East End Tales

Sleep in the day, come out at night.
That's when I reckon y'see the real East End.

East End Tales is a series of nine stories inspired by photos and news articles from local papers in east London.

It was written as part of a Half Moon Young People’s Theatre Scriptworks project for Mulberry School for Girls in Tower Hamlets, London. The story ideas were developed by a group of Year 10 Bengali girls over a number of weeks through a mixture of improvisation and written exercises, under the guidance of myself and co-tutor Julia Voce. The best material was then shaped, expanded and written up into a lyrical style by playwright Fin Kennedy.

The play is suitable for performance by any group of young people with a good level of maturity. The stories range from short contemplations on the nature of east London, through to longer tales of domestic violence, the drudgery of low-skilled jobs, petty crime and high density living. The tales are written in a heightened lyrical style and laid out in what looks like verse, the idea being that there are no individual character ‘parts’ only an ensemble of narrators, playable by any combination of male or female cast members. Each new line indicates a new speaker. The tales could therefore be delivered by two narrators or twenty, with the lines dotted around the stage amongst a crowd. In this way the play is written to allow the performers to explicitly acknowledge and address the audience. There are no stage directions, allowing the director and designer free reign in how best to bring the stories to life.

What the tales all share is a sense of the storytellers as slightly detached observers of the world around them. This allows the performers to find their own characters for the storytellers, or indeed to play themselves. In the original performances this ranged from gossipy sisters jostling for position on a sofa, through to a pair of cynical pigeons sitting on a telegraph wire observing events below them. The tone is matter-of-fact, but also bittersweet and occasionally poignant.

Because each tale is self-contained, it is possible to pick and choose among them to create performances of varying length, without affecting the overall narrative.

The script is published by Methuen in their anthology Six Ensemble Plays for Young Actors.

Click here to read a script sample.