IAN: ...and so the sleeping man in the box began to wake up.
MORRIS: Mmmph. Hrrm..
IAN: Wake up!
MORRIS: Wha..!?
IAN: Wakey, wakey!
MORRIS: No. Go away Rosseti. Can't you see I'm sleeping?
IAN: Come on! We haven't got all day here.
(William Morris opens his eyes and looks around.)
MORRIS: Where am I? And why am I speaking with this slight German accent? (Notices Ian) And who are you? And why do you keep moving your lips when I'm speaking?
IAN: Look, these are all unimportant technical questions.
MORRIS: They may be unimportant to you, but they're very important to me. My whole personality is at stake. When I fell asleep I had an English accent, and now I've woken up with a German accent. It doesn't make sense.
IAN: You see, there's a limit to the number of different voices I can do.
MORRIS: But this voice is entirely inappropriate.
IAN: Well how about this one?
MORRIS: (In Karl Marx's cockney voice:) Which one?
IAN: The one you're using now.
MORRIS: Oh, this one?
IAN: Yes.
MORRIS: That's a bit better. More English I suppose. But it's still not right.
IAN: Can you give me an idea of the sort of voice you'd like, then?
MORRIS: Well, I'm a visionary.
IAN: A visionary?
MORRIS: A visionary. So I need a sort of visionary voice.
IAN: What about this, then?
MORRIS: (Declamatory:) I have awoken in a strange and unfamiliar place. (Cockney:) That's better. A bit over the top, though.
IAN: Well, it'll have to do. Who are you anyway?
MORRIS: I am William Morris!
IAN: William Morris, William Morris. You don't mean Bill Morris of the Transport and General Workers Union do you?
MORRIS: No, William Morris.
IAN: Oh! I know! William Morris. The inventor of wallpaper.
MORRIS: William Morris! Poet, designer, craftsman, pattern maker, printer, writer, political activist, revolutionary, visionary...
IAN: That's the one. Do you mind me asking - how did you get here?
MORRIS: I don't know. I was working late in my workshop, and I must have fallen asleep. And then I woke up... (cockney) Here just a minute - what year is this?
IAN: 1987.
(To audience) Yarmouth, 1987. Remember?
MORRIS: Did you say 1987?
IAN: Yes.
MORRIS: 1987. Nineteen hundred and eighty-seven. One thousand, nine hundred and eighty-seven. That explains it.
IAN: What?
MORRIS: When I fell asleep, it was 1887. Now I have awoken a century later. But to say I have awoken would be a mistake. For this is clearly another vision. A vision of the future.
IAN: Do you have a lot of visions, then?
MORRIS: (Cockney:) Oh yes. Visions of mediaeval England, mostly. But also Icelandic visions, and visions of beautiful patterns. But not, so far, a vision of the future.
IAN: Did you say you hadn't had a vision of the future?
MORRIS: Yes.
IAN: That's funny. I was sure you had. Didn't you write a Marxist Utopia called News from Nowhere?
MORRIS: No.
IAN: Wait a minute. Where's that book? Here you are. News from Nowhere by William Morris.
MORRIS: I don't remember writing that.
IAN: Just a minute. Let's have a look at the introduction.... It was published in 1888. No wonder. You haven't written it yet.
MORRIS: Of course I haven't written it. I'm only just having the vision.
IAN: No, this isn't a vision. This really is the future.
MORRIS: Of course, you're bound to say that, otherwise it wouldn't be a very convincing vision.
IAN: No. What must have happened is that you got scooped up by my time machine when it went haywire, and deposited here. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Gods have contrived this meeting to help me. William Morris - you're the man we need. Your hope! Your vision!
MORRIS: But it is I who can learn from you! Is this really 1987?
IAN: Yes.
MORRIS: Then, tell me about the Socialist world of 1987.
IAN: So, as gently as I could, I explained to Morris that we hadn't yet established a socialist world. That there had been socialist revolutions, but that capitalism was still dominant. In order that he might understand my work, I explained all these things with magic tricks.
(There now follows a series of tricks, illustrating modern society - sorry, I didn't script this section tightly, so you'll just have to imagine it - see the cabaret act to get a better idea of the sort of thing.)
I also explained about mass unemployment, poverty in the third world, the arms race, the Tory government, the ozone layer and Television (dwelling particularly on the role of Paul Daniels.) By the end of all this, William Morris was rather depressed.
MORRIS: This is terrible. I fell asleep thinking that before too long people would find a way of living in peace, fulfilling their needs without destruction, then I wake up a hundred years later in a world that's even worse than the one I left. This isn't a vision of the future, it's a warning. I must go back to my time and make sure that this world doesn't come about.
IAN: That's no use to me. Anyway, you can't interfere with the course of history like that.
MORRIS: Why not?
IAN: If you go back, and make sure this world doesn't come about (which I very much doubt you could, anyway, but never mind) then I won't exist, at least not in my present form, right?
MORRIS: I suppose so.
IAN: So I won't be able to have pulled you through time to the present day, and you won't have been able to see this world.
MORRIS: Yes.
IAN: So how will you have come here to warn people that all this was going to happen?
MORRIS: I never thought of that.
IAN: I must send you back to your own time, so that you can write News from Nowhere.
MORRIS: But you've got me so depressed with your world that I can't summon up a vision of a better one. What if I just took the book back and got it published?
IAN: That's no good. That would be cheating. Anyway, look, the print in this copy of News from Nowhere has disappeared. And now the book itself has disappeared. It's as though you'd never written it. A classic of socialist literature is being lost to the world, and your vision of a new society is vanishing with it. And we need your vision now more than ever. Right now the best victory a lot of people can imagine is a Labour Government, which in my experience is just another form of defeat. And now the Labour party is carrying out a policy review in which it's not only throwing out the baby and the bathwater, it's also hitting itself over the head with the bath.
MORRIS: So what should I do?
IAN: We'll have to find that vision of a perfect world together. Anyway, you're the visionary. You should be able to tell me what to do.
MORRIS: Oh yes. Well I suppose we'll have to go in for a bit of dreaming.
IAN: Dreaming?
MORRIS: That's right. Sometimes it is necessary to dream, in order to find new ways of looking at reality.
And so we set out on a journey (using a shadow puppet stage) among the utopias that have been dreamed in the past. Eventually, though, I find the vision in the poem about the struggles of the past, and Morris uses this to return and write his book.
![[shot of opening screen]](welscrn.gif)
Back to Front Page