WHEN David Greig was asked
by Glasgow's TAG Theatre to write a play about young carers, he thought he'd
better talk to the teenagers themselves. The company hooked him up with a group
of young people in Fife who were responsible for looking after family members.
He asked them how they would like to be represented on stage and their message
was clear: make it funny.
"My initial instinct
was informed by quite a lot of assumptions," says Greig. "I thought
of them as poor things in a terrible situation. And, of course, they're just
normal teenagers who are in a particular situation which they respond to just
as you or I would, and there's a great deal of joy and humour in the
situation."
That was all the
inspiration he needed to write The Monster in the Hall, a highly entertaining
four-hander about a girl called Duck who has to keep an eye on a father with
multiple sclerosis while getting on with the serious business of dating a boy.
"I started to think about some of the dilemmas inherent in teenage life
about authority or doing as you're told," he says. "And it was
interesting to think about those dilemmas in a reversed situation."
By chance, the play is one
of two teen-friendly plays by Greig on the Fringe. In Short Productions, from
the University of Bristol, is reviving his Yellow Moon: The Ballad of Leila and
Lee, a tremendous piece of storytelling theatre about two teenagers who are
forced to go on the run. Both plays work equally well for adults (and are
definitely not for anyone younger than 14) but by taking teenagers seriously,
they strike a particular chord with an age group often neglected by the
theatre.
Performed in stripped-down
fashion by four excellent actors, Monster in the Hall plays with a young
carer's fear of being taken into care. Many such teenagers go to great pains to
appear to be in control and that made Greig think of farce – what he calls the
funniest form of theatre.
"Farce is exactly
about pretence," says Greig whose CATS award-winning comedy The Strange
Undoing of Prudencia Hart is also appearing on the Fringe. "It's about
someone desperately trying to hold up a picture of the world that is
respectable, while in fact it is crumbling all around them. My assumption was I
would write a very tragic, noble story about a brave young person and their
struggle, but in fact I realised I had to write a farce about a girl
desperately trying to pretend everything's OK when it plainly it isn't."
It was an approach that
worked and, although it was critically lauded, there was only one audience
Greig cared about. "The young carers saw it at a gym hall in Methill and
they responded fantastically. They were very nice about it and I was thrilled.
It got a great response on tour, and that was extremely gratifying, but I felt
immune to any responses because my primary audience had enjoyed it."
WHERE & WHEN
THE MONSTER IN THE HALL
Traverse Theatre,
4–28 August (not 8, 15,
22), times vary.
From £11,
Tel: 0131 228 1404
YELLOW MOON: THE BALLAD OF
LEILA AND LEE
C Soco,
3–29 August (not 16), 7pm.
From £8.50,
Tel: 0845 260 1234
THE STRANGE UNDOING OF
PRUDENCIA HART
Traverse @ Ghillie Dhu,
2–27 August (not 8, 15,
22), 3pm.
£15,
Tel: 0131 228 1404
© Mark Fisher 2011
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