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A review by spinesinaline
Carried Away on the Crest of a Wave by David Yee
4.25
So good! I wish I could’ve seen this performed. I read a library copy but I think I’m gonna need to pick up a copy for myself.
This collection of plays is inspired by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The playwright talks about his process in the introduction as he interviewed a number of people who were survived the disaster, though the stories and characters in his plays are fictional. All of the characters have been affected in some way by the tsunami, whether directly or indirectly. Some of their stories look at how they are preparing or facing the aftermath, while others focus more on the characters' daily lives, using the tsunami as more of a background event.
I saved my favourite passage from one of the plays:
"Pretend you are in a hospital. Or a busy street. Or in a theatre. Pretend you are in a theatre and you're sitting next to people you haven't met. Now, maybe someone asks the time, and you tell him it's almost 8:00, the show should be starting soon. He nods and you go back to your lives. And you don't even notice that this man bears a striking resemblance to your father. Even to you. You will never know that the man was born in the same hospital you were. You won't know if he has children at home, waiting for him ... or if he lives alone, or what he watches on television before he goes to sleep. You won't know this man contracted a rare blood disease on vacation in Maldives. You will never know that the hospital he goes to will experience a shortage of his blood type for transfusion. And so you won't know when this man dies. And then it will truly be of no consequence that the blood he needed courses in your veins. Because he only ever asked you the time. And you only ever told him it was 8:00. The show should be starting soon." (p. 59)
This collection of plays is inspired by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The playwright talks about his process in the introduction as he interviewed a number of people who were survived the disaster, though the stories and characters in his plays are fictional. All of the characters have been affected in some way by the tsunami, whether directly or indirectly. Some of their stories look at how they are preparing or facing the aftermath, while others focus more on the characters' daily lives, using the tsunami as more of a background event.
I saved my favourite passage from one of the plays:
"Pretend you are in a hospital. Or a busy street. Or in a theatre. Pretend you are in a theatre and you're sitting next to people you haven't met. Now, maybe someone asks the time, and you tell him it's almost 8:00, the show should be starting soon. He nods and you go back to your lives. And you don't even notice that this man bears a striking resemblance to your father. Even to you. You will never know that the man was born in the same hospital you were. You won't know if he has children at home, waiting for him ... or if he lives alone, or what he watches on television before he goes to sleep. You won't know this man contracted a rare blood disease on vacation in Maldives. You will never know that the hospital he goes to will experience a shortage of his blood type for transfusion. And so you won't know when this man dies. And then it will truly be of no consequence that the blood he needed courses in your veins. Because he only ever asked you the time. And you only ever told him it was 8:00. The show should be starting soon." (p. 59)