The Contractor/The Changing Room by David Storey
"The Contractor" and "The Changing Room" are two compelling plays by David Storey that showcase his distinctive plot technique of omitting pivotal events to focus on the inner lives of characters. Staged initially at the Royal Court Theatre, these works present a deep exploration of the social dynamics within sports and work environments. In "The Changing Room," the action revolves around a rugby team's locker-room interactions, emphasizing camaraderie and the shared experiences of the players before and after a game. Conversely, "The Contractor" depicts the physical labor of setting up a wedding tent, illustrating the collective effort of the workers, including the involvement of the middle-class family they serve.
Both plays highlight the vibrancy of routine activities and the relationships formed through teamwork, often void of traditional conflict, instead reflecting a communal critique of the outside world. Storey captures the essence of ordinary life through naturalistic dialogue, punctuated by moments of humor and rhythmic exchanges, which resonate with audiences. The plays reveal the extraordinary aspects of everyday existence, turning mundane interactions into poetic expressions of human experience, often enriched by local dialect and musical interludes. Overall, Storey’s works invite viewers to appreciate the subtleties of life as they unfold in shared spaces.
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The Contractor/The Changing Room by David Storey
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First produced:The Contractor, 1969 (first published, 1970); The Changing Room, 1971(first published, 1972)
Type of work: Plays
The Work
Companion pieces first produced at the Royal Court Theatre, these two plays are the most striking examples of Storey’s plot technique of omitting the play’s central event from the onstage action in favor of dramatizing the characters’ inner states of being. The omitted events consist of a rugby match in one play and a wedding in the other. In The Changing Room, Storey substitutes locker-room action and conversation for the game; The Contractor substitutes the construction and dismantling of a wedding tent for the wedding ceremony.
The main feature of both plays is the physical activity that creates a bond among the participants and is seldom realized in situations outside of sports or the workplace. What makes the routines in work or play so vibrant and what sets these plays apart is the absence of conflict, except for the communally shared criticism of the outside world. For Storey, teamwork can reach heights that “like art, [can become] something transcending, both to the performer and observer.”
The clock in the brutally rough game of rugby runs constantly, and time-outs occur only for disabling injuries. The Changing Room’s locker-room rituals take place before a game, during a time-out, and at the end. All thirteen men on the team are at one point or another naked and participate in towel-slapping and joking with a flow of energy that is both sensory and rhythmic. Similar rhythms are experienced by the crew constructing a wedding tent for their boss’s daughter’s wedding in The Contractor. Although middle class, the owner of the company and his family have moments in which they join in the spirit of the work. It is into this physical rhythm and flow of energy that the audience is drawn.
Ordinary lives and dialogue, consisting exclusively of nondramatic conversations that reflect the daily lives of most people, inform the plays. Within the plays’ ordinary events the extraordinary is contained. Storey dramatizes life as it is lived. In the fragments of conversational exchanges, characters reveal the dramas of their inner lives. In both plays, Storey creates poetry from the naturalistic dialogue, much of it in local dialect and some of it in bursts of song.
Bibliography
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Hutchings, William. The Plays of David Storey: A Thematic Study. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988.
Hutchings, William, ed. David Storey: A Casebook. New York: Garland, 1992.
Jackson, Dennis, and Wendy Perkins. “David Storey.” In British Novelists Since 1960. Vol. 207 in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999.
Kalson, Albert. “Insanity and the Rational Man in the Plays of David Storey.” Modern Drama 19 (June, 1976): 111-128.
Kerensky, Oleg. “David Storey.” In The New British Drama: Fourteen Playwrights Since Osborne and Pinter. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1977.
Liebman, Herbert. The Dramatic Art of David Storey: The Journey of a Playwright. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Pittock, Malcolm. “David Storey and Saville: A Revaluation.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 32, no. 3 (1996): 208-227.
Pittock, Malcolm. “Revaluing the Sixties: The Sporting LifeRevisited.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 26, no. 2 (1990): 96-108.
Quigley, Austin E. “The Emblematic Structure and Setting of David Storey’s Plays.” Modern Drama 22 (September, 1979): 259-276.
Rees, Jasper. “The Last of the Angry Young Men.” Independent, July 14, 1998, p. 10.
Taylor, John Russell. “David Storey.” In The Second Wave . London: Methuen, 1971.
Taylor, John Russell. David Storey. In Vol. 239 of Writers and Their Work, edited by Ian Scott-Kilbert. London: Longman Group, 1974.