By journalist turned playwright Angus Harrison, Polko is a dark memory play centred around three characters: one who's returned home under a cloud of failure, one who never left home, and one who disappeared. Inspired by reports during lockdown of young people moving back to live with their parents, and it being the largest such migration since the Great Depression, the play is about being back where you started, and the refuge that memory can be when it seems like the future's been cancelled. Polko is set entirely in the front-seats of a car parked in a hometown that Emma doesn't remember, that Joe has been left behind in, and that the missing Polko has been seemingly driven from.
As teenagers, Emma, Joe and Polko thought they'd never grow apart. Then time passed. When Emma returns to the suburb of their childhood ten years later she discovers nothing, and everything, has changed. Joe is stuck, living with his mum while working part-time in a hotel; and Polko has vanished, leaving a cloud of stories and misremembered nights in his wake.
Angus Harrison said, “I started writing Polko during the first lockdown, so while it isn't strictly a “pandemic play”, that's certainly the atmosphere from which it emerged. I was fascinated by the emotional landscape created by the Covid-19 crisis, and similarly seismic economic shocks across the past decade or so. As huge numbers of young adults found themselves living at home again, sliding back to the bottom of whatever ladder they'd been attempting to climb for most of their lives, it struck me that an entire generation of young people were getting older without necessarily being able to grow up. This play is about and for those people: the unemployed, bored, and rudderless, suspended in space and time. But it's also about the mystical, slippery nature of memory; what time does to friendships and where we turn when the future is no longer obviously available to us.”
Angus Harrison is a writer from Bristol. He was one of ten writers selected by Papatango for their Isolated But Open monologue collection during the pandemic, which was published by Nick Hern Books. He wrote, directed and produced a short radio play as part of the BBC's New Creatives scheme, which aired on BBC Radio 4 and was showcased at the ICA. As a journalist he was a staff writer at VICE for three years, where he wrote about politics, society and nightclubs. He has also written for the Guardian, Dazed Magazine, The Outline, and The Face.
Emily Ling Williams was previously Trainee Director at Paines Plough, a Resident Director at the Almeida Theatre and Jerwood Assistant Director at the Young Vic. She is currently an Origins Artist at Headlong.She previously directed Wasted (Lyric Hammersmith), The Full Works, The Key Workers Cycle (Almeida), text me when you're home, 5 Plays (Young Vic) and Lucky Cigarette (New Earth).
RJG Productions focuses on new writing and is currently producing It's Headed Straight Towards Us (Park Theatre) Polko (Paines Plough) and Bitter Lemons (Pleasance & Bristol Old Vic). Recent credits include Brilliant Jerks (Southwark Playhouse) Amélie the Musical (Criterion Theatre, West End), A Hundred Words for Snow (Trafalgar Studios, UK Tour & VAULT Festival) and the original production of ANNA X by Joseph Charlton.
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