Positive Stories For Negative Times

Five Plays For Young People to Perform in Real Life or Remotely

Sabrina Mahfouz, Stef Smith, Chris Thorpe, Bea Webster, Jack Nurse, Robbie Gordon

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781350233362
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350233386
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: British Drama

Five exciting new plays for young people written specifically in response to a world in the midst of a pandemic, accompanied by a handbook from Wonder Fools theatre company with guidance for staging the plays either online or live in the space.

Commissioned as part of Wonder Fools' national participatory project Positive Stories for Negative Times, these five plays offer a variety of stories, styles and forms for ages 8-25. These original and innovative plays are:

Is This A Fairytale? by Bea Websater
A new play that rips apart the traditional fairy tale canon and turns it on its head in a surprising, inventive and unconventional way. Ages 8+

Hold Out Your Hand by Chris Thorpe
A dynamic text asking questions about place, where we are now and the moment we are living through. Ages 13+

The Pack by Stef Smith
A playful and poetic exploration about getting lost in the loneliness of your living room and trying to find your way home. Ages 13+

Ozymandias by Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse
A contemporary story inspired by Percy Shelley's 19th century poem of the same name, exploring power, oppression and racism through the eyes of young people. Ages 16+

Bad Bored Women of the Rooms by Sabrina Mahfouz
A storytelling adventure through the centuries of women and girls who have spent a lot of time stuck in a room. Ages 18+

The accompanying handbook includes step-by-step guidance on how to produce the plays either online or live in the space, and bespoke exercises and instructions on how to approach directing each play.

Is This A Fairytale?
by Bea Webster

Hold Out Your Hand
by Chris Thorpe

Writer’s Note

A text for as many people as there are. Say it in your own voices. Join the lines end to end when they need it. When it says ‘silence’, don’t be afraid to take your time, but remember all silences aren’t as long as each other. When the text asks you to share something personal – only go as far as you feel comfortable going – the safer and more confident you feel, the better this works.

Hey

Hey there

Hey

My name’s (name)

Say that again

We’re talking over each other

Let’s take turns, just this once

Silence. Then in perfect unison.

Hey

My name’s –

Everyone’s names in perfect unison.

My name’s

Everyone’s name, one after the other.

Silence.

This is a play

Kind of

Also not a play

Let’s not worry about what this kind of thing’s called

What we might have started to call it

This thing we’ve always done

When we get together

Whatever we’ve started to call ‘together’

And some of us watch and listen

And some of us speak and listen

Whatever we’re calling this right now

This is one of those

It’s meant to take place

Wherever it takes place

It’s meant to take place

Gesture to the other screens/the room.

Here

Which could mean you’re wherever you are

And everyone else is wherever they are

Joining together our ‘here’s’ to make a single ‘here’

Bolting them edge to edge on a screen

Like self-assembly plastic storage boxes

For human heads

[The bit between these square brackets is an optional section you can use if everyone’s performing remotely –

And if that’s true

Then let’s tell you about

Our own worlds outside these boxes

I’m in (what town or room are you in?) and it’s (one word to describe it)

The optional section ends here.]

Or, maybe even, just maybe

That we’re all in the same big box

All in the same air

That I can look you in your actual eye

Your actual human glistening, sticky-to-the-touch, see-it-blink human eye

Imagine that, if that’s not what we’re doing

If we’re still at the heads-in-boxes stage

Imagine us all in that space, how it’s going to feel

When it finally happens

Cos it will happen

And if it has happened

If we are all together in a room

With air and eyes, and all the sounds

The small sounds of bodies that microphones don’t notice

And speakers don’t transmit

Take a moment to think back to the time

That lost age, of months or weeks or even just days ago

When we couldn’t do this

When our bodies were quiet

Or at least made noises only we could hear

When maybe the only clue to our actual existence

Our real world existence

Was when we froze, or glitched

Or had to leave and return while we stayed in the exact same place

Long silence.

Weird, isn’t it

How whatever you’re doing now

How whatever way we’re doing this now

Can so quickly become the only way to do it

The only way we’ve ever done it

I guarantee you, even though

Even though some things might be different

The distance between us, if we’re in a room

The tension in the room that was never there before

Or the lag of different broadband speeds

The colour and closeness of the walls around us

We’ll still find it hard to imagine

That we used to do this any other way

Or that the way we’re doing it will change

Silence.

Anyway

This play, this thing, this poem

What we’re calling what’s happening doesn’t matter

But it has a name, apart from that

And the name of it is

Hold Out Your Hand

Silence.

That’s what was printed

At the top of the document they gave us

It was in bold, to seem important

To say, this is the title

Silence.

But we’re not so into that

Hold Out Your Hand

We’re not that into it

...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• About the project
• Editors’ note
• About Wonder Fools
• About the Traverse
• Creative team biographies
• The Handbook
• The Plays
• eCopyright