GamePlan (play)
| GamePlan | |||
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Programme cover from original SJT Production
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| Written by | Alan Ayckbourn | ||
| Characters | Sorrel Saxon Lynette Saxon Kelly Butcher Leo Tyler Dan Endicott Grace Page Troy Stephens |
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| Date premiered | 24 May 2001 | ||
| Place premiered | Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough | ||
| Original language | English | ||
| Series | Damsels in Distress | ||
| Subject | Teenage prostitution | ||
| Genre | Drama / Comedy | ||
| Setting | Lynette Saxon's flat, London Docklands, 2001 | ||
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GamePlan is a 2001 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, the first in a trilogy of plays called Damsels in Distress (FlatSpin and RolePlay being parts two and three.) The darkest of the three plays, it is about a teenage girl who tries to support herself and her mother through prostitution.
See also: Background on Damsels in Distress (plays) page.
GamePlan, along with FlatSpin, was originally intended to be part of a pair of plays, both set in the London Docklands, and both using the same cast of seven. Ayckbourn has a flat in the Docklands, where he observed that neighbours do not know each other well and strange things can happen under their noses. The pair of plays was eventually joined by a third, RolePlay, written as an afterthought, and the trilogy, Damsels in Distress, was shown in the Stephen Joseph Theatre's 2001 season. Like the other two plays, this drew some inspiration from the London Docklands.
This play was also a landmark in the progression of Ayckbourn's plays into darker and more contemporary material. Although contemporary subjects had been covered before, such as domestic violence in The Things We Do For Love, the subject of teenage prostitution was a new departure. It was still tame compared to the material now covered by other playwrights, but still arguably a gamble.
As part of the Damsels in Distress trilogy, GamePlan was written to use the same seven actors as the other two plays in the series. In this play, the characters are:
Sorrel, Lynette and Kelly are the main characters in the play, with the other four making smaller appearances in single scenes.
The entire play is set in Lynette Saxon's flat, on the riverside in the London Docklands. As part of Damsels in Distress, the play was written to use the identical set to the other two plays. As with most Ayckbourn plays, it was originally performed in the Round for its original production at the Stephen Joseph Theatre. However, it was adapted for the Proscenium for subsequent performances elsewhere.
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