Brown Bread ‘dead’

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A new play written by Susie Miller Oduniyi, Jeff Blair and Fay Dennis is a counter-progressive story of drug-related death. Through the metaphor of bread, it tells the story of a group of people buying a new drug that is promised to deliver the ultimate pleasure: a pleasure that risks death.  Deaths from drug and alcohol misuse in England and Wales hit a 20-year high in 2020.

 

Brown Bread is part of a digital exhibition ‘After Progress’ curated by Unit of Play, Goldsmiths University of London.

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https://www.afterprogress.com

 

The overdose epidemic is raging globally. Deaths in the UK have just risen for yet another year. There are rumours of a new drug on the scene, which promises the ultimate high: a pleasure that sinks so far into the body that it leaves the lungs forgetting to breath. Gathered in an east London flat, one unsuspecting group are negotiating the selling and buying of this ‘Brown Bread’ – cockney rhyming slang for dead. Through the patter of bread, drugs and addiction, and rhythms of poetry, music and pros, we are taken on a fantastical rollercoaster of a ride through the stories of these lives lived with substances: the yearning, shame, trauma, injustice, as well as the laughter, joy, and care. Buckle up!