New Project: "It's Dinner Time!" Play, Written and Directed by Maddie Cox and Dylan Day

Dylan Day is the co-writer/director of York Drama Society's Week 11 Summer Show, It's Dinner Time!, which has been a four year passion project alongside long-term friend and fellow Theatre Student Maddie Cox. Auditions are set to begin next week, with the performance to be aired May 9th, and the subsequent episodes May 10th, and 11th.

WARNING

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The Monty Python SPAM Song

It's Dinner Time! Play Written By Maddie Cox and Dylan Day Synopsis:

The Family Show is The Land’s flagship television show aired daily, teaching viewers the values of SPAM -- Society of the Patriotic, Aristocratic and Materialistic -- and the enigmatic Marshal. But when family feuds threaten to tear the show apart, a dark past is revealed, and The Land comes under threat from its own creation.

You can read a longer synopsis here.

Commentary

It's Dinner Time! began life in 2021 as Maddie's groups A-Level devising performance at City College Norwich. It was inspired by Steven Berkoff's theatrical adaptation of Franz Kafka's short story, The Trial, where Joseph K is arrested for a crime that he didn't commit and which isn't revealed.

Maddie was the sole creator of the idea, whilst Dylan (at the same sixth form) was in a different group. However, he saw the great potential in the world of the play and approached Maddie to let him help develop it into a longer performance.

As fate would have it, the pair would end up at the same university, studying Theatre at York. And so, Dylan Day joined the It's Dinner Time! Play team. In first year they ferociously scribbled a first draft. It was riddled with plot holes and underdeveloped characters, but the seeds of a great idea (I selfishly proclaim) had been sown. They would spend the next two years perfecting the manuscript off-and-on, as life inevitably got in the way.

The world was expanded from the nucleus of SPAM to include the Marshal - the leader of SPAM - and Mr. Wolf - the director-producer of The Family Show, and a lurking predator - and The Butcher - providing a gruesome backstory to SPAM - and Ravoscoffski - a puppet-master who serves as the comic relief, much like The Mechanicals in William Shakespeare's Midsummer Nights Dream. Yes, that was a slight comparison to Shakespeare!

It's Dinner Time! became a play imbued with symbolism, and the world of SPAM burgeoned.

Themes and Symbolism

SPAM

The Society of the Patriotic, Aristocratic, and Materialistic – a parody of Capitalism and the American Dream. SPAM is a Totalitarian party that controls the minds of subjects through propaganda and food.

SPAM is also a food. Its consumption asserts the people’s affinity to the Party and the Marshal; the illusion is kept alive. SPAM is made from the “weakest” in society and any enemies to the state - namely, the gutter rats.

THE GUTTER RATS

The marginalised and dehumanised people of The Land. They are literally perceived as rats due to the illusion. They live in the gutters and are blamed for all The Land’s problems.

THE MARSHAL

The Marshal (or Marshal SPAM) is the unseen leader of the SPAM party. Like Big Brother, he watches over the people, and he is presented as a benevolent figure who wants only the very best for His citizens. The story of The Great Conflict of Deluge and Famine (as mentioned by Another Fake Father in episode three), commemorates His victory against the old oppressors and the gutter rats.

EPISODES

The play is set in an artificial world and flits between televised shows and the “off-camera” life of the characters (but even then, they are constantly being watched.)

We use Episodes instead of Scenes to indicate this theme. It suggests that the scenes are within the ideological framework of the SPAM state. Static 1 & 2 are so-called because they represent a fracturing of the on-camera world – Daughter, because she isn’t eating, is slipping from the illusion of the television show to the “real-world”, the one dominated by smog and the looming factory. Illusion and reality are key themes in the play.

STORY-TELLING, NURSERY RHYMES, SONGS

A key theme in the play is reality versus illusion, or fact versus imagination. The play uses monologues, nursery-rhymes, and songs to demonstrate the illusionary, dream-like control of SPAM, as well as highlighting its own artificiality.

Totalitarian parties rely on the ambiguity of story (whilst ironically crushing free expression) to make themselves maintain power. This is illustrated by the Marshal and The Butcher, who are each “legends” told by the people, and so they become much more than “men”. This play hopes to illustrate how stories construct beliefs; how perceptions can be manipulated.

ADVERTISEMENTS

The play features two advertisements, as well as an unseen (but heard) television sequence. These will be pre-recorded and either projected onto the back curtain (see stage design section) or displayed on a monitor situated within a “television frame”. If either of these aren’t viable, then audio-only will suffice.

The purpose of these advertisements is to illustrate how even the audience are being sucked into the consumerist propaganda of The Land.

THE POWER OF FOUR

The number four recurs in It's Dinner Time!

There is the ominous Studio 4 (where people go and never return); the use of SPAM four times in the SPAM advertisement jingles; Mrs. Roberts mentions waiting four hours; Mr. Wolf says it's "four o'clock"; Another Fake Father is audition four - but, what does it mean?

Instead of the Holy Trinity, SPAM has The Four - The Marshal, Mr. Wolf, The Butcher, and Ravoscoffski. Each represent a different part of society. Each have their own agendas.

More Commentary

The It's Dinner Time! play is a culmination of Dylan and Maddie's writers' philosophy, which they subtly indicated in The Way to Happiness, a short performance about the Church of Seraphim (based on scientology), which controlled its subjects through a special serum called Mendaxium, and was presented at the University of York as their second-year political project. The pair would like to one day revisit this piece, expand and improve it.

Their philosophy includes larger-than-life characterisation, expressionism amalgamated with the natural (the domestic - or in the case of The Way to Happiness, the court room), social class dynamics, and revolution. Dylan is particularly aware of these in his current playwriting project, a dystopian, sci-fi, fantasy (and whatever else he decides to chuck in on a whim) play inspired by the German expressionism film, Metropolis. He also recognises these themes in his novel, The Falling Sun.

(He's just trying to convince you that he's an auteur!)

Ultimately, Dylan and Maddie wish to entertain, and they write for themselves before anyone else.

It's Dinner Time! is part of a trilogy (and long-term project) that will explore similar themes of repression and Totalitarianism.

The trilogy -

• It's Dinner Time!

• The Way to Happiness

• Waste Not, Want Not (set in Victorian England)

It's Dinner Time! will be presented at the Drama Barn, York, on May 9th, 10th, and 11th. Be sure to get a ticket when they go on sale, or risk missing the spectacle of a life time!

You can keep up to date by following us on Instagram - @itsdinnertime_dramasoc

This blog post was made possible by SPAM - the food of the people, for the consumption of all ages.