Four short plays for young actors
Making Scenes 3 is an exciting selection of plays commissioned by the Royal National Theatre for the BT National Connections festival for young actors in 1995.
Indian Summer by Harwant Bains; Kulwant returns to India and becomes fascinated with an ice-cream seller and the Holy Man who has sat for years with a sword through his mouth. When Kulwant pulls out the sword and offers the man a tutti-frutti ice-cream, a remarkable friendship is established.
Almost Grown by Richard Cameron; set in Yorkshire this is the story of how a tragic accident has affected the lives of three friends.
The Ice Palace by Lucinda Coxon; in this magical rites of passage tale Siss and Unn are best friends at school, but when Siss goes to visit her one day they set out on an adventure into a magnificent frozen waterfall from which Unn will never return.
The Dark Tower by Louis MacNeice; Roland must follow his ancestors' and brothers' footsteps on a journey through time, by ship across the sea of doubt, past ghost towns of history and through 'deserts of dried-up hopes', until he reaches the Dark Tower.Each play includes Production Notes, dealing with setting and staging, costume, lighting and casting. Also included are a set of questions and exercises for workshop classes.
Richard Cameron was born in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. He taught for many years, was Director of Scunthorpe Youth Theatre from 1979 to 1988 and Head of Drama at the Thomas Sumpter School in Scunthorpe until 1991, then gave up teaching in order to write full-time. His plays include Haunted Flowers, now retitled Handle with Care (National Student Drama Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 1985) which won the 1985 Sunday Times Playwriting Award; Strugglers (Battersea Arts Centre, 1988), which won the 1988 Sunday Times Playwriting Award; The Moon's the Madonna (NSDF, Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Battersea Arts Centre, 1989) which was shortlisted for the Independent Theatre Award and won the 1989 Company Award at the NSDF and Can't Stand Up for Falling Down (Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Hampstead Theatre, London) for which he won the Sunday Times Playwriting Award for a record third time in 1990, as well as a Scotsman Fringe First and the 1990 Independent Theatre Award. Pond Life (Bush Theatre, London, 1992), Not Fade Away (Bush Theatre, 1993), The Mortal Ash (Bush Theatre), Almost Grown (National Theatre) and Seven (Birmingham Rep) were all performed in 1994. Other plays include The Glee Club (2002) and Gong Donkeys (2004). His first television play Stone Scissors Paper won the inaugural BBC Television Dennis Potter Play of the Year Award in 1995.
Lucinda Coxon was born in Derby. Her plays and films include Mornings After (1985), And One Another (1988); Bird Bones (1989); Improbabilities (a group of short plays for Loose Exchange Company, 1989); Eddie's Proposal (BBC studio screenplay, 1990); Waiting at the Water's Edge (1992); Spaghetti Slow (1993); Lily and the Secret Planting (screenplay, 1994); and Wishbones (1995). Her adaptation of Tarjei Vesaas's Norwegian novel Is-Slottet was published by Methuen Drama in 1995 in Making Scenes 3: four short plays for young actors.
