joey is a new play by sean burn touring in June 2019

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1981 and a hard right government makes savage cuts. tories wear hang nelson mandela badges. urban wastelands, poverty increases. tebbit tells the rocketing unemployed to ‘get on their bike’. riots, racist attacks, police fitting up black youth. labour party split. hunger strikes & terrorist attacks. royal wedding. yorkshire ripper caught. aids reaches uk.

overnight playground chants ov spaz change to joey because joey deacon who lived with cerebral palsy appears on blue peter.

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​friend in same year / no-care home, played stiff little fingers loud, drew anarchist signs on walls, wore dm’s with red laces, fought to do cookery at school & the day after joey became a derogatory term declared they were now called joey, still a breath-taking act ov reclamation playing on my mind still even tho they did a runner that day.

joey is a slippery fucker, a high octane monologue about multiple possibilities for survival, theyve travelled far & wide, joeys traveling still