Sap

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Lazar has her kiss the soon-to-be girlfriend tenderly after having previously engaged in an intense balancing act with the man. It's a striking summary of Daphne's precarious equation. From the poetic elements of the writing and its visual allegories down to the staging and performances, Sap is a gem.

Rafaella Marcus is a 2021 MGCFutures bursary winner and JMK Award finalist. Her work as a writer & director focuses on new writing and bringing to the stage marginalised voices, especially women. She is currently developing new self-penned play Sap, and writing new audio drama for Big Finish TBA.There is a tough truth with theatre and art in general that it has never been able to wash its own face, or exist as a purely commercial venture. It has actually always required more money going into it than will come out. So art must be subsidised to exist, which means that decisions to cut government funding for art are ideological. A modern tale of coercion and abuse at the expense of a bisexual woman echoes the ancient myth of Apollo and Daphne. The fable in question is that of Apollo and Daphne. The first very much obsessed with the latter, who is prepared to do whatever is required to reject him. In the mythical version, the final solution to the unwanted attentions arrives from Daphne’s own parents, who turn her into a plant as soon as Apollo gets too close. In Rafaella Marcus’ modern interpretation, this transformation is more metaphorical – albeit described so vividly that we can’t tell where reality ends and gives space to imagination. Fresh from a critically acclaimed run at Edinburgh and with The Plaines Plough, Marcus’s debut is also a Soho Playhouse winner of Excellence in Theatre. Sap is an enlightening, thought provoking drama that explores with maturity the nature of trust, truth, control and cohesion as well as the complexities of contemporary relationships. Rafaella Marcus’ Sap is loosely based on the myth of Daphne and Apollo; the show centres around Daphne, a bisexual woman living in the contemporary world. Daphne meets a guy she describes as ‘exactly what you think of when you think of just a guy’, and they have a one-night stand. She then meets and falls in love with a woman and fails to tell her about her sexuality due to the opinions the woman possesses about bisexuality. There’s more to the story than this, but I’m leaving it at that, so as not to spoil the plot.

The common semantics of trees appear throughout; the title itself and recurring themes of roots, planting her in the ground. Mentions of decay and trees overtaking a house, almost like nature is overtaking. These moments, along with more conversation-like script work well together, the poetic descriptions of her being ‘rooted’ into the ground in fear help the audience understand her psyche. Moreso, they help her deal with what is going on, she’s able to distance herself from the situation and focus on what her body is feeling- almost like a defence mechanism. There should be more schemes into which wealthy actors, producers and directors can easily pay a percentage of their earnings, to be redistributed. If they want to have a hand in deciding where it goes, that’s fine. If not, I’ll happily run it. We need to have formalised ways of redistributing this kind of money. The other thing I would make compulsory, if I could, is that every company with profits above a certain threshold has to do some arts patronage. Writer Rafaella Marcus comments, Seeing the reception to SAP's Edinburgh run was one of the most moving experiences of my life, and I'm thrilled that we now get to bring the show to audiences across the UK. The opportunity to tour and share ideas nationally is an essential part of our cultural lives and I'm grateful to every venue that has opened their space to this strange, mythic play. I can't wait to share the extraordinary talent of our cast and creative team in new theatres, with new people, and I hope anyone who needs to sit with the play's story of liberation, power, and transformation will be able to do so. Jessica Clark plays this Daphne with a frantic edge – the character’s need to please makes words catapult out of her before she has time to think them through. Clark also does a remarkable job of finding light and shade in a text that is dense but has might. Centring on the experiences of bisexual women, who are significantly more likely than heterosexual and lesbian women to be abused by their partner, it blends the past with the reality of the present. Peppered with artful what-could-have-been moments and self-aware sides, this mammoth story is squeezed skilfully into 70 minutes – and for the most part, it drives.I have been in several meetings recently with theatres who have expressed an interest in my work and those conversations have come down to me being asked “Do you have a great producer we could co-produce with?” or “Do you have connections with other theatres we could co-produce with?” or “Do you have a celebrity who you have a good relationship with?”