Scuttlers (NHB Modern Plays)
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A thrillingly fast-paced play about youthful disaffection, protest and violence, drawing on the history of the Scuttlers, the youth gangs of nineteenth-century Manchester.
It's 1885 and the streets of Manchester are crackling with energy, youth and violence.
As workers pour into Ancoats to power the Industrial Revolution, 50,000 people are crammed into one square mile. The mills rumble thunderously day and night. The air is thick with smoke. Life is lived large and lived on the street. This is the world's very first industrial suburb and the young mill workers form the very first urban gangs, fighting over their territory with belts, fists and knives.
Invisible in history, their lives, deaths, loves, lusts and defiant energy tell stories that will repeat and repeat over the decades that follow.
Scuttlers by Rona Munro was first performed at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in 2015.
With nine leading roles and a large cast of mill workers and gang members, Scuttlers is well suited to performance by schools and youth groups, who will enjoy its physical energy and dramatic storyline.
Rona Munro
Rona Munro has written extensively for stage, radio, film and television including the award winning plays Iron, Bold Girls and The Maiden Stone. Other plays include Long Time Dead produced by Paines Plough Theatre Company and The Indian Boy produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company and adaptations Mary Barton and Watership Down which were produced by Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre and the Lyric Hammersmith. Film and television work includes the Ken Loach film Ladybird Ladybird, Aimee and Jaguar and television dramas Rehab and BAFTA nominated Bumping The Odds for the BBC. She has also written many other single plays for radio and television and contributed to series such as Casualty and Dr Who. Rona Munro is one of Scotland's leading writers. Her play The Last Witch premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival 2009 while her translation of Federico García Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba was first presented at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, on 17 September 2009, by the National Theatre of Scotland, and subsequently toured to the Dundee Rep Theatre, the Alhambra Theatre, Dunfermline, and the King's Theatre, Edinburgh.
More by Rona Munro
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