the fittings, the jewelled shoes, the glitter, the dazzle, the glow . She is remembering the joyful greens and yellows and golds of her Mehndi night and how her favourite sister, Raheela, couldn’t stop giggling. She’s remembering the heady Sandalwood scent of Ubtan paste, the burn and weight of it on her face where her mother had rubbed it in. She’s remembering the sugary taste of the little sweets that graced every table of every day and then…
Buses!Suddenly Asma’s head is full of buses all driving madly like giant bumper cars- the 504, the 508, the 503 and, on the side of the road her eldest daughter Saima is standing with her brand new college bag full of unused pens and sharpened pencils and empty notebooks shouting through the dream to her, ‘Mum, which bus do I catch?! I don’t know which bus to catch!’ Asma finds herself walking through the dream towards her, handing her a sticky little parcel of Gulab Jamun sweets wrapped in a bus timetable, grabbing Saima’s hands and writing 503, 503,503 all over the back of them with a cone of freshly mixed henna paste…
1st voice:Down the road at number 5 lies droop-eyed soi-disant sage ‘Sad Sack’ Samuel Sanders, mercilessly mocked pedagogue; his derided vision-aids now in sleep become steel-sprung symbols of sovereignty over the Street; from his supreme vantage point, he sees midnight mutate into bright, impossible ingots, poured by neighbourhood lackeys into mountain-sized moulds, golden suns of youthful vigour; he alone in his black bear dream sees this homing spirit shine before clumsy dream chair-topple into a curtailed death of waking into grey light of another school day.
2nd voice: In number 6, Monica Matthews, 78, child of the dead, mother of no one is lying in her bed, checking the house in her head.
Monica: Door locked. Check. Good. Lights out. Check. Good. Fire off- no hum and hiss, no gassy breath on the honey comb. Check. Good. Door locked. Check. Double check. Good. You can’t be too careful here. Check. Things aren’t as they were here. Check. Some of them on this street, smoking funny stuff by the bus stop. Ruffians. Check. Can’t be trusted. Check. Setting the bins on fire. Check. Stealing my morning milk. Check. Trust…is it still a word? Who can I trust to change a lightbulb? Who can I trust to draw my pension when my legs are bad? Me, check, Monica Matthews, 78, child of the dead, mother of no one…
2nd voice: dreams of bolts and padlocks. She dreams of little gold and silver keys swimming around the air above her head like glittering minnows. Monica Matthews, 78, child of the dead, mother of no one dreams of the men she never loved, the babies she never bred. She dreams of light and locks and porridge sputting on a pan on the childhood range in that big kitchen that always smelled of jam and pudding. She is remembering the rip of leaving that sweet, plummy haven to go to school and be taught by icy Mrs Martin, the teacher that shrunk her all those years ago, the teacher that pruned the buds of ambition before they had time to bloom. Monica shudders, grabs her tepid hotwater bottle as she remembers Mrs Martin’s voice…
Monica: Her voice was like an empty eggshell that been unintentionally crushed. It was a cold voice that got colder. It was the last echo of someone crying for help through the distant darkness of the unknown. Her voice shuddered at its own reflection and shrunk in the bold surroundings of consciousness. There was no colour left in her voice. It was empty, shallow, transparent. Her voice was like a vacuum in outer space, still, but still there. It tasted of flavourless water and felt as if all hope had been drowned.
2nd voice: Strange how such a mean, thin voice has stayed with her for all these years, lodged itself under her fingernails. Strange how it echoes in her head condemning her for her loneliness. Your fault, your fault, it says. Monica wakes, tries to shake it off. Turns on the radio and drowns it with the midnight news…
1st voice: In number 7, the house with plant pots of mint and basil in the yard , Kelly Kismet, paid ladler of soups and stews at Moorland View care home, unpaid ladler of soups and stews at the soup kitchen, the salvation army, the luncheon club, volunteer at the Shelter shop, Help The Aged, Cancer Research, The cats protection league, knitter of socks for babies in Africa, knitter of blankets for the RSPCA strays, marzipan-hearted, kind as whole milk and melting butter, tries to sleep but is nagged by wolves and the sadness of other people’s lives. She lies like a flower, pressed by the weight of the world, crushed by the frowns and worries that cast their shadows on Starling Street. She thinks of the gaunt girl at number 17, all hollows and ribs and sharp elbows, her big, hungry eyes lost in bruises of bad makeup. She thinks of the lonely old woman at number 6. She thinks of the weary teacher at number 5. She would like to bake them all cakes, leave them outside their houses smelling of caramel and blazing with candles in the stagnant, dingy dawn. Tomorrow, she thinks, I will spread my goodwill. I will light up the sky and make it brighter.
Kelly Kismet: I will light up all the clocks as it’s time to be bright. I will find the darkest places on earth and share myself with them. I will light up thoughts, negative thoughts, and make them lighter. I will give my light to faces and make them smile. I will light up the trees and flowers and they will glow.
I will go to every corner in every room in every house on the street and at night I will be a street lamp. I will make sure the street is lit up. And I will be the light for those who are alone. I will light fear and drive t away. I will be the planets and stars that glow in the distance. I will be the light of dreams and make the subconscious happy and I will return when the sun rises to brighten another day.
2nd voice: Jeff lives at number 8, Starling Street. He is eating his Jeff-o-cakes and Smarties.
The clock rings. It’s Jeff O’ clock. He gets off his seat and dances like a dad.
Jeff is fat. He dances to lose weight. His girlfriend Jess joins him for moral support.
Jess is slim. She eats less. She does yoga by day and by night, in dreams, she’s a Scottish ogre that eats wild vermin. Every night Jeff dreams about those living Jeff-o-cakes...
Jeff: Jeff-o-cakes, Jeff-o-cakes. They send me crazy, the violent and cakey malfunction of Jeff-o-cakes. I run rampant wanting them. Jeff-o-cakes, Jeff-o-cakes chasing me through the night. Jess runs ragged every time she sees me going into the cupboard to get my Jeff-o-cakes, ‘What the hell woman! Those are mine,’ I say in a dark, chocolatey voice. When this happens Jess usually storms out of the house, arms full of Jeff-o-cakes, taking them away from me, singing ‘There ain’t no mountain high enough…’