Midnight Revolutions

A naïve photographer wanders through Havana, searching for Cuba’s present and his own past.  Robbed, he is rescued by a flower-seller, whose own life is scarred by the conflicting ambitions of her family.  While the older generation clings proudly to the noble hopes of its youth, the seaside promenade of today is haunted by the regrets of the outcast and the restlessness of those born in more recent times.

The sea.  The sea, like the desert.  Blueness and thirst, that’s what I remember.  Look:  I had this tattoo done three days before I got into the boat to get away from here.  So the god Yemayá wouldn’t abandon me in that madness.  

You think you can do anything when you’re 17; you can leave the shit behind and swim until the horizon welcomes you, as if you could forget everything.  

No, I don’t want to study.  No, I don’t want to work for a shitty wage.  Go where I live and look at the old men:  they sit playing dominos and drinking rum until their livers collapse.  They play 1950s music and say ‘that was the life’.  My life is now, damn it; no one has the right to paralyse me or tell me I can still have a dignified future as a builder or in the police.  

I hate uniforms.    

Midnight Revolutions was first performed during the Royal Court Theatre’s Rough Cuts season in 2008, directed by Indhu Rubasingham.

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