Brainstorm: The Original Playscript E-Book

Ned Glasier

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Inside every adolescent brain, 86 billion neurons connect and collide to produce the most frustrating, chaotic and exhilarating changes that will ever happen to us. Brainstorm is a unique theatrical investigation into how teenagers' brains work, and why they're designed by evolution to be the way they are. Created by Ned Glasier and Emily Lim with Company Three (formerly Islington Community Theatre), in collaboration with neuroscientists Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Dr Kate Mills, the play is designed to be created and performed by a company of teenagers, drawing directly on their personal experiences. This edition contains a series of exercises, resources and activities to help schools, youth-theatre groups and young companies create and perform their own Brainstorm. It also features the complete script of the original production which played at Park Theatre and the National Theatre, London, in 2015.

Leseprobe

Ned Glasier, Emily Limand Company Three

BRAINSTORM

The Original PlayscriptAnd a Blueprint forCreating Your Own Production

Foreword by Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Dedication

Foreword

Acknowledgements

The Original Playscript

The Blueprint

About Brainstorm

About Company Three

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

For Antione,who inspired the idea in the first place

Foreword

In 2013, I first saw Brainstorm as a scratch performance by twenty-five teenage members of Company Three (then Islington Community Theatre). The group, together with directors Ned Glasier and Emily Lim, had seen my TED Talk on the teenage brain and been inspired to create a play about what was happening inside their heads. Ned and Emily approached me and my former PhD student, Dr Kate Mills, to talk to them about the science of the adolescent brain.

When I saw the scratch performance, I had no idea what to expect, but from the first scene onwards I was mesmerised by the imaginative interpretation of the science and the brilliant performances by the talented young people. The play was innovative and clever, and incredibly poignant, telling the stories of the complex relationships between the young people and their parents, set within the context of the science of how the adolescent brain develops.

I wanted to get more involved and was delighted that a grant from the Wellcome Trust enabled Kate and me to spend more time with the directors and young people to develop the play. Our first step on this journey was a twenty-minute performance and talk by the young people and myself in front of four thousand people at the Discovering the Future of Medicine event at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

It is important that we find new ways to communicate our scientific discoveries to young people and the general public, and Brainstorm is a perfect example of this. The impact of the play on its audiences at the Royal Albert Hall, Park Theatre, National Theatre and on BBC iPlayer has been profound and long-lasting. The cast have told Kate and me stories of parents rethinking how they understand and interact with their children as a consequence of learning about brain development from the play. We have heard about headteachers who have seen the play and returned to their schools determined to do things differently.

And we have learned from the experience too. It’s fascinating and important to learn about how the science of the adolescent brain is interpreted by young people themselves. We learn about their experiences, what’s important to them and what they care about, and this gives us ideas for our next experiments.

It has always been important to me that science is accessible and that everyone has a role to play in communicating it, questioning it and sharing it. I hope this book enables many other young people to have the same experience of self-discovery that the cast of Company Three’s Brainstorm did, and that many more audience members might start to understand the extraordinary potential of the teenage brain.

Sarah-Jayne BlakemoreProfessor of Cognitive NeuroscienceUCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience

Acknowledgements

Company Three would like to thank Lyndsey Turner, Ben Power, Fran Miller and everyone at the National Theatre and the National Theatre Studio; Jez Bond and the team at Park Theatre; Jonathan Gibbs, Laura Campbell and everyone at Platform Islington; Jayne Gold and her Year 8 students at Elizabeth Garret Anderson School; current and former Trustees of Company Three; Izzy Madgwick; Robert Blakey; Angie Peña Arenas; Mattia Pagura; Guy Jones; Kwami Odoom; Jonathan Samuels; Camilla Greenwell; Fergus Dingle; Ruth Little; Jack Lowe; Beck Smith; Professor Vincent Walsh; Gary Horner; Salvador Bettencourt Avila; Will Oates and Ella Macfadyen.

Thanks to the Dame Alice Owen Foundation, Tuixen Foundation, Cripplegate Foundation and Sumners Foundation for their continued and long-standing support of Company Three’s work. Thanks also to the Shanly Foundation and all the individuals who have supported our work on Brainstorm over the past years.

Special thanks to the Wellcome Trust, who have been the principal funder of the development of Brainstorm.

Finally, extra special thanks to all the parents of the cast, without whose support Brainstorm would not have been possible.

BRAINSTORM

The Original Playscript

This is the version of the script performed at the National Theatre, London, in July 2015. It was performed by:

Michael Adewale

Doyin Ajiboye

Sama Aunallah

Yaamin Chowdhury

Jack Hughes

Noah Landoni

Gracia Kayindo

Tyrel Phan

Serafina Willow

Segen Yosife

A Note on the Play

The play is performed on a simple white stage, surrounded by plain wooden furniture: drawers, cabinets, bedside tables, a large wardrobe and a bed with a white duvet cover and pillows.

Cables from the theatre hang from above, linked to white four-way plug adaptors that seem to connect to the back of the set. Music plays from a mobile phone connected to a portable speaker on one of the cabinets.

There are two microphones – one upstage, one downstage. Whenever the microphones are used during the play it indicates that a parent is talking.

There is a bedroom lamp onstage at the start. Other lamps emerge from the drawers during the play. These are used to indicate individual bedrooms during the Bedrooms and Sprouting scenes and for the Brain Scan scene, where they are anonymously lit to provide answers to a series of questions.

As the cast arrive onstage they use their mobile phones to communicate with each other using WhatsApp. At various points in the play they project their phones on to the wardrobe, revealing their screens to the audience.

During the play the cast talk openly to the audience and stage manager.

A forward slash (/) in the text indicates an interruption.

Before the Show

As the audience arrive they are given cards on which they are asked to write a message to their teenage self, starting with the words ‘You don’t know this yet but…’

These are collected as the audience enter the theatre and some are selected to be read out in the final scene of the play.

Introduction

GRACIA walks on stage. She speaks to the audience.

GRACIA

Hello.

So.

JACK enters. He sits down and takes out his phone. Throughout the scene, whenever someone enters, they take out their phone and sit sending messages to each other via a central WhatsApp group, commenting on how they’re feeling, what’s happening in the show, and the audience.