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.
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.
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.
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…
What Light
In 2011 two fourteen year old boys, Jack and Daniel, best friends, argue violently about money and possessions, their families and who is to blame for the economic crisis their country is suffering. Ugly things are said about their families. Vicious opinions and accusations they have heard from their parents and learnt from the media are repeated. Their friendship is destroyed.
Suddenly it is 2061 and Jack and Daniel are old men. The world has been transformed and they live in squalor and poverty in tents in a bleak wilderness. Nothing remains of the world they knew as boys, except their hatred and mistrust, which has become an obsession with the years. Their days are spent in hatred and fear of each other and waiting for good things to fall from the sky or grow on the trees, which is all they remember from their youth.
Each has a grandchild, Sid and Nancy, who have known no other life, but now as they enter adolescence they begin to question their grandfathers’ view of the world and ask themselves why they hate each other so much and why life must be so brutal. Their tents are haunted by the zombie ghosts of global celebrities from 2011, who the grandfathers use to terrorise their grandchildren into accepting the situation. But the young people reject the past and their grandfathers and join forces. They destroy the power of the zombie ghosts and leave to find a better life. The grandfathers remember their boyhood friendship fifty years before and realise this is the world they created through their passive acceptance of the situation in the past and believing the lies they were told about each other. But hope lies in their grandchildren who are doing what they never did – asking questions and taking action.
Thank you
Text written for the PLATFORM 11+ Final Production FACE ME Time of Transition
The Last Day of School
Text written for the PLATFORM 11+ Final production FACE ME Time of Transition
What happens during the break
Short scenes written for the PLATFORM 11+ Final production FACE ME Time of Transition
Before the journey
Scene written for the PLATFORM 11+ Final production FACE ME Time of Transition
THE BOOK OF PUBERTOSIS or THE EXPULSION FROM CHILDHOOD
Short play written for the PLATFORM 11+ Final Production FACE ME Time of Transition
1. Bonny Boy & Drangonfly 2. Selma
Short scenes written for the PLATFORM 11+ Final production FACE ME Time of Transition
30 Schoolyard Nano-Plays
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.
Delete
“It all started with Gyuri Lakos, who came to our class because he’s flunked” says Boti, an 8th grader in an ordinary Hungarian elementary school. The structure of the class immediately changes when this “new guy” appears on the scene. The girls all adore him, the boys either take his side and follow his example (smoking weed and being rebellious) or hate him, like Boti does.
The truth is, nobody really knows anything about him, like why his eyes were bruised for a while, or where he goes after school, or why he had to leave his previous school. Even his ethnicity is dubious (he might be a Roma guy), and students whisper strange things about his family. In the play we can follow the way the feelings and emotions of four students (Boti, Csabesz, Dóri and Ancsa), whirl, change and float amidst love, confusion, anger and humiliation, as they try to figure out who this boy really is.
Things seem to speed up a bit when Dóri (the straight A student, who is preparing to be European Champion in Gymnastics) writes a love letter to Lakos, who decides to post it on Facebook, and lets the others distribute copies of it in school.
The unexpected suicide of Gyuri Lakos brings all of these emotions to a halt. Students have to try and put together piece by piece what has happened to their classmate, as they give their testimonies to an invisible police officer. Even these testimonies lack cohesion, although some of them mention “violence within the family” referring to Lakos Gyuri’s dad. In the end, the students are still left with the burden of not knowing why he decided to delete himself from the list of humanity. Finally, Boti concludes everything by saying: “This was the end of the era of not being responsable for each other. This was the end of our childhood, really.”
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.
Ghost Town
An east coast beach. A cold October dawn.
Megan lies face down on the tideline. Her head is bleeding and one of her shoes is missing.
Joe stands over her; watching, panicking. His world is about to explode.
Joe is a runaway, living in a decaying beach hut. Megan, who knows him from their home town, is astonished to find him here. He is different, riddled with fear and hiding a secret so dark that he takes Megan captive to be sure she won’t tell.
As the day unfolds, Megan and Joe try to make sense of their past, their mismatched memories of the events that have shaped them and discover what it truly means to be courageous.
Themes:
Ghost Town is a play about friendship and betrayal. Thrown together on the beach, Megan and Joe explore for the first time the friendship they used to share and the events that pushed them apart. Each has a different slant, a different version of events. The play looks at how our choices and actions affect other people, and suggests that we don’t always understand or see the impact of what we do. It explores the ways in which we allow the past to shape us, and how we can break away from the patterns life sets out.
It is also a play about courage. Joe suffers from a version of OCD that plagues him with graphic images of hurting people, to the extent that he becomes convinced he has acted on this. He doesn’t understand the condition, nor has he put a name to the fear he lives with. His encounter on the beach with Megan sets a series of events in motion that allow him, for the first time in ages, to entertain a positive, hopeful thought. Megan and Joe’s courage in difficult circumstances allows them to see a more positive future.
Ghost Town is a story about lost friendship, memory, growing up and finding your way.
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.
MAKE&BREAK
(Written for DUS – the Norwegian version of the British “Connect” – program)
“Make&Break” is about six young people who are chosen to take part in “Make&Break”, a reality show in which the participants compete for several hundred thousand kroner. Each of the six has been diagnosed with cancer and only has a relatively short time left to live. What is important in life? Does one become a better person when one is about to die? Does one become more desperate? Does money still mean anything? Is it ok to burn your candle at both ends? Amongst the audience there’s a couple watching the reality show. They decide who is to be voted out. But does the audience have a life when they just sit watching such things? “Make&Break” is a theatre piece packed in a reality show. Or is it the other way round?
The dark cloud
(Written for DUS, the Norwegian version of the British program “Connect”)
Five children aged 12, 13, 14, 15 and16 are to have their summer holidays without their parents. Hosting the summer camp are Cinderella, Snow White, Pamela Anderson, Marilyn Monroe and the handsome handball coach. Here they are well looked after but a threatening dark cloud appears on the horizon. What does the cloud want; how can one get rid of it, and is it all just a story?
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…