Overview
This collection brings together Philip Ridley's one-act plays for young
people, known as The Storyteller Sequence, ideal for teenagers to either
watch or perform. Karamazoo is a fifteen-minute monologue about one
of the coolest, most popular kids in the school, whose recent increase
in popularity is the direct result of a character make-over following
the death of a parent. A witty and moving performance piece for the
teenage actor. Fairytaleheart features two fifteen-year-olds,
Kirsty and Gideon, who meet for the first time and come to terms with
their broken families by sharing their hopes, fears and past experiences
- as well as stories - in a derelict community centre. Sparkleshark
tells of fourteen-year-old Jake - a victim of bullying and other
teenager's mockery - who has to take refuge on the roof of a tower block
in order to write his stories. Moonfleece sees Curtis, a young
right-wing activist, arrange a meeting in a flat of a derelict tower
block where he lived as a child. But his older brother's ghost
keeps haunting him. Moonfleece is an intense and thrilling exploration
of memory and identity. Brokenville features an unknown disaster, which
has left seven characters with little knowledge of who they are or of
what has happened. As an old woman and five teenagers begin to
act out stories for a mute and frightened child, they begin to discover a
little of who they were and what they can be.