Next Swan Down the River Might be Black

Next Swan Down the River Might be Black

by Sean Burn

• Launched in conjunction with the Tara Theatre’s production in London prior to a national tour.
• From acclaimed playwright Sean Burn Time Out Play of the Year 2004, Peggy Ramsay Foundation Award 2006, Dadafest.
• Shortlisted Artist 2009, BBC’s Alfred Bradley Bursary Award.
• This hard-hitting play celebrates the diversity of our society in which one in four experience mental ill-health.
• Ideal for use in schools, colleges, youth theatres, amateur and community groups

‘you think you won’t survive, but you do…’

Next Swan Down the River Might be Black is a poetic and personal response to being sectioned under the mental health act.

We follow the shifting alliances of three young women on a psychiatric ward over one momentous week. Cerys, nineteen, black and depressive, Kay, twenty-six, white and bipolar, and Zee, a Pakistani-British student nurse and former service user, are all fighting a faceless institution in their own way. Their happiness, health and friendships are at stake as they struggle to find creative paths through life. The play examines diversity, friendships, sexualities and power at a time of rising uncertainties.

About the author

Sean Burn‘s plays have been staged by a number of companies across Europe and in the UK. His thirty short films have received screenings worldwide, as well as at Tate Modern and National Film Theatre Studios, London. The latest – Widescream – was joint winner of 2010’s Old Vic short monologue competition. His latest solo show – Bastilles Englan – taking poet John Clare’s asylum break out and five day walk to freedom in 1841 has toured internationally. He was shortlisted for a Dadafest Disability Arts Award 2009 for Next Swan Down the River Might be Black.

Other plays published by Aurora Metro written by sean burn include: Joey and Next Swan Down the River Might be Black