Artistic Discoveries in European Schoolyards

Annina Rokka (Finland)


The Last Day of School

Text Extract

Characters:
Loviisa 16 yrs.
Johannes 15 yrs.
Jucy-man 12 yrs.

Act 1: Freedom

Outside school. A bench. Loviisa is sitting with her mp3 headphones on. Next to her sits Jucy-man with his skate board.

Jucy-man
This is the last day of school. The grey building looks sad, though the skies are filled with sunshine. Now we all get rated from four to ten. I wonder how many sevens I’ll get. None, I hope. Will I get any nines? I hope I’ll get two. I haven´t been concentrating at school so much, so that would be good. The younger students will be singing at the ceremony. Our class is also singing a song but that’s kind of embarrassing.

Johannes enters. Jucy-man puts his headphones on.

Johannes
After today there’s no more school for me. I’m free.

Loviisa sees Johannes. Takes the headphones off.

Loviisa (to herself)
Been drooling over that Johannes for some time now. He’s deliciously creamy, a perfect bloke.

Johannes kicks over a bin. He turns his head towards the school. He starts walking towards Loviisa.

Loviisa
Hello!

Johannes stops and sits down. Jucy-man takes his headphones off.

Loviisa
What are you doing today?

Johannes
Don´t know, Loviisa. There might be something going on in town tonight.

Loviisa (showing her mp3)
This is not working right. Me no happy. Can you help?

Johannes (looks at it)
No can do. But definitly a party of somekind.

Jucy-man
Party? No, says I. No. No way I´m taking any drugs!

Jucy is fooling around and pointing Johannes to be a gang leader.

Jucy-man
He’s gonna try and make me anyway.

Jucy takes Johannes hand and points the finger to his own head, like Johannes is holding a gun to Jucy’s head.

Jucy-man
Will you take drugs or alcohol?

Jucy takes a bubble gum.

Jucy-man
So I took drugs because alcohol tastes so bad.

Johannes
Are you the guy in that tre flip double set videos?

Jucy-man
Yeah, but that was just luck.

Jucy shows the position on his feet.

Jucy-man
I was at the skate park, trying out some double ollies but my feet were like this, in tre flip position and my ollies just started rolling out as tre flips. First I got spooked, but when I landed and it had all got caught on video, everyone shouted ”u r crazyyy”. I was trying to tell everybody that it happened accidentally but they wouldn’t believe it. They put the video on the tube. But I didn’t care.

Loviisa

You are crazy.

Johannes
Yeah but the video had 15 thousand hits and like at least a hundred comments.

Jucy-man
10,000 likes. It’s crazy, and it all happened in just one day.

Jucy shows Loviisa a clip on his mobile. Loviisa puts her headphones on and looks at Johannes. It
starts raining. Johannes puts his hood on. Jucy and Loviisa walk in.

Loviisa
See you, maybe tonight.

Johannes looks at her for a long time, but after she disappears around the corner, he closes his eyes and thinks of freedom.

Summary

Text written for the PLATFORM 11+ Final production FACE ME Time of Transition


Rightholder:

www.ouka.fi/teatteri


Performances:

Cast:
M: 2
F: 1