You’re in Year 9,
a nerd. It’s the school dance. Your friends, also nerds (one’s a loser-nerd),
are there. You wait outside, trying to pluck up the courage to go inside
because, well, the school bully is in there and he said that if you were to
show up tonight he’d break every bone in your body. And you knew he probably
wasn’t kidding. Also, there are girls in there. And they’re dancing. Which is
even harder.
This is the
premise of School Dance – a play
developed by Windmill Performing Arts and presented to much acclaim at last
year’s Adelaide Festival – playing as part of the Sydney Festival by the Sydney
Theatre Company. Written by Matthew Whittet, it is set “right [at] that
horrible just-getting-into-girls phase,” and follows three awkward teens –
Matthew, Luke and Jonathon (the play’s writer, composer and designer,
respectively, playing semi-fictionalised versions of their fifteen year-old
selves) – as they embark on a hormone-fuelled quest for social acceptability.
