Plays for study: Holloway Jones by Evan Placey

Holloway Jones was first performed in 2011 and toured to schools and pupil referral units. It's therefore an ideal option to explore with school students. While the original cast had six or seven people, the play has a chorus which could allow for a bigger cast if needed. The chorus acts in a similar way to a Greek chorus, acting as bystanders to the action. This allows you as a teacher to explore with a class or a group of students the different ways in which non-naturalistic theatre devices, such as a chorus, can be used to have an impact on an audience. At the start of the script, the playwright provides a useful note on punctuation – he says that it is left up to the director's discretion as to what punctuation might mean. As a result, it's sometimes difficult to decipher when a pattern doesn't seem evident, but it provides plenty of scope for discussion in the classroom.