The play is still in development stage.
Set in a park, this play centres around two main characters ‘Tree’ and ‘Bench’. They are old friends and relate/interact with each other but never directly to users of the park. Bench was once a beautiful straight tree, made into a wooden bench. Tree is crooked and so was not altered by humans. The play is about a local community’s use of a park with threads of different stories that connect, or not – a homeless man, an immigrant family, a man and his dog, teenagers and more. The play starts in Spring and ends in Spring, going through each season (hence the title – Vivaldi’s Four Seasons will play at appropriate times). There is comedy and drama, with themes of casual racism, homelessness, LGBTQI issues, families etc. Tree and Bench are the threads that link the characters and scenes with Winter being the scene that breaks Tree and Bench suffers the consequences of hostile architecture as the metal brace placed on him prevents anyone lying on the bench. The scenes and stories come from the participants personal experiences.
WRITTEN BY Alaine Beek and participants of the Essence youth drama program Say it Out Loud 2022 and 2023.