This is the true story of a relationship (including a sexual relationship) which is cross cultural (Scottish/Greek). It is also inter generational - the Scottish woman is 60 years old and her own two sons are the same age as the Greek boy she falls in love with (26 years old) It raises important questions about the nature of the relationships we form with others and questions whether we merely replicate the models of our own parents relationships and try at the same time to heal our childhood relationships with our parents. We seek what is familiar even if it makes us suffer . Relationships always throw up the question of our own identity and how secure that is . Our partner often represents a symbol of something we lost or never had- rather than a person in their own right. Only the establishment of our own secure identity and self knowledge allows us to free ourselves and others from the prisons of our own pasts.This will be achieved when the Greek boy finally finds his lost father and the Scottish woman learns what it is to be a mother and leave childhood behind

This play references Hamlet and Oedipus Rex and discusses the relationship between fathers and mothers and their children. There is a search by both the Scottish woman and the Greek boy for a "lost" father figure. Romantic relationships are generally based on impossibility and dangerous addictive relationships are often tragic if they are allowed to continue. However, such unusual relationships come about through two people meeting across the generations because they share more than divides them. Such unusual relationships , help us to understand what actually motivates us in our relationships and how that motivation may stem from the example provided by our own parents' relationships. Destiny brings together two people from different generations with similar pasts and similar desires and lacks and the play reveals the complex nature of relationships more clearly because the relationship spans the generations. The age difference between the two main characters encourages us to draw parallels between all sexual relationships and our inherited expectations of relationships based on our knowledge of our own parents' relationships. Are we always trying to heal our parents relationship and our own childhood through our own relationships which actually seem to mirror our parents relationships - and our relationship with our parents as children ? Greek theatre , particularly its comedy ,focused on the phallus , and before theatrical festivals, a large phallus was carried aloft through the Greek streets. In this play, the phallus is also present , but as a puppet operated by the boy and symbolising the conflict between his physical desire for the woman and the psychological trauma of his past rooted in family relationships where it seems that, like the woman, he has been sexually abused.It will often be comic - with the phallus making an appearance round doors and sometimes the woman will speak directly to the phallus instead of the boy- emphasising the conflict between the phallus and the boy . She has also been damaged and that's how she gets hooked into this relationship. Both people have been materially spoilt but emotionally neglected in their childhood. Both are attracted by a target moving away from them - Since they both are attracted by rejection , the boy rejects the advances of the woman who becomes further addicted to his rejection. Their similar need for rejection in order to feel loved, brings them into constant conflict and reunion, expressing their need to fight for love and so replicate the rejection and neglect they both experienced as children which is now what they recognise as "love . "As a former spoilt child she cannot cope with his rejection and the more rejected she is the more addicted to him she becomes. The play shows the importance of self knowledge to ensure that a suffering inheritance is not passed on to damage future generations. The play will discuss the Greeks many definitions of love. The relationship will move through those definitions as a kind of evolving and complex relationship. It will be powerful and even comic , ranging initially from a purely sexual relationship to a more playful relationship and even a parent/child relationship where roles are also swopped - it will not always be the boy who behaves like a child - in fact, it will be more often the older woman who is pushing the boy Into adulthood by behaving like a child herself in search of her own father through him. This pressure into adulthood he has long tried to avoid . It makes him uncomfortable and even pushes him into psychopathy . The play will end with the relationship developing into a more appropriate mother/ child relationship which is also a friendship based on mutual respect rather than control but the investigation of how many different relationships are in fact present within one relationship reveals the complexity of relationships where many roles for both parties are simultaneously possible. This play questions the nature of all sexual relationships. We try to refind our original parental relationships in our own "new " relationships but we also try to transform those original relationships into something better- an impossible paradox that dooms us to relive the mistakes of our parents. It is also in the nature of addictive relationships that we see the other person as a symbol of something we lost and are seeking to regain. The woman's own sons will at times be spectators to the story and pass comments on events, although they will not directly participate in events in terms of being visible to the two lovers. .The relationship of their mother with this young boy makes her own younger son , who has always been very close to his mother, feel threatened. Closeness within family relationships can make us feel insecure and threatened at the same time as feeling loved The play ends with the finding of the boy's lost biological father and the replacement of an idealised father with a real living breathing father. This will change the whole dynamic of his current family and he will establish for the first time a new and independant identity within the family where he is at last able to become a "man" and the woman realises that through the similarities in this boy she has at last come to understand her own emotionally distant father . She learns that being a mother is her most important role- not to be confused with other roles. Kathleen walker Kayew2015@gmail.com Tel +447877752084

Greece is the European home of theatre. European values hold dear the right of the individual to self expression within the law, but this is a right which can be removed in practice ,by family or by society at large . The rights of children are particularly vulnerable and abuse of their rights can continue into adulthood, maintaining those "adults" as compliant children with little if any separate identity or self expression within the family and with the family reach stretching wide it is hard to escape its influence even when family members are not actually present , rights to privacy and separate identity can be tragically compromised. This story is a true story and discusses an intergenerational relationship and connects my country Scotland with Greece. Greek theatre has traditionally often depicted strong maternal figures and the play discusses the ability of the individual to stand up against the forces of family and the society it represents which threaten to oppress the individual's rights to self expression. In many traditional Greek families, the power of the mother over the son remains particularly strong with sons often remaining within the family orbit even when adult and living abroad. My play will discuss the model of parental and parent/child relationships in influencing children's eventual sexual relationships as adults and their ability to assert their own eventual independence as adults free from family control.It will move the relationship of the older woman and the young boy through each of the many Greek definitions of love relationships and will move the relationship from an edgy, dangerous sexual relationship breaking through accepted social norms, but reflecting basic human needs for love and nurturing, to a more appropriate mother/ child relationship based much more on friendship and mutual respect than control. At a time where within Europe many families find themselves separated as refugees, this story will also involve the boy's search for his own identity through the quest to find his missing father - effectively "killed" through his disappearance from family memory caused by the remarriage of the mother and adoption of the original children by a stepfather. The Scottish woman herself was very close to her own father and recognises her closed father in the secretive behaviour of the boy. The boy is very close to his own mother but angry with her and expresses this conflict indirectly through this new mother figure. The play references Oedipus Rex and Hamlet and I will use elements of Greek theatre - the wearing of masks by idealised parental figures (seen in many ways as Gods) and will discuss the role of strong maternal figures , the importance of family relationships (especially parental and parent/ child relationships) in promoting or blocking the development of a child's separate and unique identity , free from potentially suffocating family control.The family of the boy will be depicted as a Greek chorus acting together - a formidable force against which an infantilised son ,although technically an adult , has little hope of developing his own independence and self expression.The Greek boy will eventually find his own freedom through the courage that enables him to fearlessly search for his father absent for 24 years and find his own truth instead of remaining prisoner to his mother and stepfather's version of the "truth".- the only "truth" he has heard since childhood and the disappearance of his father. The fragmentation of his original family had developed into a fragmentation of the boy's own personality through the fear and anxiety caused by his past traumas within the family. He now becomes whole again and knows who he finally is. The transformation of modern day Greece ,particularly following the economic crisis of 2008, from the relatively liberal past of Ancient Greece into a country polarised between rich and poor, heterosexual and homosexual , Greek and foreigner will also be discussed