One Hour Theatre Company staged a script-in-hand reading of The Pact, David Lloyd’s ‘political Faust play for our moment’, at the Studio Theatre, Edge Hill University, on Friday 14 July 2024.
The author introduced the play, as follows,
Blank, a revolutionary organizer wearing out his days in remote confinement after leading a failed insurrection, frets and fumes at his inability to influence events. Then Malina arrives, as if in answer to his call. But who is she? What is her history? Is she to be trusted or is she just another informant, sent to lure him into a doomed attempt to reinvigorate the insurrection and thus secure its final defeat? And what is it she really wants, with her nihilistic delight in insurrectionary violence and her professed admiration for his leadership?
Does she serve the police or the movement, work for Blank’s re-empowerment or for his destruction? And in the end, who uses whom to gain what ends? Are both of them just pawns in some larger plot? Are all the strings being pulled by the disembodied agents of the state or is there a hope that Blank and Malina might outplay them at the devil’s game?
At a time when radical political movement seem to have stalled and dispersed, when violent insurgency on the left and the right seems an option that is at once alluring and futile, when ubiquitous surveillance and pervasive state violence foreclose every emancipatory movement, and state forces themselves increasingly resemble gangs of outlaws, The Pact stages an anatomy of our contradictions and perplexities.
Featuring internationally reputed actors Mark Lambert and Missy Maramara, this staged reading of The Pact offers a unique chance to preview the play in its final stages and for the audience to contribute your own post-production comments to the writer, David Lloyd, and the director, Victor Merriman, and to participate in its development. ENDS
A full recording of that event, dedicated to the memory of our esteemed colleague, Professor Ricardo G Abad (Director, Arete Centre, University of Ateneo de Manila; https://arete.ateneo.edu/), is available here: The Pact (2023) (youtube.com)