Liar, Liar | Teacher Resources

TEACHER RESOURCE PACK

LIAR, LIAR

BY EV CROWE DIRECTED BY BLANCHE MCINTYRE

RESOURCES DEVELOPED BY CATHERINE GREENWOOD & ELLA MACFADYEN

unicorntheatre.com

LIAR, LIAR TEACHER RESOURCES

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Page 2 Page 3

How to use this resource pack and the focus of the Drama activities Introduction to the play

MEET THE CREATIVE TEAM Page 4 Page 5-6 Page 7-11 Page 12-13

Overview The Writer - E V Crowe The Director - Blanche McIntyre The Designer - James Perkins

DRAMA ACTIVITIES & TEXT EXTRACTS Page 13

Page 14

Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18-24

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Activity 1 - Two truths, one lie Activity 2 - Signs of lying Activity 3 - Pair improvisations Activity 4 - Grace and her father Activity 5 - Agreement line Activity 6 - Exploring the character of Grace Activity 7 - Grace and her mother Text extracts

LIAR, LIAR TEACHER RESOURCES

INTRODUCTION Welcome to the resource pack for the Unicorn Theatre’s production of Liar, Liar by E V Crowe.

This pack is designed to provide teachers and students with materials that can extend and deepen a visit to the play. These resources will support teachers working with students before and after seeing the play to enrich the experience through an imaginative and reflective engagement with the piece, and at the same time connect with students’ classroom learning.

The play and resources will be relevant in particular to Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 Drama and PSHE.

The resource pack is in two sections: 1) The making of Liar, Liar: interviews with the creative team in the lead up to rehearsals in January 2013.

This section gives insight into the work of the creative team behind the making of Liar, Liar and focuses particularly on the process of creating a new piece of work. The interviews will help GCSE Drama students to understand how theatre professionals interpret a play and communicate meaning through the creative decisions they make: • The use of drama medium such as set, props, costume space and lighting.

• The elements of drama such as form, content, characterisation, rhythm and contrast.

2) Practical drama activities: using Scene One of Liar, Liar.

By practically exploring the opening scene the students will be introduced to the characters of Grace and her father David and begin to explore the main themes of the play as well as the theatre conventions that run through the whole piece. The focus of the scene is the relationship between Grace and her father David and between the truth and the lies she tells.

Further drama activities will be added to this pack in January.

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LIAR, LIAR TEACHER RESOURCES

INTRODUCTION TO THE PLAY Liar, Liar is a newly commissioned play written by E V Crowe for audiences aged 13+ Liar, Liar tells the story of a teenage girl Grace, who knows the truth can be dangerous.

Grace chooses to lie, to invent stories, in order to control her world. At times she tells people what they want to hear, to protect herself and to protect those she cares about. The action of the play takes place in her bedroom and within the powerful imaginary stories she creates.

Grace: If I tell you it will be like my mouth shooting out a bullet.

When the play opens Grace is home, but where has she been and what has she been doing all night? Her father David, sister Coco and neighbour Steve all want to know. But do they want to hear the truth or do they want something else from Grace? Certainly they all make assumptions about Grace, about the kind of young woman she is and what she is capable of.

Grace loses herself in her game playing and keeps the people around her at bay, but with the discovery of a disturbing crime the police become involved, the need to know the truth intensifies and the pressure on Grace increases.

As we learn more about Grace through BBM conversations she has with her friend Javaad we discover that there is a particular secret that she is compelled to protect and ultimately she has to decide whether to speak out in order to protect her father, or to stay true to herself and her friend.

This dynamic new play dramatises Grace’s real and imaginary worlds and explores the relationship between the two.

Often we think about people who lie as ‘bad’, but I wanted to explore the reasons why someone like Grace might lie, and to look at the pressures of how she is perceived. For her, often, it is easier to lie, than to tell the truth. She realises that very often, people don’t want to hear the truth.

E V Crowe

There is a wonderful mixture of concrete everyday realism, the world that the characters inhabit, and a surreal, flowing, exciting, boundary-free imaginative world, and a lot of the fun will be in how those things intersect, how one grows out of the other, what the differences are between them and how they overlap.

Blanche McIntyre

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MEET THE CREATIVE TEAM What happens when we create a brand new piece of work for our audiences?

The process began around 18 months ago when Artistic Director, Purni Morrell, invited E.V Crowe to create a new play for our Spring Season. The first conversation was about creating a prequel for King Lear in a contemporary setting. The play has moved some way from those beginnings but still retains the root of those initial discussions.

With the script underway and the performance dates confirmed the rest of the creative team were drawn together.

Writer

E V Crowe

Director

Blanche McIntyre

Designer

James Perkins

Sound George Dennis

Lighting

Gary Bowman

The Actors

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Danusia Samal

Tom Padden

Grace

David

Carl Patrick

Coco

Steve

Ritu Ayra

The following interviews provide an insight into how the creative team work together and how much work needs to be done before the actors begin rehearsals.

MEET THE CREATIVE TEAM

THE WRITER - E V CROWE E V Crowe is one of the most exciting young playwrights around. Nominated for Most Promising Newcomer at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards in 2011, she won critical acclaim for her plays Kin at the Royal Court and Young Pretender at the Edinburgh Festival.

She is widely regarded as an inspiring voice for and about teenagers’ experience in Britain today.

WHY DID YOU WRITE THE PLAY? Before writing the play, I had spent quite a bit of time in the company of 12-14 year old young people, talking about plays. Some were based in Wood Green, some Tower Hamlets, some in Chelsea, but the thing they all had in common was how much they seemed to have to adapt their behaviour all of the time to fit in with how different people perceived them - their friends, teachers, strangers, me. It felt also that every time I walked into a room to spend time with them, I would have to drop all of my own preconceptions about them and their views on life, because it was never what I thought it would be, but it was always interesting.

I suppose in the play I wanted to work out what the idea of a ‘young person’ means in society now. How adults are maybe afraid of young people sometimes, even those who care for them and what affect that might have on a character. I wanted to think about what it must feel like if everyone assumes you are bad and have probably done something wrong, if that makes it harder to be good.

And also to think about different kinds of relationships, and that sometimes, a relationship with a friend can be just as, if not more, important than a relationship with a member of your family. And that friendship is important, and can be the most stable thing in your life sometimes. A friend can be the person who knows you best, and can love you as much as a brother or a sister.

WHAT IS THE CONNECTION TO KING LEAR?

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I knew that I wanted my play to end where King Lear starts; with the King’s decision to divide his kingdom among his three daughters. One daughter, Cordelia, however, doubts her father’s motives. She also doesn’t want to have to publicly tell her Dad she loves him in order to prove that she is worthy of her inheritance. She wants their relationship to be better than it is; to be more about both of them, and less about him. So when she says ‘I cannot heave my heart into my mouth’, she’s saying that she can’t make a big speech, she can’t talk about how she feels in the way she wants to. So she stays true to herself, but at the same time her actions cause a lot of things to go wrong. But she never regrets it, because she values herself and her sense of self above all else.

MAKING THE PLAY Writer E V Crowe continued

I wanted to explore that relationship between father and daughter, where the father makes unreasonable demands. He in a way becomes the child, and she the adult. And he exploits his knowledge of her vulnerabilities (in Liar Liar, he exploits the idea that Grace worries people think she looks ‘hard’ or like someone who commits crime/does bad stuff) and forces her into a position where her self worth is very low, and his well being is the priority.

Often we think about people who lie as ‘bad’, but I wanted to explore the reasons why someone like Grace might lie, and to look at the pressures of how she is perceived. For her, often, it is easier to lie, than to tell the truth. She realises that very often, people don’t want to hear the truth. The truth can be dangerous and you have to be very brave to face the consequences.

HOW DO YOU HOPE AUDIENCES WILL RESPOND? I hope that young people will recognise themselves or people they know in it. I hope that they will feel the play ‘tells the truth’ to some degree about the relationships that sometimes exist between adults and young people. And I hope they feel that like Grace, they have the power to find strength where they need it (In Liar Liar, Grace ends up able to rely on herself and her friend Javaad) and the strength to be honest with themselves and other people about how they feel.

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I also wanted to acknowledge that some young people, especially in London exist in quite extreme situations. That violence against young people happens, and that not everything is always black and white. That we sometimes love people even though they are violent. Weird and extreme things happen in life, but Grace is able to know herself in the midst of all of it and to voice it, and I hope young people feel empowered by that.

MEET THE CREATIVE TEAM

THE DIRECTOR - BLANCHE MCINTYRE Blanche was the winner of the Critics’ Circle Award for Most Promising Newcomer and the Off West End Theatre Award for Best Director in 2012, and the inaugural winner of the Leverhulme Bursary for Emerging Theatre Directors in 2009. She was Associate Director at Out of Joint in 2010, and Director in Residence at the National Theatre Studio and the Finborough Theatre in 2009. Blanche is an Associate Artist for Hightide Festival Theatre.

WHY DID YOU WANT TO DIRECT LIAR, LIAR? Because it’s a brilliant play, it’s beautifully observed, it’s very moving, it’s very funny, and it’s incredibly imaginative and it’s very, very rare in my experience to come across a playwright who is quite so bold in where she lets her imagination take her.

CAN YOU TALK A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR VISION FOR THE PLAY? It’s new writing so a lot of my job is going to be about honouring the play. I have a duty to find the exact nature of it, the essence of it and bring it out as truthfully as I can.

There is a wonderful mixture of concrete everyday realism, the world that the characters inhabit, and a surreal, flowing, exciting, boundary-free imaginative world, and a lot of the fun will be in how those things intersect, how one grows out of the other, what the differences are between them and how they overlap. I want to get that relationship right.

It is much more spectacle heavy than a lot of shows that I do.

It is political in the original sense; which is that it speaks to an audience of its own kind about an experience that affects them, that the audience that it is built for are naturally locked into its subject. The way that it chooses to communicate with them is through music, it’s through sound, lighting, magic, exciting visual experiences as well as character, plot, story, and the stuff out of which real life is made.

Image from James’ notebook

IS IT DIFFERENT DIRECTING A PREMIERE?

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If you’re directing a play that has been done before then you have a relationship with the public and their expectations of what the play’s like, as well as a duty to the writer. You are working with a received idea of what the play is. Whereas with this one no one has the slightest idea of what the play’s like so my only point of reference is the playwright’s head.

It’s much more personal in a way.

MAKING THE PLAY Director Blanche McIntyre continued

WHAT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE WRITER DURING REHEARSALS? I’m lucky that in the meetings I’ve had with Emma I’ve tended to say ‘I think it’s this’ and she’s said ‘good, that’s in my head too’ so we’re coming from a similar place.

I hope she will be in rehearsals. Normally it’s useful if the writer comes in at the beginning: the cast can ask questions, the writer makes sure they like the way you want to take it, and then they can come back later on, see what you’ve done and go ‘ok, I agree with that and not with that.’

But the play changes its nature as you work on it: you start seeing things you hadn’t spotted when you read it, and often the writer puts more in than they realise. So it’s always really good to have them there.

HAVE YOU DIRECTED FOR THIS AGE GROUP BEFORE? No I haven’t. I am very scared because - I could be totally wrong about this, my impression about directing for that audience is that they are incredibly sharp and more demanding than an audience who have been blunted by seeing 200 plays or whatever. And they will be watching a play that is about their experience and if I get that wrong they will be the first people to notice it. The stakes are very high for me.

What could be more fun than directing for a very discerning audience, a very sharp audience? Those are the kind of people you want to be making theatre for, they are the people for whom it is important that you get it right, who are going to get very engaged with it.

WHAT DO YOU THINK THE AUDIENCE WILL CONNECT WITH?

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There is a truthfulness about the relationships, about the way that the friendships work and about the ways that the family is messed up. When you are growing up you are trying to define who you are, actually to create who you are. Sometimes other people put pressure on you to be somebody else and there are always people who – in this case there’s an older sister and a father - who have relationships with you that aren’t helpful and that you have to change. I think everyone who has gone through 13 to 14 has had that sense of ‘who exactly am I? Who do these people think I am and what can I do to change it? Because I’m gonna have to make it change, they’re not going to change it for me?’

MEET THE CREATIVE TEAM Director Blanche McIntyre continued

WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES OF STAGING THE PIECE? One challenge is getting the claustrophobia of Grace’s room - it’s all set in one room and people try to bust into it and take it over but the theatre is a huge space - so how to make her feel like she’s stuck in this tiny room without making it feel like you’re a hundred miles away from her.

The other big challenge is how to bring her imagination to life. I don’t want to spoil the story but the things she thinks of are very unusual and vivid and I have to find an exciting way to bring them into the show. I’m putting the inside of someone’s head onstage, if you like.

Images from James’ notebook James has designed it, with this little raised tower, it’s like being in a castle: you can defend it but you can’t get out of it. If you’re stuck in a castle and an army is coming you can’t run away, you’re stuck there. That’s quite like what’s happening to Grace, she’s got all these people trying to take over her story and she is trying to resist them and control it.

We’ve been talking about magic, about surprises, about people popping up from nowhere, false entrances - as much fun and surprise and inventiveness as we can have – a little bit gritty and real and then this wonderful disco excitedness bursting out of it all over.

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MEET THE CREATIVE TEAM Director Blanche McIntyre continued

WHAT WERE YOU DISCUSSIONS WITH JAMES THE DESGINER LIKE? We talked about how the brain works and how her imagination works and where these images come from and how Grace’s room relates to what is going on outside. We started talking about the ego and the id and at an early stage of the design the room was her ego and she was in control of it and it was, if you like, her conscious mind. But then from below and above the id could be summoned: things could come out of the ceiling or the floor.

She’s pulling it from somewhere deep inside and so it seemed to make sense that these stories should be dragged up from underneath, or given to her from above. There was an early stage when the whole outside space was the id, but when we discussed it, it seemed like that would make it seem as if Grace’s battle was with her subconscious and her own demons and that seemed wrong. All the problems that she has come from outside, from people who are putting pressure on her, but not from inside herself.

So we ended up with this column of ‘Grace’ in the middle, and the ego and the id that she could bring stuff from, like a magician, and then this slightly threatening outside world. In Freud there is the ego, the id, the super-ego and the external world and it is the external world that changes you, which you resist or you engage with. So that suddenly became a much more interesting part of what’s going on: Grace is in charge of her own little world, but outside there’s a world that is bleak and strange and frightening and full of threats that she doesn’t even really know about, that she’s got to go out there and deal with, because it’s coming at her, threatening the reserves that she has. And James said at this point “we need to junk the super ego” and I said “yeah!”

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MEET THE CREATIVE TEAM

THE DESIGNER - JAMES PERKINS BEGINNING THE DESIGN PROCESS I start by collecting ideas; reading the script over and over again, researching any practical or emotional ideas that crop up, talking to the director and lighting designer.

Design is reaction. Most creative activities are reactions, even if you are right at the beginning of the process like a writer, or an artist, if you’re not reacting to external forces such as the audience or the wider world then what you’re doing is probably irrelevant. As a designer you’re right in the middle of the process, a writer, director, producer and venue are already involved so you have much more information to react to.

The research is like finding building blocks, you spend all this time filling this imaginary room with blocks of information and blocks of ideas until you reach the point where the floor of your head is covered in blocks - then you kind of sit in there and play and you click ideas together and they either work or they don’t work. If you hit a problem then you go away and you start the process again; you read the script again, you research again and you talk to Blanche again. Sometimes these problems just require a subtle shift in shape, sometimes your ideas get flattened back into their individual blocks and you have to start again.

Moments of failure only help to distill and strengthen your ideas.

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Images from James’ notebook

MEET THE CREATIVE TEAM Director James Perkins continued

Design, regardless of whether for theatre or anything else, is about the combination of seemingly opposing forces; so in product design you have form versus function or cost versus quality. In theatre, something you play with a lot is naturalism versus abstraction; the combination of these is what helps us create a new theatrical reality.

If you take theatre as telling a story then designing for theatre is about creating a world.

Whilst reading something about child development I found a quote that said nature and nurture are to a person what width and length are to a rectangle. The rectangle part of this phrase struck me as a good example of the creation of theatrical worlds too – if even the humblest of shapes requires two opposing forces how many complimenting and contrasting ideas, whether technical, natural or emotional, do we need to use to create a new reality in which a story can be told?

There is a huge gulf between a script and a piece of theatre. I think for a lot of people, myself definitely included, reading a script can be really hard work, yet that script on the stage with the right set and the right cast and the right space and the right visuals can be really easy, you can suddenly take in all the information.

HOW DO YOU WORK WITH SCRIPT, WRITER AND DIRECTOR? They’re all fixed points of reference and inspiration, they’re the starting point and the returning point and every time you hit a wall you go back and read the script and every time you read it you find out that Emma has done things that you hadn’t noticed the first time round. I’d like to think that she comes to see it and she will see things that she hadn’t imagined when she first wrote it.

You want people to come into the space and feel like they can relate, like this is a space they know. Then, through words and images, you want to reveal whole new ideas that they might not have expected.

The model box

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DRAMA ACTIVITIES ACTIVITY ONE - TWO TRUTHS, ONE LIE AIM A quick partner warm up that introduces the idea of lying.

RUNNING THE ACTIVITY • Ask your class to move into pairs.

• Each person tells the other three things about themselves; two true, one lie. The aim is to try and confuse your partner about which things are true and which are false.

• Ask each partner to identify which of the three things was the lie.

Reflective questions What did you need to do to tell a successful lie?

Could you tell if someone was lying? What were the signs you picked up on?

How did it feel to lie?

ACTIVITY TWO - SIGNS OF LYING AIM To observe body language and behaviour when people lie.

RUNNING THE ACTIVITY • Ask for 4 volunteers and brief them separately from the rest of the class. Ask two of them to only tell the truth, the other two can only tell lies.

• Ask the rest of the group to ask them questions on a particular topic: for example childhood holidays, explaining that sometimes the interviewees’ answers will be lies and sometimes they will be true – their job is to look for body language/clues to see if they can tell. Encourage them to ask questions that they don’t already know the answer to.

• When you have asked the panel a couple of questions stop and feedback what they have observed; what raises their suspicion? What kind of behaviour and body language have they observed?

• Reveal to the group that two have been lying the whole time and two telling the truth.

• Continue to ask questions and see if we can work who is lying.

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Reflective questions What are signs that someone is lying? Body language, facial expressions, manner when answering, content of what is said, eye contact etc.

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DRAMA ACTIVITIES ACTIVITY THREE - PAIR IMPROVISATION AIM To explore the links between storytelling, lying and the imagination.

RUNNING THE ACTIVITY • Explain to students that the main character in Liar, Liar is a 14 year-old girl called Grace.

Grace lies to protect the people around her; to give people what they want to hear and also to cope with difficulties in her life. Grace’s lies often move from the realistic to the weird and fantastical - she gets carried away in her own stories which become more and more implausible. This activity will explore the idea of getting caught up in a lie or story that you tell to a partner.

• In pairs, one person asks questions, the other replies and can only lie.

• The person lying can start to exaggerate and let their lies build upon one another.

• The person asking questions can help build the web of lies by asking leading questions.

• Start to exaggerate the lies more and more. Imagine you are on a scale of 1-10, with level 1 being very realistic and level 10 being completely unrealistic - how far up the scale can the storyteller get?

Reflective questions How did it feel to be free to lie and make up stories?

ACTIVITY FOUR - GRACE AND HER FATHER AIM To think about the relationship between Grace and her father by exploring the opening scene of the play. The script of the scene is in the resources section at the end of this pack.

This is a pre-show activity.

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RUNNING THE ACTIVITY • Read Scene 1 in pairs.

• Choose one moment to enact in pairs that you think says somthing about the relationship between Grace and her father, David.

• Start with a freeze frame. Think about where they are in the room, physical/spatial relationship.

• Bring the moment to life using up to 2 lines of dialogue.

• Watch each group’s work. What do we think they tell us about Grace and David?

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DRAMA ACTIVITIES ACTIVITY FOUR CONTINUED...

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Using a role-on-the-wall (large outline of a Grace on paper), write insde the outline the things we think we know about Grace so far. Write the things we want to find out about Grace around the outline. This would be interesting to come back to after you have seen the show.

Looking back at scene one, highlight in pairs where you think Grace is lying in the scene.

Discuss why do you think she might be lying and what the truth mighe be in these moments.

Look at the stage directions in this scene – what do you think the writer’s intention is here? How do you imagine these moments might be staged?

ACTIVITY FIVE - AGREEMENT LINE AIM To open up a discussion around lying.

RUNNING THE ACTIVITY • Draw an imaginary line down the middle of the room. Explain that one end of the line is ‘strongly agree’ and the other end is ‘strongly disagree’. The middle of the line is ‘indifferent’.

• Read our the following statements. After each one, the students move to the part of the line that represents how strongly they agree or disagree with the statement.

• After each one, ask a few students to explain there decision to stand in particular place.

• Statements: - Everybody lies - There are some situations in which you should never lie - It’s ok to lie to children - Some people are too truthful •

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You could repeat this activity after seeing the show – have people’s opinions changed at all?

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DRAMA ACTIVITIES ACTIVITY SIX - EXPLORING THE CHARACTER OF GRACE AIM To look at the relationship between what people say about Grace and what she feels about herself. This is a post-show activity.

RUNNING THE ACTIVITY Read the following section of writer E V Crowe’s interview to the class: Often we think about people who lie as ‘bad’, but I wanted to explore the reasons why someone like Grace might lie, and to look at the pressures of how she is perceived. For her, often, it is easier to lie, than to tell the truth. She realises that very often, people don’t want to hear the truth. The truth can be dangerous and you have to be very brave to face the consequences.

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Now read Grace’s line from the play: It’s always a young person’s face in the paper for doing something bad. People like it that way. Young people are good at taking the blame. I’m good at it.

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Look at all the lines from the play that Grace says about herself and the lines that others say about her (text extracts at the back of the pack).

Place these lines onto the role-on-the-wall. Inside: what Grace feels about herself, outside: what others say about her.

Discuss with the class the relationship between how she feels about herself and how others speak about her. How much does what people say about you affect the way you present yourself to the world?

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DRAMA ACTIVITIES

ACTIVITY SEVEN - GRACE AND HER MOTHER AIM To explore the relationship between Grace and her mother through looking at extracts of the text. You will need a copy of scene five. This is a post-show activity.

RUNNING THE ACTIVITY • Read scene five and discuss why Grace might be lying to her Grandmother.

• In groups of four, create 3 still images that show key moments from Grace’s lie about her mum leaving.

• Share each group’s work.

• Now think about what you imagine really happened when her mum left - as an audience we don’t get to see this moment, but we do hear about it - (we learn from Grace that her dad has been unfaithful, has told the mum, there’s a fight, she packs a bag and leaves, leaving Grace & Coco with David.)

• Create another 3 moments that show this reality - we are ‘filling the gaps’ and imagining what these moments might look like. You could bring some of these moments to life.

• Imagine it’s a now few weeks later after the point the play finishes. We know that Grace has decided to tell the truth – “I’m never telling another lie”. In role as Grace, write a letter to her mother. What sort of things might Grace want to say to her?

• If appropriate, swap letters and read each other’s to out loud.

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SCENE ONE Grace’s bedroom. Nowhere else.

There’s a mattress with mis-matched duvet and sheets on the floor.

Grace is sitting on the edge of her makeshift bed.

David is standing, almost camouflaged against all her stuff.

Grace is playing out a scenario on her console, she’s got the controls in her hand. We can’t see the screen but we can hear the sound, really loud – cars pulling away, gunfire, people shouting, voices, soundtrack, helicopter. And we watch her play it. Her face, lit by the screen glow, she’s totally into it. She’s killing people all over the place with real skill. She plays out a round, it lasts a little while, she gets excited as the game climaxes, standing up into the fantasy.

Yes. Die! Die. I said you die. Follow, Follow, reload.

Grenade. Not yet. Release, release!

Come on.

Come on.

You’re dead.

You’re all dead.

She jumps a bit, up and down, on the spot, controlled, in a series of shoot outs, her face, savage, then suddenly she’s killed.

She drops her control on the carpet, wipes her face with the back of her hand.

Turns to look at her Dad, David.

Grace: WHAT? David steps out of the dark.

Grace: If you weren’t watching me, I would’ve killed way more people. I was on a proper killing streak and someone just shot me in the back of the head.

She touches the back of her head, her hand comes back with blood on it.

David: Coco said you didn’t go to school yesterday.

Grace: Did she?

David: Yeh she did.

David: Did you have a good time?

Grace: What?

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SCENE ONE continued David: Did you have a laugh?

Grace: What?

David: What’s the point in not going to school if it’s shit.

Pause.

Grace: No, yeh. I had a good time.

David: Nice one.

Grace: Were you worried about me?

David: What?

Grace: Were you worried?

David: Not Gracey!

Grace: Did you notice I was gone?

David: I was worried yes, worried you were being boring.

Grace: What?

David: Joking. I’m joking. You’re alright. You’re a good girl.

Pause.

David: What’s wrong with you?

Grace: Nothing.

David: Good.

Grace: Nothing.

David: Good.

Silence.

Grace: The marshes.

David: What?

Grace: I was up on the marshes.

David: Oh.

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SCENE ONE continued Grace: In case you want to know where I was.

David: Right. Sounds like a riot.

Pause.

Grace: It was. It was ace.

David: Was it?!

Grace: It was brilliant.

David: What did you do up there?

Grace remembers. She can hear trees blowing about, birds, someone calling for their dog, a train going past.

David: A rave was it?

Grace: Yeh. David: What sort of rave?

Grace: Grimey house stuff.

David: Ok. Grace: That’s right. And we danced all night.

David: Did you?

Grace: And all the next morning. There was a band, I mean a DJ. This underground DJ and it was SO HARDCORE and SO LOUD. Music blasts, they both dance pumping their fists in the air. It stops.

Grace: It was ace.

David lingers, awkward. He bounces his foot on the mattress, then tries to bounce on it. It doesn’t work.

David: Shit bed!

20

SCENE FIVE Grace carefully places a chair against her door to stop anyone coming in.

She sits on her bed, tries to think.

Her phone rings a Justin Beiber ringtone.

Grace: Javaad?

Oh hi Grandma, No, it’s Grace. How are you?

I said how are you? Grandma, it’s Grace, your granddaughter.

It’s good to hear your voice.

Mum? She’s not here.

No. I mean, went, and we don’t know where.

Not his mum, my mum, your daughter. Yes. Yes. We’re very…we’re doing ok. I’m fine. I’m…

No I wasn’t…

I was…

It was….

Don’t get upset Grandma.

Don’t be sad. Don’t cry.

Grace doesn’t know what to do. She thinks, then stands up, invents.

It was a beautiful experience. Grandma?

Pause.

Yes, really. Mum leaving.

Everyone should get to go through it.

Of course, we was all there. All three of us. Dad picked us up early from school and we had this long chat in the car about what might happen, how mum was feeling, how we have to look after her and each other.

And then when we got home she took us in her arms and explained that she just wasn’t happy living with Dad and it’s not out fault. And we all know that.

Ok? And we had doughnuts too for a treat, and the sticky bit was still warm. But not so hot it burns your tongue.

And Coco had too many and she was sick.

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TEXT EXTRACTS ABOUT GRACE - FOR ACTIVITY SIX

David: You’re alright. You’re a good girl.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Coco: What IS wrong with your face?

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: I just killed 200 enemy soldiers. It makes my cheeks go puffy. I think I get dehydrated.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Coco: You’re, like, the best little liar in our family.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: You won’t believe me, whatever I say.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Coco: You know they say that lying IS self harm. Also your eyebrows looks like some one drawn a line with a marker pen from one side of your head to the other. You do have some sort of facial hair problem, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Steve: She might know something.

----------------------------------------------------------------------David: Grace is a good kid.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Steve: She smashed our car window that time. I saw her do it. For fun.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: Every1 THINKS I done smthing ----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: I haven’t done anything bad.

----------------------------------------------------------------------G: I dnt want any rumours startin about me.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: I’m getting tired of making stuff up. I’ve been lying so long it’s starting to hurt my mouth when I tell the truth.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: Will they think I’ve become bad. That I’m like, a thug?

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: That Grace is a dis-grace?!

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: And the men they says, this, ‘this is the youth of today – too much tv, flying around, want to be famous on tv, think of nothing else, want us to bow to their feet. This is the youth of today.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

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David: You and me were doing alright before.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: I’m worried.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: No I haven’t gone off the rails. Why does everyone think I’ve gone bad? Missing a couple of lessons, only History.

Which is like, missable.

I miss Mum. She gave good hugs.

----------------------------------------------------------------------David: They know you’re trouble.

----------------------------------------------------------------------David: You look hard as nails you do.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: Good grace, bad grace?

----------------------------------------------------------------------David: See. Snap. Party Animals us.

----------------------------------------------------------------------David: You got suspended.

----------------------------------------------------------------------David: You’re a weird one.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: If you really want to know. Pause. I keep thinking something bad’s going to happen. Something we don’t expect. It’s this FEAR. I’ve had it for ages.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: This is the kind of stuff I think about. I get scared about the earth falling in, or like a giant meteor hitting us. And I feel completely on my own. And I can’t just sit there at school waiting for it to happen.

----------------------------------------------------------------------David: What if I told you that I like you the least of the two of you at the moment Gracie. That even when you were little, I thought there might be something bad in you. You showed signs.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Coco: You’re acting guilty.

Grace: Am I? Coco: Yeh. You’re all jumpy and sweaty.

Grace: My heart’s going fast.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: People think I’m weird.

23

Coco: Guilty face.

Grace: You think you can tell I’m bad just by looking at me?

Coco: Definitely.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: But we just run around getting into trouble, getting out of school, tearing up the place without ever really thinking.

Sometimes something happens and you just need time to think about it or maybe I don’t deserve to have a head or a brain.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: I feel bad anyway. Like I’m a bad person and a bad friend. It’s the worst feeling ever. It’s the only thing that matters.

I didn’t hurt the little boy, but I’m still a bad person. I still deserve to get in trouble.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: I want to put my head out of this window and scream and scream.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: It’s always a young person’s face in the paper for doing something bad. People like it that way. Young people are good at taking the blame. I’m good at it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: We’re all soldiers round here. We expect to get hurt and to fight and to be in pain and to die. It’s like, normal.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: You don’t know how good I am. When Mum went off. I got angry, and I would just make stuff up on purpose. Now it’s more of a hobby. Like recreational lying. Or a super power. Trust me.

----------------------------------------------------------------------David: You look like trouble!

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: It’s just surviving isn’t it. Making it to the next level. Working out who the enemy is.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: I feel like I’m always the bad one. And I have to be like it. You never told me I could just be good. She wipes her mouth.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: I lied to every1.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: I’m never telling another lie again.

----------------------------------------------------------------------Grace: I don’t want to be scared of me.

----------------------------------------------------------------------G: I knew something bad would happen. I said so didn’t I. Like a meteor, or something. And the whole world falls to bits ----------------------------------------------------------------------G: I got no one.

J: You got me.

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