Teenage Wildlife: Mixtape

Guided by performers We Great Ladies, young people’s group Next Big Thing created and performed original monologues inspired by real teenage stories donated to the project, each one from a different decade in the last seventy years.

Below are excerpts from each of our five scripts.

Photographs and video by John Slemensek | Studio Bokehgo

David 1950s

The bedroom is set 1950’s boys bedroom. It is neat. There is a teddy boy suit laid on the bed. A pair of winkle pickers are at the foot of the bed. On the chest of drawers is a comb and Brylcreem and a bottle of old spice. Teenager In Love is playing on the radio. A young man walks in, he is wearing filthy work trousers with braces and a vest. His hair is wet and he has obviously just washed his hands, arms, face, neck and hair. He is drying off as he walks into the room.

David: Mum, did you starch my white shirt?

He crosses to his bed and tosses the towel down and picks up the suit and shirt. He turns and looks around the room, not sure where to start.

David: Veronica says…

Veronica: I’ve put you on a blind date, meet her at The Thre’penny Bit in the bus station. They call her Maureen.Take her to the Gaumount. She likes teenage romance films.

David: I prefer cowboy films. You know, like Randolph Scott and John Wayne. Maureen works with Veronica at the Bateman’s factory, you know the bobbin makers. Veronica says…

Veronica: You can take Maureen out now you’re on a proper wage from the pit, you’re good looking enough when you have a wash.

Maureen 1960s

The room is set. It is the 1960’s. There are posters all over the walls and clothes littered on the floor. A young girl of 17 walks into the room with a scooter helmet on. She has gloves on her hands. She takes off the gloves and drops them on the floor. She takes off her helmet and tosses it on the bed. She walks over to the record player takes a record out its sleeve and sets it to play. My Girl starts to play. She is wearing a hairdressing tabard. She slides it over her head, throwing it onto her bed. She dances gently across her room, over to her vanity unit. She faces the audience, like they are her mirror and teases her hair back to how it should be. She kicks off her shoes. Looking into the mirror one last time…

Maureen: My Nanan is always saying that I’ll flatten my bouffant with my helmet. What she doesn’t know is that there is half a can of lacquer on this.

She touches her hair.

Maureen: My Nanan also says ‘it’s not lady like to ride a scooter, no good’ll come of it, I tell you. Maureen, all Hoyland will see your undergarments’. And I tell her ‘Nanan every Monday, Hoyland sees your knickers on the wash line’. I saved up for nearly year to buy it. The moment I saw Twiggy on hers, I knew I needed a Lambretta. It means I can get to work in tarn, and when I do my home visits, it’s easier. I’m a hairdresser. I started at Leslie Frances as a Saturday girl when I was 14. All it was, was leaning to shampoo. But I wanted to earn some money. I had a Lambretta to buy.

Kath 1970s

A young girl walks into the room carrying with a box with a veil. She is dressed in a long night dress. Hung on the wardrobe door is a wedding dress. She walks over and strokes the fabric. She sits on the floor at foot of the bed, opens the box and takes out the veil.

Kath: Something old.

She lifts up the veil and holds it to the light.

Kath: My mum wore it on her wedding day. Everyone’s getting to church for one o’clock tomorrow. My mum keeps fussing but I’ve told her, as long as Steven’s there, I’m not bothered what time everyone else arrives. Then folk are coming back here. Steven lives over the way. Look, his bedroom lights on.

She points out, into the audience.

Kath: I wonder what he’s doing. My mum and Steven’s mum have spilt the cooking and Mrs Clewis from number 24 has done us a beautiful wedding cake.

Mrs Clewis: I don’t mind, all mine are grown, wed and gone.

Kath: She won’t take a penny for it.

Mrs Clewis: Seeing your Kathleen wed and happy is payment enough.

Kath: And I am happy. I am. They say it won’t last, Steven and I.

The girls puts her hand to her tummy.

‘They’re wrong about it not lasting. We’ll show them. They were right about school though. I hated it. Not all of it. I loved English and History. I was always in the library. I failed my 11+ plus maths, so I couldn’t go to the grammar school, so I was stuck at the secondary modern. We were never encouraged to be anything more than mothers and wives, which there’s nothing wrong with.

She lets go of the veil.

Kath: But you can be more, you know, it’s not just needle work and keeping the home.

Tony 1980’s

The bedroom can be seen there is vinyl everywhere. Posters littered the walls, piles of clothes and shoes are on the bed. Town called malice is playing on the record player. A young man walks in, he has a cigarette in his hand and pair of boots in the other. Over his shoulder is a German coat that is fashioned to look like a mod Parker. He puts his cigarette out. Opens up the coat and looks at the patches that have been sown on. The record finishes and he walks over and takes it off the turn table. He replaces in the sleeve and starts to looks through the collection on the floor. He lifts up The Jam Sound Affects album. He reads;

Tony: ‘Rise like lions after slumber, in unvanquishable number! Shake the earth, like dew which in sleep had fall’n on you. Ye are many – they are few.’ I read this to my Grandad. I was working at his pub, The Red Lion at Worsbrough. It’s my job to clean the ashtrays out. I have to brush them out with a paintbrush.

I hate that job. So, I was stalling and I’d just come back from tarn, where I’d bought this from Casa Disco and I was desperate to go home and listen to it. My grandad saw the bag;

Grandad: You’d do better than to spend all your wage filling your ears with all that noise.

Tony: Grandad, it’s The Jam. It’s more than just music, it’s a movement for my generation. They’re speaking for us. The world’s got to change Grandad, in London…

Grandad: London lad? This is Barnsley. Don’t be telling me about London, I used to live there, and I tell you this for nothing, London might as well be Marrakesh for the ways its different to Barnsley.

Taryn 1990s

A neat bedroom can be seen. A couple of dance posters are on the wall, as well as an Oasis Definitely Maybe poster. A girl comes in with a Walkman on. She is listening to Half The World Away. She moves around her room, taking off her dance bag. She is wearing a leotard and dance shorts. Her hair is in a tight bun. She stops and sits on her bed and takes off her leg warmers and dance shoes. She takes off her headphones.

Taryn: It was opening night. We’re doing The Boyfriend at The Civic. It’s sold out tomorrow night. My mums coming. My dad came tonight. I’ve never performed in a proper theatre before with lights and proper dressing rooms. You know they have lights around the mirrors, and they do this thing where they announce on the speakers when you are due on stage.

Announcer: Five minutes to beginners!

Taryn: It was ace. I felt like a proper dancer, like a professional. My dad came to watch tonight. He drove me home. He said he really liked it. He liked the music. He likes music, my dad. He used to play the guitar when I was little. I remember being in the bath and my mum lifting me out and wrapping me in the big towel and getting dry on their bed listening to him play. He had to sell his guitar in the miner’s strike. I remember someone coming and collecting it and then he stopped playing. The miner’s strike stopped lots of stuff, not just music.