Written by David Hayward

About the show

Chastity is a short (about 15 minute) comedy that takes place late at night at a wedding reception which is starting to wind down. It is a simple boy meets girl story. As so often happens in theatre (and real life), this simple scenario has a lot of comic potential. It was one of the plays included in Emerging From The Collective Unconscious.

From the writer

In 1998 we were talking about what makes a show popular and what we would have to do to get sell out crowds at the Blue Room (or any other venue for that matter). And we came to the reluctant conclusion that a carefully crafted show would always lose out to the sexually sensationalist show (and unfortunately shows that are both carefully crafted and sexually sensationalist are rare).

Pondering this fact with some dismay I said that we should do a show called Chastity, Bestiality, and Necrophilia. I said this as a joke, but when I thought about it I liked the title. In my (possibly disturbed) head, it had rhythm and flair. So I got to work. With a name like Chastity, Bestiality, and Necrophilia it had to be a comedy (which suited me as I love comedies even though they are the hardest thing to do). "Maybe", I thought to myself, "I could have three acts or three separate but related pieces that corresponded to the three nouns in the title."

Six months later I knew a little bit more about how difficult it is to put together a decent script. I also found out how difficult it is to write about necrophilia and bestiality in a comic fashion without serious breaches of good taste (maybe someday when we are rich and famous enough to get away with it, we will do a late night show with some of this early material ;-).

However, I did have a short piece which made people laugh when they read it. This was Chastity, which is a little bit about about the hypocrisy of social mores, but more importantly about two people who were destined for one another.