Then
Then is a play by David Campton ()[].
Contents
The original text
Sitting alone amid a wasteland of nuclear destruction, his head covered by a brown paper bag, Phythick laments the loss of all that was, and could have been. Then a girl walks by, her head also covered by a paper bag. They talk: he revealing that he was a science teacher; she that she was "Miss Europe." They fall in love, but cannot kiss, cannot remove their paper bags for fear of radiation. The bags are a crinkling barrier between them-and perhaps must always be so. Yet can there be hope? Do they dare? A cloud comes over the moon as Phythick slowly raises his hand towards the bag covering his face.
First published in A Smell of Burning and Then. Two Plays by Dramatists Play Service Inc., 1969, and in the USA as an acting edition in Now and Then by Samuel French.
Published for use in South African schools in the collection The Distance Remains and Other Plays, compiled by Robin Malan, Oxford University Press, 1996.
Translations and adaptations
Performance history in South Africa
Sources
Robin Malan. 1996.The Distance Remains and Other Plays, Cape Town: Oxford University Press.
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