Our Own Generation on Display
Julia Zgurgynski
We visited the National Theatre a second time, to see “Our Generation”. It is a mix between fiction and non-fiction, for the characters are inspired by real UK teens. The playwright, Alecky Blythe, interviewed a set of twelve teens of various ages from different parts of the UK over the span of five years, and compiled their stories into the form of a play. The play is narrated by all twelve of the children. The focus shifts from one to another, and during their individual moments they eagerly share with the audience a snippet about their life, perhaps something they are excited for, or something that is stressing them out, or something comically mundane. With twelve equally important characters, the playwright certainly took on a challenge, but she succeeds in presenting twelve unique, charming, and believable characters. The play introduces us to the children when they are in secondary school, preparing for their GCSEs, or General Certificate of Secondary Education tests. They are the very long and very important tests that British students take after two years of secondary school. Naturally, the students are very stressed about taking the tests because they will help determine their future, including their university and their future career. The audience watches anxiously as the students took their GCSEs and got their results. Then the teens continue to deal with the stress of meeting high standards of academic and social success, imposed on them by their teachers, parents, and themselves. The atmosphere is generally tense for this reason, but broken up by fun songs and dances, and the teens’ sweet personalities. The play continues until they reach university. At that stage, additional characters are introduced, but played by the same twelve actors, which was a bit confusing at first.
As far as the visual elements of the play, the set was noticeably bare. The different locations were never communicated using backdrops, really the only times a location change was communicated by physical means was the changes from school to home, signaled by switching the school desks for a dinner table. Often, the director effected a location shift by only changing what the characters were doing, such as the scene in which the actors run in a circle to indicate they are outside for gym class. The minimalist set was effective—with so many places and times being invoked in the play, it would have been impossible to account for them all in a realistic way. By choosing not to attempt realism in the set, the play feels more streamlined. Further, the production takes characters who live in very different worlds as far as social class and geographic location, and placed them all on the same plain black stage. In that way, the audience is able to focus more on who the characters really are, who they choose to be, and less on the lot they have been given in life. Thus the plain set, as well as the virtually equal emphasis on each character provided the sense that everyone is important. With a lack of visual interest in the set, the most interesting visual element of the production was the costumes. Each character had a few costumes, and they all effectively communicated the character’s identity, as well as their age throughout the play. It was impressive to see the same actor appear so young in the beginning, and so much older in the end, using only changes of clothes. For example, like all the characters, Mia starts out looking young and in her school uniform. Then she changes into skinny jeans and high heels during her rebellious phase in which she is trying to look mature. Then she ends the play looking truly mature and comfortable with herself, because she is wearing a more natural looking outfit of comfy clothes, including an oversized cardigan over a tank top.
As an American, watching the play gave me a window into life as a British teen. I am certainly familiar with the fear of failure that the characters have, and the desire to survive in what feels like a very high stakes game, where success at school seems to be all there is to life. Indeed, as I watched the characters stress about their GCSEs, I was sitting in the audience worried about my own current assignments and academic future. It was nice to see other people my age dealing with the same problems. Also, the set of twelve students on stage was really not so different from our set of thirteen students in the audience—like them we are all very different but working hard to succeed in the same world, and often have moments of spontaneous fun and camaraderie. However, the play also expanded my outlook by showing the elements of the struggle for success unique to British students, like taking GCSEs at only fourteen. Overall, I enjoyed the play, because of the endearing characters, effective costuming and minimalist set, and the new insight it gave me into growing up in Britain.
