Girls Like That and other plays for teenagers (NHB Modern Plays)

Evan Placey

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781780017600
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

This collection features four urgent and explosive plays by award-winning playwright Evan Placey, each tackling issues facing young people today. They provide ideal material for teenagers to read, study and perform.

Girls Like That explores the pressures caused by technology when a schoolgirl's naked photograph goes viral. Commissioned in 2013 by Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Theatre Royal Plymouth and West Yorkshire Playhouse, it has subsequently been performed by school and youth-theatre groups across the UK, at the Unicorn Theatre, London, and in the Houses of Parliament. It won the Writers' Guild Award for Best Play for Young Audiences.

Banana Boys, published here for the first time, is about the challenges of being on the school football team – and secretly gay. It was commissioned and produced by Hampstead Theatre's heat&light company in 2010.

In Holloway Jones, Holloway dreams of being a world-class BMXer, but she is held back by the tough reality of a parent in prison. Also making its debut in print here, the play was commissioned by Synergy Theatre Project, toured schools and the Unicorn Theatre in 2011, and won the 2012 Brian Way Award for Best Play for Young People.

Finally, Pronoun is a love story about two childhood sweethearts dealing with the fact that one of them, Isabella, has now become a boy. As one of the plays in the 2014 National Theatre Connections Festival it proved enormously popular with youth theatres and college companies.

'Maybe change starts with plays like this' Lyn Gardner, Guardian, on Girls Like That.

'I don't censor the world for young people'. Read an extract from Evan Placey's introduction to this volume, published in The Guardian.

BANANA BOYS

For Danny

A single edition of Banana Boys can be printed on demand if you wish to read, study or perform the play separately.
Please contact [email protected]

Acknowledgements

Neil Grutchfield for the faith, support, and astute dramaturgy.

Debra Glazer, and the company of young people in heat&light at the Hampstead Theatre. The most joyous time I’ve ever had in rehearsal, and doing research.

All the girl groups mentioned, quoted and used in the play, and the writers of their songs. And my parents, for forcing me to listen to them all throughout my childhood.

E.P.

Banana Boys was commissioned by the heat&light company and first performed at Hampstead Theatre, London, on 9 December 2011. The cast was as follows:

THE SCHOOLBOYS
CAMERON	Myles Howard
CALUM	Caleb Hughes
RILEY	Cavell O’Sullivan
MAX	Awaab El-Essawy
ZACH	Edmund Ludlow
BEN	Tom McDermott
THE SCHOOLGIRLS
PIPPA	Skye Stuart
ETTA	Jimena Meza Mitcher
ALISHA	Ellie Horne
TANISHA	Francesca Green
FALISHA	Nyaueth Riam
OTHERS AT SCHOOL
DJ	Ricardo Benavides
MIRANDA	Jean Mackay
THE SIBLINGS
RACHEL	Marlie H-C
JORDAN	Jesse Gassongo
NAT	Ellie O’Donnell
THE BANANA GIRLS
SANDRA	Akuc Bol
GEORGIA	Chantè Joseph
MANDY	Chloe Evans
Director	Debra Glazer
Set & Costume Designer	Robbie Sinnott
Lighting Designer	George Bishop
Sound Designer	Cressida Klaces
Dramaturgs	Neil Grutchfield Debra Glazer

Characters

THE SCHOOLBOYS, all sixteen years old
CAMERON
CALUM
RILEY
MAX
ZACH
BEN

THE SCHOOLGIRLS, all sixteen years old
PIPPA
ETTA
ALISHA
TANISHA
FALISHA

OTHERS AT SCHOOL
DJ, nineteen years old
MIRANDA, eighteen years old

THE SIBLINGS
RACHEL, thirteen years old, Cameron’s sister
JORDAN, eighteen years old, Calum’s brother
NAT, eighteen years old, Jordan’s girlfriend

THE BANANA GIRLS, early twenties
SANDRA
GEORGIA
MANDY

Author’s Note

As much as possible, The Banana Girls should assist with scene changes/transitions – orchestrating changes and/or performing in changes as indicated. It is expected that The Banana Girls will lip-sync to their songs, and while they are women playing women, there should be something a bit drag about their huge theatricality.

Ideally the play should run straight through; however, if it’s necessary to have an interval this should go between Scene Nine and Scene Ten.

A Note on Punctuation

A dash (–) is a cut-off, sometimes of one’s own thought with a different thought (not a pause or beat).

An ellipsis (…) is a loss or search for words.

Words in square brackets [ ] are not spoken, but there to clarify a line’s meaning.

A lack of punctuation at the end of a line means the next line comes right in.

Scene One

Hampstead Heath, overlooking water. CAMERON and CALUM hold hands.

CALUM. On three.

CAMERON. Do we jump on three or after three?

CALUM. I don’t know.

CAMERON. Well you have to decide.

CALUM. Oh just jump whenever. One, two –

CALUM turns to the ‘audience’, speaks to them as if he’s pitching a film. Throughout the rest of the scene, the boys go back and forth between pitching to the audience, and speaking to each other.

That’s how it opens.

CAMERON. That’s how it would start.

CALUM. The movie of our lives. Who’s gonna play us?

CAMERON. Casting later.

On the edge of a cliff, water crashing below.

CALUM. It’s not a cliff

CAMERON. It’s like a cliff

CALUM. It’s Hampstead Heath

CAMERON. But they’re eight and it seems like a cliff.

CALUM. Danger.

CAMERON. Risk.

Calum and Cameron.

CALUM. Cam and Cal.

CAMERON. Zoom in on the edge of a cliff

CALUM. A Heath.

CAMERON. A summer that’s so hot you feel like a runaway

CALUM. A pioneer

CAMERON. The summer Cameron learns to ride his bike.

CALUM. Though you’re not very good.

The summer Calum learns to spit over a metre in front of himself.

CAMERON. The summer they discover this spot here, the cliff, their secret spot on the Heath.

CALUM. They can be anything.

CAMERON. They can talk about anything.

CALUM. Why the latest Batman movie was crap.

CAMERON. Whether Playstation 2 or Xbox is better.

CALUM. Why Pepsi is far superior to Coca-Cola, despite widespread public opinion to the contrary.

CAMERON. Cal and Cam

CALUM. Cam and Cal.

CAMERON. Think Stand by Me but without the crazy murderous dog that they spend all summer avoiding.

CALUM. Cameron, that’s The Sandlot.

CAMERON. No.

CALUM. Stand by Me they go looking for the body of a missing boy in the woods. Sandlot’s the dog...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Banana Boys
• Holloway Jones
• Girls Like That
• Pronoun
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information