A partial idea for a show, written in a seminar.

The audience are all given high chairs. Pink wash is spread around the performance area. They enter to a song by the Wiggles. Light fades. Pin spot comes up on a rattle on the floor. A woman walks into the spot:

“I’m going to spoon feed you the story of this production. You aren’t clever enough to understand without my explanation. You are all … babies. You are all in your high chairs being spoon fed Shakespeare or Stoppard. You look to us to come up with your interpretation for you. Then we say ‘well done, who’s a clever baby’. You’re all used to being spoon fed your plots and structures and don’t worry, tonight will be no different. First, we have a character called John. Now, this man is really, really clever. He works as an engineer at a big, big car company. Brum brum. John has a wife, and she’s called Sally. Sally is very nice. Except when she’s having an affair with Peter, the next door neighbour.”

She gets out a picture book with cartoon pictures of the characters.

“Do you remember their names? John. The car man. Brum brum. Yes. Sally, the silly wife. And Peter, the naughty neighbour. Now remember, at the start, John, brum brum, doesn’t know about Sally and Peter. And you’re not meant to either, but if I hadn’t told you now, you would have been completely clueless. Lets sing a song:

John works in a car factory,
Sally’s at home where she makes tea,
Then she sits down to watch TV,
Then she commits adultery,”

The words appear on a screen behind her and she encourages the audience to sing the song.

“Well done everyone. That concludes the first scene of the play and we’ve managed to get all the exposition out of the way. Can you say that? Ex-pos-never mind. Now we’re going to move onto scene two. Now this is a very important scene, because John finds out about Sally’s affair. And this is where our first ‘theme’ comes in. Betrayal. So when you go and crawl over to babble to your friends and play dates about the show, you can tell them all about the show’s ‘theme’ of ‘betrayal’. It will make you sound really clever. You could then compare the show’s theme to – biblical themes/ Say that Sally is representative of Judas and John is like Jesus because both their names start with a ‘J’. They will think you’re a genius. Now when John finds out about the affair, he cuts one of his wrists with a rusty nail, more Jesus imagery, but then, without saying anything, bandages up the cut. You must all be really confused by this, so let me explain. It’s meant to look like John is trying to kill himself, but the audience is meant to figure out that he’s only hurt himself to try and make Sally feel guilty for having an affair. That’s the subtext. But the fact that he bandages himself is a ‘betrayal’ of his true intentions. See? Doesn’t being in the presence of such dramatic complexity make you feel special?”