Part of 37 Plays, a national playwriting project to create a series of 37 brand new plays that reflect the world we live in today.

SYNOPSIS

A One Man Performance of a tragicomedy.

Ezra and Terry are cellmates serving long-term prison sentences during the 80's. An unlikely friendship develops between them as they flirt with Chocolate Hobnobs, heroin and Shakespeare themes explored include: addiction, illiteracy, mental health, rehabilitation, religion, freedom.

Trigger Warnings: Locker room humour, A few C bombs, and drug talk.

About the playwright

I live in Brixton with my flatmate and our dog Lucy. Writing isn't really my strong suit – not that I'm bad at it, but it's not something I love. I write because I need material for performing, which is what I'm ok at.

Early 2011 I reinvented myself as Spoken Word artist Uncle Errol after seeing Mr. Gee perform at the Ritzy one evening. My spoken word poetry has made it into three feature-length films and has even been turned into visual art that's been shown in exhibitions. I've also won a couple of awards and slams along the way.

During the lockdown, I couldn't perform live, so I tried my hand at playwriting. I came up with a one-man show loosely based on my own experiences – it's about cellmates during the 80s, talking about heroin, Chocolate Hobnobs, and Shakespeare. I named it "Something to Take Off the Edge," which is a line from Hamlet.

The play got selected by the RSC's 37 play initiative. I immediately signed up for the Camden Fringe festival to get it ready for the stage. In the early stages, I performed 10-minute sections of the play at various scratch nights, including the Royal Court Theatre. Now, I'm preparing to return to the same theatre in order to perform the whole thing live in the bar area for the RSC's 37 play event. It's pretty cool to see how far everything has come.

In partnership with Intermission Youth