Out of the Margins

"I am interested in people trying to find connection - HOW they do this shows everything." 

Alexander Zeldin's trilogy of work about society’s most marginalised (Beyond Caring was about zero-hour contract workers; Love, a homeless hostel at Christmas) concludes with the story of a community centre that’s been threatened with closure. A band of waifs and strays are thrown together by circumstance rather than choice; movingly, their gentle optimism always ends up outweighing their outrage at a government that outsources basic services to the individual by way of neglect. 

"I heard somewhere that every story is a 'stranger comes to town'. Here the stranger is Mason." This is how Alexander Zeldin begins his annotations, and he continues much in the same vein, guiding the reader through his creative process, almost as in conversation. "At one point I wanted to write about a flood. This [Hazel's line "It might rain"] is what is left of it. The insistent sense of rain never stopping." We get wonderful glimpses into moments of realisation, as if the playwright is also discovering for himself how his process works. "Action! Action leads to words - the best way for me to write." It's almost as if we're being personally guided around his world: "This whole bit is really about music", "This whole section is/should feel like a ballet". Along with lots more, including a note on the hardest scene he's ever had to write, and some big philosophical reflections on the nature of writing, this is a real insight into one of the most socially aware playwrights working today. 

The playwright admits Faith and Charity are very much covered by the play. "Hope is there too - but you have to find it!"