Random Playtext

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by debbie tucker green

A new edition of the award-winning drama. An urgent play about the senseless killing of a black schoolboy, from one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary British playwriting.

Death never used to be for the young.
You get up.
You go bout your business.
You expect to come back.

A young black woman starts telling us about her day. She speaks in a continuous present tense: The alarm clock goes. She tries to ignore it. She goes downstairs. Her parents are nagging her younger brother that he'll be late for school. He leaves in a rush, the parents grumble. She gets ready for work. Then the police are at the door.

The boy has been killed in a random knife attack. And their world implodes...

Written with a vivid immediacy that captures the wonderfully observed idiosyncrasies of an ordinary family starting what they think is an ordinary day, Random is another provocative tour de force from Britain's leading black female playwright. It had its original premiere on the main stage of the Royal Court Theatre, London.