Ghosts and Class: Above the Ground and Under the Church

I wanted to discuss two of my creative projects today as a sort of working journal and to share my work with others. I'm working on two dramas called Above the Ground and Under the Church, both of them centred on class and social issues, which is explored through the lens of the supernatural.

The Living Amongst the Dead: Above the Ground

Above the Ground is a drama currently in the form of a theatrical production. It follows a group of middle to higher class people, primarily in the creative industries, including an artist, writer, poet, musician, architect, and also a doctor. All of these characters are brought together by a mutual friendship with an aged playwright and director who used his connections and money to revamp an old cottage into a little club room for the group to meet in and discuss their work together. However, we come into this happy, upper-class life at a time of sadness, the aged friend is in hospital, dying, as they all know but will not say, and this threatens the continuation of the group as a whole. As the action of their strong, weak, and sometimes volatile relationships move forward it is revealed that their shared friend has passed away and from that point, their lives begin to fall into the murky waters of the supernatural. Whether it is the ghost of their departed friend or something else, all the characters are plunged into the supernatural. At first, they relish the expedition and begin to share stories about their experiences of the supernatural, all of which have something to do with their class and privileges. This exploration forces them into introspective reconsiderations about their lives and class, reforming and shaping their experiences with one another, either reforging them or breaking them forever.

'A Supernatural Reminder of Britain's Dire Class and Economic Situation'

The drama, then, is a supernatural reminder of Britain’s dire class and economic situation. It takes the jobs and lives of its protagonists and sets it to a backdrop of what system brought them to where they are today, and how they try to understand their place within that socio-economic system.

The actual action of the drama, however, is very similar to Alan Ayckbourn’s The Snake in the Grass (2004) or Conor McPherson’s The Weir (1994). It consists of many characters discussing supernatural stories and experiences to attempt to understand themselves and each other better. Experiences that, as is the case in The Weir, and Above the Ground, are laden with the supernatural. The supernatural, in Above the Ground, haunts the lives of its characters as a ghostly form of what we recognise as class and the economy. The characters see the ghosts of these things, in the form of people, animals, places, feelings even, and in the process are forced to ask questions about their own lives and what place they occupy in this world.

As an aside, I do wish to make it very clear that just because someone works a supposedly middle-class job, such as writer, architect, or doctor, that doesn’t mean they are automatically a certain type of person. Although they have had many privileges in their lives and upbringings, they are not what you might expect, they haven’t been to Eton or Cambridge, and don’t have RP, pigeon-English accents. The action takes place in Yorkshire, and the characters are from the area, making them speak in that wonderful way we do in this county. So as much as I am stating that these characters are of middle to high class, I am not regurgitating the ridiculous rule that dictates how they speak, or where they are from. The ruling classes in this nation are certainly of a certain breed, primarily from the south, educated in similar ways, and from similar backgrounds, but that is not to say that in order to be similar to them you have to be like them entirely. That is the socio-economic nuances that these characters are trying to navigate through.

As a final point on Above the Ground, I want to address why I have chosen to represent the higher class as, on the majority, people who work in creative and artistic industries. It’s partly aesthetic as people in such occupations are more likely to discuss and converse interestingly, more likely than the lawyers, managers, and CEOS, leading to dialogue that delves deep into artistic and cultural ideas in entertaining ways. The characters regularly make their own intertextual references, understand things through their jobs, and interact with each other based on how their creative minds think. In another way, these characters are made to work these jobs because the narrative is one of introspection, growth, and accountability which, let’s face it, is more likely a trait of a creative than a CEO. I suppose the story is ‘A Christmas Carol’ like in this regard, but instead of Scrooge being a clerk, he is instead a painter. Above the Ground features Wildes rather than Brunels.

The Dead Amongst the Living: Under the Church

Now onto Under the Church, the opposite, or compatible depending on the way you think, drama to Above the Ground. Under the Church has a very similar premise to Above the Ground, it follows a small group of homeless people and a priest who are hunkering down in a church on a freezing winter night. That premise itself brings about ideas of social issues within the UK and the difficulties faced by many people sleeping rough. And so, the ghostly apparitions that these people face are of social problems that have affected them or events that haunt them. Sitting around a small electric heater with little food and drink that the priest was able to gather, the men and women of the group, all of ages and histories, share their past, with the hapless priest coming in now and again to check on them.

'The Supernatural is a Terrifying Fictional Inisght Into Something Similary Terrfying but Completely Real'

The setting of this drama certainly suggests more overt supernatural happenings and with that more opportunity to play about with horror tropes and iconography than Above the Ground. I am wary, however, not to rely too much on these overdone horror tropes in the building of the supernatural narrative and instead want to keep the paranormal as a lens into social issues rather than a more traditional exploration into demons, devils, and religion. As it is in the real world, the supernatural is a terifying fictional insight into something similarly terrifying but completely real.

The basics of Under the Church have already been worked out but I concede that more work is certainly required for it, how did the characters get here, what is haunting them, what is it all for? Needs to be answered. I have however done some work into the setting of this drama, it will be in Leeds Cathedral.

A beautiful church right in the centre of the city. A space that is supposed to offer peace and sanctuary for all those around it but due to the rising social issues within cities, it's not doing its job very well, except for this one cold and bitter night. Ideas of social responsibility are suggested by the setting then and that conveys a key aspect of the drama’s central ideas from the get-go.

Names of the Great Beyond

I feel, also, that the titles of these plays have lots of significance. Above the Ground suggested the elevated class of its characters and the presence of life over death, literally over the ground where the dead are buried. Under the Church conveys the opposite, with its lower-class characters and closer proximity, you could argue because of class of the setting as well as the characters, to death. One drama explores the haunted lives of the wealthy and the privileged, while the other explores the hauntings of the downtrodden. In addition, the titles explore questions of social agency and power, the higher-class characters being closer to life and thereby agency and the lower-class characters closer to death and a lack of agency.

The Stages of the Beyond

These dramas have so far been written for a theatrical production, but I have played with the idea of making them screenplays. It makes sense initially: the two could become one and the action of the drama could move back and forth between the two groups, highlighting the similarities and differences between them, and giving greater opportunity to explore the histories of the characters by showing it directly on screen. However, I feel like we have many ghostly dramas that have done these things very well and because of that, there’s little interest in another drama of the same brood. I instead relish the idea of creating a supernatural drama for the stage because I think this offers more opportunities to be playful with depicting paranormal activity than the screen. The theatre is more visceral, it can be a better setting for the scary because it offers none of the safeties of the screen. No chance to pause or mute the action, instead all the viewers can do is watch the horror take place. Taking cues from Nigel Kneale’s stage version of The Woman in Black (1989), I would depict the ghosts as almost unnoticeable, placing them in the backgrounds, walking past a window, or creaking the floorboards of the set, much like the titular Woman in Black haunting the very theatres the play is performed in (an actor playing her of course).

I’d keep the two dramas separate if they retain their theatrical form, making them more companion pieces than directly related stories. However, I am still always open to new forms of art and always looking to experiment with the various forms that drama can take.

That is all for now on Above the Ground and Under the Church, but I hope this little update has been of interest to some of you. I’m always open and eager to take any criticism or ideas so please comment below if anything I’ve said has resonated with you in any way. Also, if you have any ideas of what mediums best suit horror of the supernatural form, please comment below and let's get a discussion of the macabre and the terrifying going. I will hopefully post similar updates to this one in the future.

All creative work discussed here, unless stated otherwise in the form of footnotes, references, or by explicty being attributed to another author, is entirely my own work and I assert the intellectual ownership of them. The discussion of these properties does not constitute a publication of them.