Plays for Young People

Charles Way

This collection of three plays is by one of Britain’s leading writers of plays for children and young people. ‘Red Red Shoes’ won the Arts Council’s Award for Best Children’s Play in 2004.

Charles Way was born in Devon in 1955, trained as an actor at the Rose Bruford College in London, then joined the Leeds Playhouse Theatre-in-Education team, for whom he wrote his first professional play in 1978. He became Resident Writer at the Theatre Centre in London and has since written over forty plays including adaptations, radio, television and large-scale community theatre.

His work has been translated into French, German, Russian, Greek and Welsh and performed all over the world.

His play ‘A Spell of Cold Weather’ (Aurora Metro) won the Writers’ Guild Award for Best Children’s Play in 1996. He was also invited to the Sundance Institute in Utah to work on The Dove Maiden, which subsequently toured Britain with the Hijinx Theatre Company. Also published: ‘The Classic Fairytales, retold for the stage’ (Aurora Metro).

He is a member of the Writers’ Guild and the Welsh Academy of Authors. He lives in Wales with his wife and two children.

‘… more people in Wales have seen a Charles Way stage play than one by any other writer working here. He has also been produced in Britain more than any other living Welsh-based playwright… his plays can be complex, subtle, elusive, metaphorical, mythic, magical…’

David Adams

aurora metro press

Founded in 1989 to publish and promote new writing, the press has specialised in new drama, fiction and work in translation, winning recognition and awards from the industry.

new drama

Theatre Centre, plays for young people,

introduced by Rosamunde Hutt ISBN 978-0-954233-05-1 £12.99

Young Blood, five plays for young performers,

ed. Sally Goldsworthy ISBN 978-0-951587-76-8 £10.95

Three Plays: Jonathan Moore ISBN 978-0-953675-72-2 £9.95

Best of the Fest, new plays celebrating ten years of the London New Play Festival,

ed. Phil Setren ISBN 978-0-951587-78-2 £12.99

Black and Asian Plays Anthology

introduced by Afia Nkrumah ISBN 978-0-953675-74-6 £9.95

Six Plays by Black and Asian Women Writers

ed. Kadija George ISBN 978-0-951587-72-0 £10.95

Seven Plays by Women, female voices, fighting lives,

ed. Cheryl Robson ISBN 978-0-9515877-1-3 £5.95

Under Their Influence by Wayne Buchanan ISBN 978-0-953675-75-3 £6.99

Lysistrata – the sex strike after Aristophanes,

adapted by Germaine Greer and Phil Willmott ISBN 978-0-953675-70-8 £7.99

Harvest by Manjula Padmanabhan ISBN 978-0-953675-77-7 £6.99

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Charles Way

Plays for Young People

Introduced by the Author

Red Red Shoes

Eye of the Storm

Playing from the Heart

AURORA METRO PRESS

Copyright © 2001 Aurora Metro Publications Ltd.

Eye of the Storm, Playing from the Heart and Red Red Shoes © copyright 2001 Charles Way

Reprinted 2005

Foreword © copyright 2001 Rosamunde Hutt

Introduction © copyright 2001 Charles Way

Cover design: Paul Vater Sugar Free 020 7243 2100

Photograph: Christine Devaney in Red Red Shoes by Angela Taylor/Unicorn Theatre for Children

With thanks to: Sherry Ann Collins, Ros Hutt, Tony Graham and Unicorn Theatre for Children, Gail McIntyre at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Vicky Ireland and Polka Theatre for Children and the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh.

Permission for the use of any copyright music mentioned in the text must be agreed in advance with the Performing Rights Society, Live Music Centre: 020 7580 5544.

Caution: All rights whatsoever in these plays are strictly reserved. Application for a licence to present performances including professional, amateur, recitation, lecturing, public reading, broadcasting, television and translation into foreign languages should be applied for, before rehearsals begin, to:

In accordance with Section 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the author asserts his moral rights to be identified as the author of the above Works.

Aurora Metro Press [email protected] 020 3261 0000

Trade distribution:

UK – Central Books Tel: 020 8986 4854 [email protected]

USA – Theatre Communications Group, N.Y. [email protected]

Canada – Playwrights Union of Canada Tel: 416 703 0013

Print version ISBN 978-0-953675-71-5

Printed by Antony Rowe UK.

E-book version ISBN 978-0-906582-17-3

E-book conversion by Simon Smith.

Contents

Foreword by Rosamunde Hutt

Introduction by Charles Way

Red Red Shoes

Introduced by Tony Graham

Eye of the Storm

Introduced by Gail McIntyre

Playing from the Heart

Introduced by Vicky Ireland

Plays Produced and Published

Foreword

Rosamunde Hutt

I have had the privilege of seeing Charles Way’s plays from as many angles as you can imagine, having directed, co-produced and acted in his work over the years. I have sat in village halls from Abergavenny to Dorset with audiences helpless with laughter, and have watched children in schools and theatres spellbound as his particular form of magic unfolds. A friend once said of his work that you can spend an evening laughing aloud, then suddenly, without realising it, you are in the grip of something mythic – love has entered a loveless home, a child has been saved from a violent end, and you are unexpectedly, deeply moved.

Charles has written over forty plays, mainly for young people. I have followed his work ever since the early 1980’s. His plays are regularly produced throughout Britain and on the international stage. In 1999, I saw a feast of his plays comprising three different Christmas shows in London at the Polka Theatre For Children, the Unicorn Theatre For Children and the Orange Tree in Richmond. One of his specialities is engaging both adults and children in family shows, work that subverts the fairytale or the received opinion, that looks at the dark corners of life but comes laced with a sharp wit, warmth, poetry and humanity. His children’s plays have led us through the looking glass, through tempests and tantrums, and into miniature and epic worlds, always encouraging the adult and the child to engage meaningfully and to acknowledge the magical in the everyday, as in Eye of the Storm.

Charles was the first writer I worked with as a director and I still abide by the rich nuggets that I learned from him – his insistence on working through metaphor, the discipline of plotting the differences between a narrative epic and a psychological journey, and where the twain shall meet, the need in us to explore the archetype. He is always very clear about the impetus of a play and how that impetus, or wellspring, should inform the writing of every scene, every encounter.

I have witnessed the sweep of his preoccupations, as he has created a body of socially and politically engaged work but I’ve also noticed how he returns repeatedly to certain key themes: love, the complexities of human nature, and the importance of storytelling, often bearing witness to events on the world’s stage and to collective and individual acts of courage. Some of his characters rage against their circumstances, for example, Betty in A Spell of Cold Weather. Others take action, determined to take charge and make a difference, as exemplified by Evelyn in Playing from the Heart.

I think it significant that Charles has dedicated so much of his work to theatre outside of the mainstream. He has stated that, ‘The act of theatre is an act of society and an act of hope’. I think it crucial to an examination of his work that often a Charles Way play will be a child or young person’s first introduction to the power of theatre, a moment that might kick start a life-long relationship with the art form. His work introduces theatre as part of everyday living – the shared experience in the nursery, the church hall, the community centre. Significant too, is the fact that he has nurtured longstanding collaborative partnerships with many companies and artists: Gwent Theatre in Education Company, Theatre Centre, the Unicorn, Polka, New Perspectives, Hijinx Theatre, the Sherman Theatre Company, developing plays sometimes through improvisation with actors, prioritising the use of music and of dance. Here is a playwright who believes in the power of the community.

At the heart of his success with children’s plays is, I think, a very special truth. It is not just that his plays are child-centred, speaking to the children in the audience with direct simplicity, but that the child in his work often transforms something that is undernourished, that needs to flower. In a world where children are often powerless, neglected or marginalised, audiences recognise that he sees the child as a catalyst for change, as in Red Red Shoes.

Back to Dorset in 1993, at a packed performance of In the Bleak Midwinter, a show for families, where an audience member joyfully quoted the following line to me afterwards. Miriam the realist says critically to Zak her husband, ‘An’ to pass the time you ’ave to find meaning an’ honour in humble things.’ What Miriam, the character, saw as a frustrating habit, the audience member saw as summing up the spirit of the play and the evening. Zak the dreamer, insists that, ‘Life is full of meaning, as the sky is full of stars.’ Charles searches for meaning in a world that to both the adult and the child can appear confusing, meaningless, impoverished. He finds meaning in humble things and therefore makes the ordinary, heroic. Because of this, I am convinced his work will endure: it is contemporary and timeless, charged in recent years by country rhythms, the seasons, a sense of wonder and the cycle of life. Always commenting on our times, unafraid to tackle spiritual, moral and political matters, he looks at the stuff of life, tenderly, compassionately and with a sense of humour.

Rosamunde Hutt is the Director of Theatre Centre, and has worked extensively in Theatre for Young People throughout Britain, specialising in collaborating with writers on original plays.

Introduction

Charles Way

I have often wondered what it is that makes an author write for children. Lewis Carroll wrote brilliantly about the central predicaments of childhood; feeling small, lost, in a strange unreasonable world. Carroll was expressing something that we feel, not only as children but all our lives, and this is why his work endures. For my part I write plays that seem to be about the journey of childhood and the three plays in this book all involve children/young people and their relationship with the adult world and their progression into it. This journey into a new state of self- knowledge is a metaphor for the whole of life’s journey. I would like to think therefore, that my plays, while entirely suitable for young people are not