‘I wanted a life like they had.’
‘Ordinary?’
‘Yeah. And long.’
‘We just came here at a bad time, I suppose.’
​​​​Daisy Hall’s Bellringers is a brave debut. A bold metaphorical play, imbued with science and superstition, it is geographically specific but temporally vague, and steeped in wider ambiguity. Is this the fourteenth century, or the twenty-second? Is it our reality or someplace else? Climate crisis or the Apocalypse? To paraphrase the characters, is it the end of the world or is it just weather? But some things are certain: it is dark and funny and filled with strange magic, and at its heart Bellringers is an unmistakable story of love, hope, and heroism.
The bittersweet two-hander follows Clement and Aspinall as they wait in the bell tower of a rural church for the eye of a colossal storm to reach them. Why? Because in a world beset with omens and (un)natural disasters that seem to multiply and increase with each passing season, their desperate society clings to the historical superstition that the ringing of church bells can dispel a storm. And if it can end a storm, maybe it can banish the omens and the other disasters too. Maybe it can save lives when there are fewer and fewer lives to save. ‘Maybe there’s something we can do.’
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But as Clement and Aspinall wait beneath the knotted bell ropes it is impossible to ignore how many bellringers before them have died in the execution of this probably futile task. So this could be their final night, or it could fix things forever. Or the storm might just fizzle out somewhere over Chadlington. Or the storm might never end. So should they ring the bells?
‘We’d only like to live — for ages, ideally. But at least through the night.’
This is a play about being young at the end of the world. And it is a play about finding a basis for hope that does not rely on everything being fixed. It’s hard to be hopeful when it feels like nothing you do can make a difference and, in Bellringers, hope tussles with resignation and a terrified refusal to engage. Yet although the play is bound with a sense of tragic inevitability — surely no one and nothing can be saved? — it sings with irrational, irrepressible hope. Because ringing the bells is an act of faith, hope, and love (or more precisely charity, which originally meant a mingled love of the divine, of one’s neighbour, and of one’s self). To ring the bells is to say that ‘when there’s people you love relying on you, you do whatever, don’t you? Whatever you can. Even if the chance is small.’ And to ring the bells is to turn to the person you love most in the world and ask ‘What’ll we do tomorrow?’ even if there aren’t many tomorrows left. To ring the bells is to dream of the future but to find hope in things that make no plans, like love for love’s sake, acts that ask nothing in return, and the little wonders that can fill our days. A joke, a murmuration of starlings, an apple. Or one last evening in the company of someone you love. That might be enough. It might have to be enough.
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Jessica Lazar (Director of Bellringers)
July 2024
Songs from the rehearsal room playlist...
Forever Young (Alphaville)
Heaven (Talking Heads)
Mad Rush (Philip Glass)
Reincarnation (Susanne Sundfør)
To Be A Papa (The Felice Brothers)
The Young People (Lankum)
We Might Be Dead by Tomorrow (Solo)
Wriggle (Cosmo Sheldrake)​