BU21

by Stuart Slade

“So you know how on the news these days there's just this endless stream of horrendous shit going down, like every single night? Suicide bombs, mass shootings, genocides, drone strikes, school massacres – it's like the end of the world or something... And you're kind of like – ‘Could I even cope if that stuff happened to me?’” Six young people are caught in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in the heart of London. By turns terrifying, inspiring, brutal, heartbreaking and hilarious, BU21 is verbatim theatre from the very near future.

Genres: Plays, Drama

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 5, 2017

About the author

Stuart Slade was Director of the Consulting Group at Forecast International in Newtown, CT, a company which provides Market Intelligence for the world's Aerospace/Defense industries. He was also the primary analyst for the company's Warships Forecast and Industrial & Marine Turbine Forecast. In other defense related areas, he wrote United States Strategic Bombers 1945-2012, Littoral Warfare: Ships and Systems, Navies in the Nuclear Age and Multinational Naval Operations. He was also the successful author of 14 published novels including an alternate history series that began with his 2007 novel The Big One. He died in December 2020.

Reviews

[pippa · Rating 4 out of 5]

reading this for my theatre class.. yeah there are monologues here

[Kylie · Rating 1 out of 5]

What an absolutely despicable and horseshit play. There is quite literally nothing of value in this work, and it's very existence is the exact kind of tragedy porn it derides throughout the story. It's not clever or moving or insightful, it's a bitter, spiteful, horrible little man imagining everyone else in the world is as nihilistic and empty as himself.

In the effort to not just go on a tirade insulting the playwright:

1. Clive is not a clever plot device, meant to show people the error of their racist ways. Writing a character specifically to sound like a man who becomes radicalized and then turning around accosting the audience for daring to believe this horribly shallow playwright might have made the muslim man the terrorist? Cheap. And completely ineffective (and frankly embarrassing for Slade) because I was never thinking "oh this horrible muslim must be the terrorist", I was only thinking "oh this horrible writer actually only included a muslim man to be a terrorist? yikes."

2. I think, at a basically level, most playwrights should ask themselves if they've failed what I like to call the Stephen King test. And in the Stephen King test, you look at your work and assess what percentage of women have had their naked bodies and breasts described in graphic detail. In the case of this play, it is every. single. woman. Maybe Clive's mother escaped sexualization... but that's about it. With a fun little added bonus of ableism in which the only character to find Ana attractive is an absolute hog of a man-- neatly aligning the sexuality of disabled people with the type of disgusting deviancy that is hooking up with your girlfriend's sister at their mother's funeral.

3. The creation of a fictional trauma effecting the rich British neighborhood to explore terrorism and violence, when there are so many true traumas existing in the world is simply in poor taste. If the reason for creating a false trauma is so that the character's can be crass and awful, perhaps that's a sign the work doesn't need to exist at all or isn't so true to reality as the playwright would like to pretend. There are plenty of people writing wonderful works on tragedy out there, don't waste your time with this pathetic imbecile playing make believe so he can wax poetic about dead bodies.

I won't waste any more of my time on this nonsense but I think it's worth asking: Did Stuart Slade donate his earnings from this show to charities serving victims of violence (or owls), or is he accosting his audiences for paying for tragedy porn and pocketing the profits?

I would give this zero stars if I could.

[Katie Toon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Loved it. Such a poignant story, and definitely something to be learned.

[Lucy Jennifer Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny despite it's tragedy

[Emily Farley · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favourite plays filled with complex characters and great monologues.

[Sophie Banning · Rating 5 out of 5]

An emotional complex read, I like how he uses the present tense so the actors aren’t as personally affected by the role.

[Jude Morse · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kind of crap attempt at dark humour. Look here if you want to pretend your good at acting my saying horrendous shit

[Lal · Rating 4 out of 5]

floss seni seviyorum

[Zizi Franses · Rating 4 out of 5]

*4.5 stars

Well written, great for monologues, and a captivating plot!

[Tilly Long]

what the actual fuck (review from 16 year old me)

Reading this again at 18 was wild, I actually understand it now lmao