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Club Director's Notes

Noel and Gertie Groping for Words: Three more performances! Music Hall Blackbird It Could Be Any One of Us The Handyman DNA & Sparkleshark Tonight at 8:30; A collection of 10 one act plays

• DNA & Sparkleshark

• 16th Jun - 18th Jun
• Written by: Dennis Kelly & Philip Ridley
• Directed by: Matt Haynes & James Firth-Haydon
• Performance Times: Thu 19:45, Fri 19:45, Sat 14:45

Synopsis

DNA by Dennis Kelly
A group of teenagers do something bad, really bad, then panic and cover the whole thing up. But when they find that the cover-up unites them and brings harmony to their once fractious lives, where’s the incentive to put things right?
DNA was first performed in the Cottesloe Theatre of the National Theatre on 16 February 2008. The play was commissioned by NT Education as part of its Connections project. Consistent traits in Kelly’s work are strong women, violence, fantasy and flexible identities. For DNA Kelly said in an interview, “this concept of a flexible identity was something I wanted to explore in a play. DNA was originally written for the National Theatre’s Connections project, which pairs young actors with new writing. It was to be
performed by more than 40 different youth groups across the country, and when I wrote it, I stipulated that all the characters’ genders and names could be changed according to the groups’ needs. John could become Jane, or Leah could become Lee. I reasoned that
there isn’t the huge gap between men and women that we like to think there is. We are different, yes, but our similarities far outweigh our differences. One quite angry youth leader took me to task over this, nsisting that girls and boys were practically different species, and this could never work. But the interesting thing was that, with all the different cast configurations I went on to see, I forgot the original sex of the character I’d written within 10 minutes

Sparkleshark by Philip Ridley
The play opens with a fourteen year old taking refuge on the roof of a tower block in order to write stories. The teenager is a victim, the classroom geek, bullied by some and avoided by others. Before long seven other young people arrive on the same rooftop and the taunting begins. At first the geek endeavours to hide but learns to fight back in the only way they know how too - storytelling. Soon the whole group is enmeshed in the story, enacting a fantastic tale that resonates with the dynamics of their own friendships and enmities. Sparkleshark is a theatre play by Philip Ridley that was originally commissioned for BT National Connections, the UK National Theatre’s youth theatre scheme which ran from 1993-1999. Sparkleshark had a run at the Royal National Theatre followed by a tour in 2001. Sparkleshark’s debut was at the Royal National Theatre in 1997, performed by Youth Lyric, Lyric Theatre, Belfast. The show was awarded first prize at BT National Connections, receiving a notable standing ovation. Following the show, Ridley published a book of his short plays, citing each member of the Youth Lyric cast as a thank you to their work. The cast played the show for a further three years. Since 1997, Sparkleshark has had many productions around the world, including at the Australian Theatre for Young People.