5boys.si
A play about children, written for grown-ups. Grown-ups, playing children and women playing men. Brutally graphic display of pointless violence, violence without reason or explanation, offering several starting-points for contemplating questions on social constructs of childhood, violence and gender.
The script shows the time of childhood with no romantic views or embellishments. Through the play of five boys who meet weekly in an abandoned building, we are given a direct and accurate illustration of their respectful family life as well as the wider picture of the social reality. Blaž, Jurij, Denis, Vid and Krištof are all ten or eleven years old and their world is a world of computer games, PlayStation and TV. By role-playing superheroes like Superman and Spiderman, they incidentally play out various social roles and relationships (man – woman, child – grown-up, homosexual – heterosexual, Hare Krishnas – Catholics etc.) through which we enter the field of a real tangible violence.
The script does not follow the standard structure of plot development with an exposition, complication, climax, and resolution. Instead, it is bursting with palpable bare and pointless violence without a reason or explanation. The play offers several starting-points for contemplating questions on social constructs of childhood, violence and gender, all of which are such everyday and ordinary ideas that we never question them enough.
- No. of roles
- 5
- No. of male roles
- —
- No. of female roles
- 5
The roles of boys are played by adult women.
Script extract
JURIJ
come on
guys
let’s play
dinner will start soon
and I’ll be late
and mom will go crazy
and then grandfather will go crazy
and then grandmother will start praying
and it’ll be a nuthouse
let’s play
so
I come home
drunk