Buckets by Adam Barnard

This term we will be providing the technical support for the Play Buckets.

Review

A puckish meditation on a fundamental theme: how we give purpose and shape to lives overshadowed by the knowledge of our own mortality… it startles, touches and wryly amuses… a neat balance of absurdity and pathos. –The Times

Barnard’s script names no characters, assigns no lines to individuals. A scene may be a single line (just five words in one case) or an extended scena but the actors here make each vignette a situation full of meaning… vibrant, sometimes poignant… while it looks at dying, it celebrates life and presents a wicked sense of humour. –British Theatre Guide

Similar in its DNA to Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information… buckets is a freewheeling series of vignettes on the subject of death… Exuberant, likeable and snappy…winningly absurdist… it will make you feel better about your own mortality. –Time Out

About the Author

buckets is Adam Barnard’s first full-length play. His one-act plays include Closer Scrutiny and Too Small To Be A Planet.

Amazon

As can be read above the play has no stage direction or characters so is in fact wide open for interpretation by the theatre company. It would be classed as a contemporary play.

The direct notes from the beginning of the script are

buckets can be performed by any number and composition of actors.

Gender, where referenced in dialogue, can be generally be switched – ‘he’ for ‘she’, ‘mother’ for ‘father’, etc. Some singular voices could be made plural – ‘we’ for ‘I’, etc.

A line that’s just an ellipsis (…) is a moment where a speaker:

wants to communicate but can’t, or

communication without words, or

refuses to communicate, or

is otherwise occupied.

Where a line ends without punctuation, a choice should be made.

A new paragraph usually indicates a change of speaker.

Everything’s an option

This text went to press before the end of rehearsals and so may differ slightly from the play as performed