We went last week to Bradford to see a gritty modern
production of a play about the build up to a teenage suicide.
It began in the context of gang warfare and quickly
portrayed the first of several knife crimes.
The girl’s infatuation with and seduction by an older man followed,
leading to the portrayal of underage sex.
She actually appeared to come from quite a privileged background, albeit
one in which most of the responsibility for child rearing had been left to a
nanny who had personality issues of her own.
Her boyfriend was quickly sentenced for a violent offence so was removed
from the picture just as her father began to pressurise her into a forced
marriage. The lifestyle guru who had
encouraged her to lose her virginity to her boyfriend then pushed drugs on her,
which she took saying how unsure she is of what they really contained. It was her befuddled emergence from this drug
fuelled stupor, and the images of suicide she saw as she emerged, that led her
to takes her own life in a copycat manner using one of the ubiquitous knives
close by. There were some touching scenes
and some beautiful dialogue - but the move from being surrounded by rival gangs
to her death was inexorable.
The play was the Royal Shakespeare Company’s touring
production of Romeo and Juliet.
The top picture is a version of St James’ East Window with
Jesus centrally preaching the Sermon on the Mount to a crowd. It was produced during the first attempt at
an All Age Worship Sunday there two Sundays ago.
The bottom picture is a Fairtrain at St Michael’s, a version
of one which appears on the village mural in the Bronte Parsonage Car Park. It was produced there at All Age Worship last
Sunday when we celebrated becoming a Fair Trade Church and anticipates the ‘special’
which will run on the Keighley & Worth Valley railway in Fair Trade
Fortnight.
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