Beyond Hillsborough by Joanne Halliday Layla Dowie

Author:Joanne Halliday, Layla Dowie
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783196333
Publisher: Oberon Books
Published: 2016-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Taxi Scene

Actor, ROGAN TAYLOR walks on C.S. Projection: Liverpool streets – Anfield. Places his two chairs down next to each other. As scene progresses projection takes us through the Liverpool streets.

Two other actors enter S.L and S.R. Each have two chairs with them. They place them down, facing the audience.

ACTOR: Rogan Taylor, writer, broadcaster and Director of the Football Industry Group.

ACTOR: Steve Rotherham, Labour MP, Liverpool.

ACTOR: Brian Reade, Sports journalist for The Daily Mirror.

ALL : Taxi!

Three actors playing taxi drivers enter, each carrying a chair and they each place in front of the others. The action takes up the whole stage.

ROGAN : You know when somebody first paid me to think about football, pretty neat eh? (Pause.) Erm, I wrote down FOOT, BALL and FAN. (Pause.) And I spent a couple of months unpacking that (Pause.) because there’s something absolutely weird about football. What does the word ‘fan’ mean? Yeah… it’s short for fanatic. Outside of Palestine and one or two other odd places in the world – fanaticism is not something that attracts ordinary people is it? You’ve kinda got to give your life away. You know who wants to be a fanatic? You know what Italians call football fans? It’s Tifosi, T.I.F.O.S.I. – what does it mean, exactly what it says – ‘tifosi’, people with typhus. The Tifosi – anyone fancy typhus? Actually no – I’ll give it a miss if you don’t mind. In Brazil – the word is torcedor, T.O.R.C.E.D.O.R, it comes from the verb, to wring water out of washing – the English would be, ‘the mangled one!’. Anyone wanna get mangled? No, I think I’ll give that a miss as well. So the words that fans used for being a fan describe a condition that no sane human being would actually volunteer for, isn’t that weird? So on 15 April 1989 – I’m at Hillsborough, not in Leppings Lane but in the West Stand and we watched the disaster unfold.

STEVE ROTHERHAM: I was there, but I swapped my ticket, 15 minutes, it was probably even less than that before the start of the game. I’d gone there the year before, semi-final against Nottingham Forest, very differently policed but uncomfortable in those pens, I was a brickie then, not a politician – so I was fit, not like now (Laughs.) and I was feeling the pressure, and so this year, even though I had one for the Leppings Lane end I thought, I’ll try and swap this. I tried for a bit and eventually someone said, ‘here are, I’ll have that an’ go with me mates’. So I didn’t know this lad but we swapped and they went in…and so that always plays on ya mind a little bit.

TAXI DRIVER 1: Cos I remember when I first ’eard the news it had been delayed, I was made up cos it meant I’d get home in time to watch the match… you know, before I realised what was ’appening. I ’ad mates there yeah, they were

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