Plays Database
The Mystery of Jack and the Clones of Chaos
A time-traveller from the future journeys back to 2010 to investigate the strange case of Jack, a thirteen year old boy who believes his life is being taken over by alien clones of himself. The clones look and sound just like him, but behave in ways he never would. They are messy, dirty, rude, destructive, obsessed with girls, clothes and music, sometimes childish, sometimes violent and frightening and get him into all sorts of trouble with his mother, his friends and teachers. When they invade his bedroom, Jack teams up with a famous female pop singer in a final battle to regain control of his life. The time-traveller is revealed as Jack, now grown up, revisiting his own adolescence and coming face-to-face with his younger self. A comedy-drama play about the confusions and battles of growing up, it runs for 45 minutes and is performed by one adult male actor and one teenage male actor with multi-role playing.
Before the Bell
The Secondary school-student Janus, lives with his mum in an apartment block in a suburb somewhere. He is not the coolest guy in the class, but nor is he one of the nerds. Actually, he is quite average. But he has a crush on someone. He has a crush on Dina. A distance crush. Dina started in his class last fall (autumn), and she has the most beautiful neck he has ever seen. Today it’s Dinas birthday, and Janus has bought her a gift. He has planned in detail how he’s going to surprise her with it, behind the gym after school. All this he’s thinking about, as he is standing by the window eating his breakfast this particular morning. Then he looks over to the neighbour block, and in the windows to Leos flat. That bastard Leo. The bully in his class, always picking on someone. On people like Janus. He can see that Leo is smiling. Why is he in such a good mood? Has he got a new dog or something? He can see him stretching out his arm to someone. And then, in the window he can see Dina. In Leos room…
Nothing turns out the way Janus planned this day.
Everything changes, everybody can change. Noone is just the way they are, they are also the one they can be.
Paperclip Belt
A 16-year-old girl Kati is dead but her spirit is now reminiscing about the times preceding her death.
She used to wake up every morning loathing her alarm clock and going to school where she was not the most popular girl in class. Kati smoked and drank alcohol quite often. She had a couple of best friends. She found one boy, Juhan, strangely attractive. All that Kati had wanted was to be attractive and different. She had never dreamed of fitting into the normal everyday world.
Kati’s younger sister is having a birthday party, Kati invites Juhan to her place to help her keep an eye on the youngsters, not wanting to do this on her own. That night Kati and Juhan make love for the first time.
Soon summer begins. Kati and Juhan have a huge fight and do not speak to each other for a month. Kati decides to go to a party in another city. She eats a strange pill given to her by a boy she does not really know. A little while later, Kati gets raped by the same boy. She stumbles out of the house in total confusion only to see Juhan together with another girl. She runs into the nearby forest and tries to slash her wrists.
Juhan arrives in time to save Kati and drives with her to his summer holiday house. They have a long talk and suddenly find themself enjoying some of the nicest days of the summer.
As autumn approaches, Kati and Juhan start getting ready for school. Markus, the boy who raped Kati, contacts her out of the blue. He announces that he’s HIV positive and suggests that Kati should get tested. A while later, Kati receives the horrible news as well.
Kati starts to push Juhan away, since she is too afraid to talk about her condition. On a rainy autumn day, Kati finally confesses.
A while later, she climbs to the top of a tall parking house, thinking about her bygone freedom. She slips and not having enough strength to hang on to the railing, falls down.
Her sister is standing right there and sees Kati’s body smashing onto the cold ground.
Schoolyard Stories
“Schoolyard Stories” takes place in a classroom. Four students, around 13-16 years old, are working on a task left for them by the teacher, who, for various reasons, is absent. Their task is to write about their own everyday life. For some, it is easy, for some hard. Through this simple situation, the play goes into their stories, their thoughts and feelings about life at school and home: taking care of little sisters, enjoying candy, going to school, coming home from school, playing computer-games, listening to mother’s sermons. Dreams, everyday frustrations and boredom, perfect moments and not-so-perfect moments fill the stage as the youngsters try to find their stories and put them on paper. The final story is about the end of the spring term at school, coming of summer and most importantly, about finding peace and harmony. “Schoolyard Stories” is not a play centered on a problem or problems. Its main goal has been to give the young audiences a possibility to recognize themselves on stage. If the play has a point other than this, it could be that the lives of today’s youngsters are full of things to do and to think about – maybe a little too full. The play ends with the school bell.
Sorry Dad, but I have to
Everything about Ludwig is alright. He doesn’t use drugs, he gets good grades, and he gets on well with his father – until Ludwig tells him, that after graduating from high school, instead of studying “something with a future and money”, he intends to go on tour with his band. From then on, the Celine Dion songs, which Ludwig’s father loves so much, are frequently drowned out by fighting and screaming; “and then I slam the door I’m pretty good at that and I run away I’m even better at that.”
What to do when you have to disappoint the ones you love? When the one person who should know you best, understands you the least? When you feel like having killed someone, and at the same time feel incomprehensibly angry? And when suddenly some girl stands outside the band rehearsal space and wants to have a relationship with you or simply “fuck now and then … the main thing is just having something with you.” Ludwig keeps on running away from the town. He smashes a window pane, and that’s a lucky break for him, because through this, he meets Mrs. Rose. Mrs. Rose came of age in the 1968 movement, and has seen a few things that she does not like to talk about; so she is not going to be rattled by a confused young man in her front yard, either. But Ludwig, repairing the window and weeding her garden, is something that she really did not expect; least of all, that she might take a liking to him. Slowly, with Ludwig telling his story, and Mrs. Rose asking precise questions and giving occasional answers, a friendship builds that will alter the outlook of both of them – until Ludwig nearly loses sight of his real plan.
Frost damage
Frost damage
is a play for children of about 12 years old, to be played by two actors in classrooms. It is based on biographical data of the youth of a man who is now about 60-years old, living in the north of The Netherlands.
The play is situated around an old-fashioned coalfired stove, in the back of the classroom somewhere up North in the ‘60’s. Associations of warmth, a family life, possibilities of warmth people can give to each other. Some scenes are located in the classroom, other scenes in a cowhouse, a factory and so on.
`Mother and I’ is a story of not being wanted and of neglect.
Eric is born to a mother who didn’t tell anybody that she was pregnant. The boy is born in a cowhouse. When the farmer finds his housekeeper he doesn’t know whether the bucket with water she took with her, was meant to wash or to drown the baby.
The mother is sent to town. Her hobby is acting. She always takes Eric to rehearsals. When he is 7 years old, he plays Hansel in the Christmas pantomime Hansel and Gretel. His mothers corrects him if he calls him mother, because she is playing the witch: I’m a stranger to you.
Eric tries to win the attention and love of a female teacher by buying her flowers, but she doesn’t see the signs of a neglected boy. Eric is becoming a nasty pupil, often punished.
Eric is very often alone at home. He makes up stories being a popular train driver who is bringing everybody home safely. He imagines being a hero: a knight, or a detective, or a rich boy giving presents to everybody. Eric finds the key of the blanket factory in which his mother has started to work, and finds the wage money of several people.
His mother is suspected, being one of three persons having a key for the factory. She denies it of course. Although there is no evidence, she punishes Eric when the police is gone, locking him up in a coal bunker, and beating him. She doesn’t notice that the boy wants her attention.
An actor and a actress are acting scenes from this life. Not a funny story, not a nice life. They discuss the possibilities of solving the problem of the boy. Is there no end to children being unhappy?
Once it hit me
The play takes place amongst the fourteen year old classmates in year 9,at a secondary school. The characters meet up at school, after school on the estate, or at home. The play opens with a scene of a school poetry recital, a long standing tradition at Slovakian schools. Students recite their texts, and their individual attitudes expose the nature of the characters, who try to survive puberty. Hippie environmentalist Sasha, who wants to rescue the world, is in love with Eman, a hip-hop clown. Dirt acts as though he’s a sexually experienced adult, he is in love with Sasha. The gloomy poet Eman loves Bela. Bela, a model, loves herself. All of these characters are talking about their everyday life, problems with love, parents and growing up. On Emans 15th birthday they are all planning to explore the adult world- the pub world. When they are kicked out of a bar because they are not yet 18, they decide to go to the pub at the train station. There, they make a video which shows how drunk they are and then run away without paying. The girls split up from the guys and stay the night at a disco, where older guys are buying them drinks. Sasha hates the attention they pay to Bela and runs away leaving Bela alone. The school teacher discovers the video from the previous night on youtube and that Sasha and Dirt are not at school. They are hanging out at Dirt’s apartment. The friendships between guys are marked by jealousy, love and lies.
“The word has tempted me” was first staged as a site-specific production in a regular secondary school classroom. The audience, pupils, get involved in the story by literally following the actors around the school, stopping at different places according to the plot (classroom, cloakroom, hallway). They have a unique chance to peek into spaces they would normally not be allowed (e.g.: boiler room, the toilets belonging to the opposite sex…) but above all, they get to see how their daily school environment can change into a theatre site and how the space opens up to new meanings.
Actors do not have any specific props and have to prepare different stage design made specifically for each school.
Bluer than usual
Finn likes Jules and Jules likes Finn. And life becomes complicated. Expectations, desires and anxieties get all mixed up – for the very first time, and turn their worlds upside down. Together they are searching for an island where their love can grow, but hostilities, envy and the inquisitiveness of others, get in their way. Finn relys on betrayal to save the relationship from sinking. His father risks a new start in life and is somewhat surprised to accidentally meet his early love. The kiosk owner packs up her life in endless, strange stories and has to face the fact, that certain feelings never die, no matter how old one is.
A play about the quest to find one’s own pace as a young human being in the storm of outside influences, about sex, love and the questions that one doesn’t dare to ask.
Help!
A fourteen years old (Estonian) boy and a twelve year old (Hungarian) girl (the home countries can be changed to any country) spend their holiday in an International Youth Camp in Finland in winter time. Together with some other boys and girls they steal some snowmobiles to take part in an illegal race in the dark evening. The girl and the boy are together on the same toboggan. They lose their way, the snowmobile breaks down in the forest, a long way from the camp. It’s a dark and cold night. What can they do? Finding a cottage for shelter, they decide to wait there until somebody finds them and helps them to get back to the camp. Nobody comes to their rescue. There’s a big snowstorm. The boy and girl spend a number of days and nights together, eventually they run out of firewood, food and drink. They have to come to grips with the fact that they may die. The boy can’t speak Hungarian and the girl can’t speak Estonian. Both can speak English a little bit, so they have to communicate in their English, this is a difficult process. They neither understand each other very well, nor do they trust each other very much. The games and the tales help them to get to know each other better and to try and find a way to stay alive and to protect each other.
Two actors, one spotlight: the duration of the play is approximately one hour.
Beginning
Three actors are working together to create a new piece of theatre, retelling a timeless story; the creation of the world. Known only by the initials of I, V and L (in reference to the Finnish mythological characters Illmarinen, Vainomoinen and Lemminkainen from the traditional folk tale the Keravela) they are battling with their competing ideas in order to tell the story in ways which satisfy them all.
As they retell the ideas that once felt fresh and new it becomes clear to I that he has lost the imagination and creativity of his youth. He invites V and L to delve into their childhood experiences, to remember the imaginary friends, games and places of their early adolescence and revisit the chaotic and difficult moments when they realised their childhoods were ending.
Whilst I gains closure on his conflicted feelings, V begins to lose patience with the creative process and the need to behave like adults in the rehearsal. He launches into a musical attack on the adult experience in his song ‘forever young’, sending the rehearsal into a spiral of teenage angst.
Music, sex and violence collide as they recount the things in their lives they would rather forget, committed under the influence of hormones.
The group reforms after the embarrassing and potentially distressing memories they have shared with a renewed vigour to finish their story once and for all, but as they move onto the last section of the story they are finally halted by L who cannot but help feel left out of the play; echoing feelings from her late teenage years. She addresses her collaborators, sharing a series of intimate moments that have shaped her sense of insecurity and isolation.
By the end of the play the three actors have journeyed together through a difficult and troubled landscape; in attempting to tell one single story they have succeeded in creating a whole world of personal memories and reflections on the beginnings and endings of their adolescent experiences.
As they race towards the final stages of the piece, as their new world begins to take a shape and form they are left to question what sort of place it is they are creating on the stage. In deciding to create a world full of imperfections and troubled experiences they gain closure on their memories and learn to forgive others and themselves for the people they have been and for the people that they find themselves being today.
Thinking Time
Nina’s and Hilde’s flat: Nina (15) has a date, she is standing in her room considering what to wear. A phone rings, her mother Hilde answers. She is told that Ruth, Nina´s great-grandmother is about to die. Nina is eager to keep her appointment, but Hilde insists; they should both go to Ruth´s deathbed.
In the car: Nina considers running away when the car stops at a red traffic light. She doesn´t, however.
Ruth´s flat: Ruth dozes and dreams; during the evening she experiences her first meetings with the man she later married. The meetings take place within a few days of each other in Norway 1941: Norwegian Ruth meets the German soldier Werner. They are infatuated – they fall in love – during their third meeting, Werner proposes, Ruth accepts. With her answer, her life changes totally and for ever. She moves to Germany.
Hilde doesn´t get in contact with dying Ruth. Nina doesn´t reach the boy she´s supposed to contact by mobile phone.
Hilde is worried about the seriousness of Nina´s appointment; who is she seeing?
Nina recalls the three meetings she had with the itinerant Romanian boy Moreno. The meetings have taken place outside the building where Nina is having piano lessons.
She lies to Hilde, she says: his name is Martin, he is German and that he plays the violin.
Ruth dies. Hilde calls a doctor.
Although the time for the appointment has passed, Nina wants to go to the meeting point to see if Moreno is still there. Hilde lets Nina go.
The bus: Nina travels through town. At the building with the piano lessons, Nina´s piano-teacher enters the bus. She tells her that she experienced a robbery attempt recently. Just as Nina is about to leave the bus, her teacher recognizes Moreno at the bus-stop and tells her; he is the robber. She warns Nina not to leave the bus. Nina has to choose – should she belive in her teacher or in Moreno?
Salto Mortale (Kombat) : One Plot - Two Plays
The story takes place in a travelling fun fair which is owned by two families. The first family consists of two parents and two kids – Valter, aged 14 and Anna, aged 12. The second family consists of a mother and her son Oskar, aged 14. The kids go to one particular school during the winter period and travel around with the fun fair for the rest of the year. When they’re travelling, they have to change schools almost once a week and they also have to work after school, selling tickets and helping out around the fun fair.
Valter has reached the stage where he feels like rebelling against his parents. He is not happy with the idea of becoming the owner of the fun fair when he grows up, and there is a lot of tension between himself, his sister and his parents. Valter and Oskar are best friends, but their relationship is ruled by Valter’s dominance. Oskar wants to be like Valter, because there are social differences between the two families. While Valter’s family can afford the most expensive carousels, Oskar’s mom owns only a few small ones.
Valter is jealous of his sister Anna, who is just becoming a teenager and they are both fighting for the attention of their parents. Anna is a good student and a “perfect daughter” Valter, on the other hand is not doing very well at school and is also causing some trouble, so the parents openly prefer Anna to Valter. Oskar is secretly in love with Anna but is not showing it because of Valter. Instead, he joins in with Valter to tease and bully her.
The funfair needs some seasonal help and so a 21 year old guy is hired (called either Tristan or Bear) for the summer. He has a great influence on all three kids: for Anna, he is her first big crush, for Oskar, he is the father figure he never had, and for Valter, he represents the free soul outside the “prison of the funfair”. When Anna becomes the favourite of Tristan/Bear and a little sparkle begins between Oskar and Anna, Valter feels more restricted than ever. His actions have always been a bit over the edge but this time they lead to much more serious consequences…
Babel (Book of errors 1-7)
The old King Nimrod, the only survivor of the Big Disaster, sees his town Babel growing and growing. Unity is no longer evident. So he decides to build a tower as high as the sky, as a symbol of prosperity and understanding.
What do young Haran, Ylon and Sem think of it? Haran is dreaming of a paradise regained, Ylon is desperate about the vanity of life, and Sem is looking for his own position to Nimrod and the others.
The ancient God, observing that the tower is being built, is irritated, and sends another language to the town of Babel to disturb the building the tower. Despite this friendship and love sometimes bring the inhabitants a bit closer together and the building of the tower goes on. Will it be finished?
Babel[Book of Errors 1-5] is a play for 12-14 years old kids, about the struggle between the longing for understanding and unity on the one side, and the eternal mistrust and the development of individual identity on the other. Humor and bitterness alternate in the playful fantasy based on the biblical story of Babel, written for the cooperation between Teatro Elsinor (Milano) and Theater De Citadel (Groningen). Although being played in two languages, both the Italian and the Dutch audiences can understand every word of the misunderstanding.
pirat07&QueenOfLove - A Comic Style Story
A comics-style story about one fateful meeting that had to take place twice.
Karel, or Kájínek as his mother calls him, likes to draw maps. However, they are the sort of maps you won’t find in an atlas. They are charts that can only be used for navigating in one place, the virtual world of the internet. Karel lives alone with his mother. Since his mother isn’t at home very often, she doesn’t even notice that Karel is already thirteen. She treats him like a child, or else she isn’t there. And to cap it all, Karel’s girlfriend starts going out with his arch enemy….All of which makes it better to stay on the internet, in a virtual identity.
T. or Teresa, on the other hand, lives alone with her father. That is not good, since he is a dinosaur who has no idea what unhappiness T. suffers in the name of love. Her unrequited love for an ideal man named Zeca can only be cured by another, much stronger passion. One that she can experience with someone who is a real pirate. And so pirat07 and QueenOfLove meet somewhere in the virtual world, although he is Czech and she is Portuguese.
They spend a nice time in their virtual indentities. Conquering new worlds, dance in the air, even virtual wedding, so they could be man and wife. And they had Cote d`Azur, the place which they made new home. The colors are different in this fantasy world compared to the reality with which one has to live every day. In time their existence became virtual and their bodies walked in reality without life.
Luckily, one day a chance comes up to go to the real Cote d`Azur. It was in the holiday catalogue and Karel`s mother agreed to go. Also Teresa convinced her father, so the dream journey came true. And it was really a journey for change, although nobody may have noticed. But after thousands of kilometers there is something new between children and parents.
The meeting in France was… not successful. Without their virtual identities, there was no big love. It`s a pity, that you have to travel thousand of kilometers just to find out. But the parents apparently found themselves liking each other. And Karel`s dream of steering a catamaran became true. And Teresa learned a big portion of the French language with the beach boys. So, in the end, it wasn`t so unsuccessful. And Karel and Teresa have become good friends since then.
This story of love in a virtual world is inspired by comics, and tries to find a narrative form that brings this literary genre into the theatre. The result is not only comics-style poetics, but art design that rustles with paper drawings.
In the window
Short text written for the PLATFORM 11+ Final Production FACE ME Time of Transition
Salto Mortale
The play is about a young man named Peter and his friends, who have all just finished high school. Peter does not have a good relationship with his father, a former circus artist, and his mother left them a long time ago. Peter is a sensible young man and does not let the environment around him mess with his head, despite the friends he has. One of his friends, a drug dealer, finds dealing to be the easiest way to earn money. Other friends are children of rich and important people and money opens the way to university for them. The play examines the power of friendship, the relationships between young people and their parents, and the uncertainty of the future. The (un)happy ending shows, how one bad decision can lead to a deadly consequence. It is a story about love and despair, the strongest emotions that have to be dealt with by such young people.
FEED
This short piece for three characters is an exploration of traditions kept alive in the face of modernity; of changing times and entrenched habits. European multiculturalism forces many of us to question our heritage, our ‘first’ language and our parents’ past. Keeping the ‘old country’ alive in a new country is a difficult and delicate balancing act.
The young daughter of a couple describes her daily routine ‘after dinner, every day’ – time spent with her father in a repetitive programme of repetitive reading… in a language neither of them understand. The pent up frustrations of the girl come to a verbal and physical head as she explodes with anger and confusion about the reasons behind this seemingly pointless activity.
We are left with the resumption of the process, with understanding, forgiveness and love.
Too Old and Too Young
CHARACTERS: Mum, Dad and a 14-year-old boy called Miko
Evening at an ordinary modern home. Miko, the 14-year boy is carrying computer equipment and is about to set off for an evening at his friend’s house, but he gets stopped by his parents in the corridor.
They want to know where he is going and what he is going to be doing. Miko explains he is going to be playing videogames with his friends, eat pizza and hang out, but the parents do not approve. The situation escalates. A clash of generations in our modern culture follows.
The young person and parents don’t understand each other. An exchange of ideas takes place about playing, computers, video games, pizza and crisps, upbringing, exercise, socialising, diets, the rat race of modern day, basic rules and responsibilities, decision-making and the many issues of what one should be able to do and decide at a certain age. The discussion highlights the difficult in-between-age of the boy and the importance of trust and being able to discuss things properly.
The parents were also young once, Miko brings up stories of their youth, which puts things into perspective for the parents. Families have always struggled with a generation gap. Miko is allowed to leave the house in the end. His dad even gives him money for the pizza and crisps. Miko’s phone rings, his friend’s brother has come to pick him up. He leaves the house with his computer equipment.
Victorias Station (Pokerface & Babyface)
Who am I? What do I want to be like? With whom will I go? Who wants to go with me? What should I wear? And what is love? All existential questions for twelve 12 year old Jella whose parents are preoccupied with themselves and their own problems – and can’t give her any clues. But fortunately she has friends and a sister. Using a minimal amount of language and playful packed scenes, Lilly Axster VICTORIA’S STATION is a sensitive portrait of a girl on the threshold of adulthood.
Oh boy!
Danilo, a Russian, and Sertac, a Turkish boy; two boys in a city that could not be more different. Really? Despite all the cultural differences at first glance, the second glance might perhaps show a few similarities.
The two boys get closer to each other, as Sertac watches Danilo measure the energy of lightning like a real scientific researcher. He does all this in the backyard of Sertacs father’s shop. At first the two find each other rather odd. But because of what they experience together in a competition for a big fashion show, Danilo and Sertac realize that they actually get on quite well together. But Sertac’s father observes the friendship with a boy of the “Russian Mafia” sceptically. Then, an incident Sertac’s father’s store casts a shadow on Danilo. The two friends have to be very courageous to keep their friendship alive and to defend it against the problems in the family. Because with the strong family honor in Sertac’s family and the separation of Danilo’s parents, the two eleven year olds actually have to plough through a lot of other areas.
“Oh, boy!”is a play about a very different male strong point and disassociation from identified role models. And a friendship that first looked like nothing and gives a lot more support than expected in the end, after the boys have sought and found their identity.
Kim playing
(Written for DUS, the Norwegian version of the British program “Connect”)
Kim doesn’t like his new home; he’s got the smallest room and a new mother who doesn’t trust him. Kim, wanting to punish his father for dragging him away from the life he knew, sleeps outside at night and refuses to come home for dinner. Everyone in Kim’s vicinity has a summer job: His step-sister Becky is looking after Kim’s new-born half-brother while his big brother Jon is getting paid for looking after Kim. Kim won’t accept his big brother’s playing dad in his father’s absence and won’t be caught. In the end, he gets tired of running away and hiding. To protect himself and raise his status, Kim employs a watchman…