We Are Shadows poster
“Nine lives, nine tales and a chain of events and unforeseen consequences”
Moving among the shadows of London’s East End, a group of disconnected young people face harsh choices in their lives. A chance encounter reveals the invisible links between them all and how an action can unknowingly cast a shadow on someone else’s life plunging their world into darkness.
Through a series of stylised interwoven monologues, We Are Shadows created a snapshot of contemporary urban life. This was an extraordinary hard-hitting coming-of-age drama that toured nationally to venues and youth settings.
You can access the script of this play via the British Library’s MPS Modern Playscripts Collection.
Chris Elwell has been the Director of Half Moon Theatre on White Horse Road since 1997. He talks about We Are Shadows, a series of monologues and duologues that lead into each other. The play depicted some very tough issues for teenage audiences. Interviewed by Kavana Joyett.
“Fin Kennedy’s beautifully constructed new play is based on recent work with young people in Tower Hamlets through Half Moon’s Careers in Theatre programme. The ingenious result is nine monologues by characters whose lives are tangentially hooked together by all the day-to-day horrors (many) and joys (few) of teenage East London life.
First there’s Sam, played by Daniel Broadhurst, whose brother had been killed and whose venomous but poignant rage is hurled relentlessly at the audience. In the end he kills a Muslim taxi driver whose daughter (Samantha Schefele) gives us the next immaculately paced monologue. Then, later, there’s a care home worker played with warmth and panache by Samantha Schefele, who is also the girlfriend (sort of) of a geeky but dangerously manic lad splendidly played by Broadhurst. The play ends where it began – with Sam being filmed in prison by Sagar, a Somali refugee played by Tracy Green with gentle dignity.
The versatility of these three young actors is astounding. It isn’t often a cast of three can fool an experienced theatre-goer. For most of this show, having not read the programme in advance, I thought there were four actors not three because Tracy Green as Nicola, an in your face East Ender struggling to cope with a new baby – or a Tesco till girl – is a million miles from her Sagar role. Broadhurst’s doubling as a market trader is disconcertingly convincing too. And the well directed scene in which Broadhurst and Schefele drive a foundling baby to hospital when neither has a driving licence is hilarious theatre – although it ends, predictably, in tragedy.”
Susan Elkin, The Stage, September 2007
We Are Shadows – Sound track
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