Whole

Philip Osment

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781849434454
• eBook ISBN: 9781849438148
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Performance Art
• Index: Literature

What happens when you're in a hole? What happens when that hole's inside you? What do you do you fill it with to make yourself feel whole? Last year, 3 teenagers emailed the 20 Stories High Theatre Company to ask them if they could make a play about their friend Holly. This is how it unravelled… 3 teenagers: …So that's our story and we really want to tell it... and we want to act in it as well, and play ourselves… cos actors wouldn't really be as convincing as us… 20 Stories High: It's a very moving story… but we're really busy at the moment and also, to be honest, you're not really actors. 3 teenagers: But we really want to tell our story… it says on your website that "Everybody has a story to tell… and their own way of telling it…" 20 Stories High: …well, come back in a year, when we're less busy, and let's talk… One Year Later… We made the play with them… WHOLE Winner of the Writers' Guild Award for Theatre Play for Young People 2013.

 

1 INTRODUCTION

DYLAN, CHANTAL, JOSEPH and NATHALIE/HOLLY

DYLAN: Hello everybody…ummmm…we’re from 20 Stories High and we’ve come here today to tell you about our friend Holly who we went to school with. I guess we should introduce ourselves first. My name’s Dylan and this is –

JOSEPH: Yes, my name is Joseph. Hello.

CHANTAL: Hi, I’m Chantal.

NATHALIE: And my name’s Nathalie.

DYLAN: Nathalie’s an actress/ who’s going to play –

JOSEPH: /A fantastic actress.

NATHALIE: /Thank you Joseph.

DYLAN: /Yes she is fantastic. Nathalie didn’t go to school with us but we’ve got her in to play Holly. I’m just going to say a few words about why we’re doing this show umm. We’ve been rehearsing for the last few weeks with Julia our director [who’s sitting over there] and we’ve put together some scenes and some lyrics

JOSEPH: And some music

DYLAN: Yes and music umm because we thought that this is a story that it’s important for people to hear. Especially people at school who might be going through some of the stuff that we were going through at the time. Anyway so like I said, Chantal, Joseph and me went to school with Holly.

JOSEPH: Back in the day –

DYLAN: Yeah, it’s um four years ago now. We’ve all left school now and for various reasons we found that we had some free time –

CHANTAL: We’re unemployed.

DYLAN: Yes, I was unemployed and Chantal is taking a gap year and Joseph’s waiting go to Uni ummm so I thought we could do this show. So I got back in touch with these guys and they agreed it was a good idea. So then we approached Julia and 20 Stories High about putting it on. Luckily Julia thought it was a good idea too.

NATHALIE: And you auditioned me.

DYLAN: Yes, we held auditions and –

JOSEPH: And Nathalie came along and we thought she was fantastic.

DYLAN: And so yeah here we are.

CHANTAL: So Dylan tell us how you know Holly.

They all laugh at her blatant attempt to get him to move on.

DYLAN: Yes. I actually knew Holly from nursery. We lived quite close to each other and hit it off right from that time really. We ended up going to the same Primary School and um as far as I knew, everything in her life was ok. But actually there was stuff going on at home that I didn’t really know about. Her Dad wasn’t around and so it was just her and her Mum. And one day my uncle – yeah um – my uncle worked up at the hospital in the psychiatric unit and one day he said something about Holly’s Mother being in there – in the ward for people with like mental problems. Anyway I said something to Holly about it and she went bananas – she didn’t speak to me for the rest of the term. So after that we didn’t talk about it and we made friends again. Then we went to Secondary School together.

CHANTAL: Where you met me!

DYLAN: Yes where we met Chantal. By that time Holly was in care but social services worked it so that she could keep coming to the school. She had a few different foster homes but always like in the area, so we didn’t even know she was in care. She didn’t talk about it – she didn’t ever invite people back for a sleepover or anything. So anyway, yes, we met Chantal in umm…

CHANTAL: Year 8.

DYLAN: In 2006.

CHANTAL: Yes so it was in drama – our first drama class after the summer and the teacher got us into groups and told us to make a still picture of something that happened in the holiday. I’d been on the London Eye because my Aunty came over for a visit from Cameroon and it turned out that Holly had been on the London Eye that summer too and so we said yeah, let’s do that. But Dylan was going –

The following altercation is good-humoured. They have rehearsed it with Julia who has thought it would be engaging for the audience to see them arguing like this.

DYLAN: – I didn’t want to do that –

CHANTAL: He wanted to do some/ James Blunt concert

DYLAN: I thought the London Eye was/ a pretty boring idea.

CHANTAL: (Sings.) You’re beautiful!

DYLAN: I wanted to be him and them to be my adoring fans at the Koko Club –

CHANTAL: He hadn’t even been to a James Blunt concert/ he’d just seen him on YouTube.

DYLAN: /Ooooh look, there’s the Houses of Parliament! Big deal!

CHANTAL: So anyway he was outvoted and after that Holly and me became best friends.

DYLAN: And that day after school we went down the graveyard to hang out –

CHANTAL: Holly was just beginning to write lyrics and I liked singing –

DYLAN: She had this book where she used to write down all her ideas –

NATHALIE holds up a brightly coloured A4 notebook.

DYLAN: Yeah, that’s the actual one.

CHANTAL: So we went down the graveyard and –

JOSEPH: You jammed?

DYLAN: Kind of.

NATHALIE/HOLLY, CHANTAL and DYLAN move forward.

2 JAMMING IN THE GRAVEYARD IN YEAR 8

September 2006.

CHANTAL: It’s a bit spooky down here.

DYLAN: That’s the point. It keeps the chavs away.

HOLLY: Snob!

CHANTAL: Eee look at this gravestone. This girl died at the age of 15. That’s really sad that.

HOLLY: Yeah Samantha Barnes – condom girl.

CHANTAL: What?

HOLLY: We found a condom on top of her last term.

CHANTAL: That’s disgusting.

HOLLY: It wasn’t a used one. It was probably Flakey Blake. He blew one up in the playground.

CHANTAL: I thought you said the chavs don’t come down here.

DYLAN: HERE IN THE GRAVEYARD WITH THE GRAVES AND THE BONES

HOLLY: HERE IN THE GRAVEYARD WE CAN BE ON OUR OWNS

CHANTAL: I HOPE I DON’T START HEARING GROANS AND MOANS

HOLLY: HERE IN THE GRAVEYARD WE CAN GET IN THE ZONE

DYLAN: WE CAN GET IN THE GROOVE AND HIT THE RIGHT TONE

CHANTAL: TO BE HONEST I’M GLAD I’VE GOT MY MOBILE PHONE

They laugh.

HOLLY: THIS IS CHANTAL
SHE’S MY PAL

DYLAN: SHE’S THE...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-title Page
• WHOLE 2013 TOUR DATES
• WHOLE
• DIRECTOR’S NOTE
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Characters
• Note
• PROLOGUE
• 1 INTRODUCTION
• 2 JAMMING IN THE GRAVEYARD IN YEAR 8
• 3 NATHALIE READS FROM HOLLY’S BOOK
• 4 JOSEPH MAKES NEW FRIENDS
• 5 JOSEPH JOINS THE TEAM
• 6 GIRL TALK
• 7 BOY TALK
• 8 BOY AND GIRL TALK
• 9 NATHALIE READS HOLLY’S POEM
• 10 DYLAN’S PAINFUL MEMORY
• 11 HOLLY AND JOSEPH DRINK CIDER
• 12 JOSEPH SHARES HIS EXCITEMENT
• 13 PILLOW TALK
• 14 DUET
• 15 PLAYGROUND WAR
• 16 AN INTERUPTION
• 17 HOLLY’S SUICIDE NOTE
• 18 THE FINAL ENCOUNTER