The Domino Effect and other plays for teenagers (NHB Modern Plays)

Fin Kennedy

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781780016092
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

This second volume of plays from award-winning playwright Fin Kennedy features three ensemble plays for large casts of young people aged thirteen to nineteen, each developed via a long-term, collaborative process with the target age group.

In The Dream Collector, a school group on a Media Studies field trip to the isolated country house of a black-and-white movie pioneer enter a sinister dreamworld when they go exploring after dark. Once they step through the movie screen, each of the young friends meets their dream double, the sinister Neverborn...

In Fast, a twenty-four-hour school fundraiser in a semi-rural town takes on a new urgency when farmer's daughter Cara refuses to eat again until the supermarkets she holds responsible for her father's suicide agree to her demands.

In The Domino Effect – a five-star hit at the 2014 Edinburgh Festival Fringe – a silent girl finds her voice, and her mother, when a mysterious East End antiques dealer teaches her how small actions lead to big effects, and how to master the law of unintended consequences.

With their flexible, mixed casts, the plays are particularly suited to performance by young people's groups, who will enjoy the demands and challenges of playing roles specifically created for teenage actors.

THE DREAM COLLECTOR

Author’s Note

The play has been written for sixteen young actors aged fourteen to sixteen.

One group is a ‘Real-World’ twenty-first-century group of school students from East London. These eight all have names and individual identities.

The other is an ensemble cast of eight who inhabit the ‘Dreamworld’. They are known as the Neverborn. Their world is like a black-and-white film, and is stylised and movement-based. They bring to life the other cast’s dreams, and share lines as a chorus. Each Real-World cast member has a Neverborn who shadows them, and plays them in their dream sequence. This means there needs to be a minimum of eight Neverborn, but there could be more if a larger cast is available.

Note that the Real-World cast cannot see the Neverborn, except sometimes for the odd flicker. However they can, of course, see them when the Neverborn are on screen, and when they finally enter the Dreamworld.

The Neverborn are capable of silently manipulating the Real-World cast, a bit like puppeteers or hypnotists, sending them in certain directions at certain times, or prompting them to speak with a snap of their fingers. This can be played with in production, and is not always referred to in the script.

Note that the sections referred to as taking place ‘on screen’ do not necessarily have to be pre-recorded films. They could be realised more imaginatively, using live performance too.

The play was developed across two schools simultaneously. A parallel premiere production was also performed at St Paul’s Way Trust School on 4 December 2013, with the following ensemble cast:

	‘REAL-WORLD’ CAST	NEVERBORN
RAPHAEL	Jenna Islam	Julakha Begum
MADGE	Nabeela Hoque	Nazia Begum
NASIMA	Romaysa Azzoug	Abida Chowdhury
JAYDEN	Matthew Rano	Kamar El-Aslani
MACK	Ben Cribb	Muneem Hussain
ALI	Azhar Uddin	Alessanrdo Islam
SURAYA	Sherinne Ghoneim	Soraia Pinheiro
AMELIA	Beatrice Green	Saabira Tasneem
		Mahfuza Uddin
Creative Director and Producer		Kelly Jasor
Set/Costume Production		Liz Gaskell,
		Frances Beasley,
		Magdalena
		Plewa-Ould
Technical Lead/Lighting		Rob Yardley
Stage Manager		Stephenjohn
		Holgate
Assistant Stage Manager		Ming Liu
Music		Denzel Bunbury

Characters

REAL-WORLD CAST

All fourteen or fifteen-year-olds from a twenty-first-century East London school:

MACK, dreams about quantum mechanics

AMELIA, dreams about fashion

MADGE, dreams about animals

ALI, dreams about business

JAYDEN, dreams about ninjas

SURAYA, dreams about medicine

RAPHAEL, dreams about dying

NASIMA, dreams about the army

TEACHER, a part which can be pre-recorded and played as voice-over, or played by some of the students, or the Neverborn (or even a real teacher). This is a creative decision for the company.

Ethnicity of these parts is not that important. It is also possible for girls to play boys, if necessary.

THE NEVERBORN

Can be played by any young people with good physical-theatre skills. They do not have individual character names and their lines can be distributed among the group, as a chorus. Each new line indicates a new speaker, though sometimes several can say the same line. Play around with this. Sometimes they chant, sometimes they sing – find their rhythm.

Gender and ethnicity of the Neverborn is not that important either, though it would help if each had a passing similarity to the Real-World character they shadow.

Together, this c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Dream Collector
• Fast
• The Domino Effect
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information