KEY CHAIN is a play for students in Years 6, 7 or 8 (Level 3). It is designed for a normal-sized English class and for students with varying interests in acting. Since there are 49 roles – none of which are really minor – students who enjoy acting can perform in several scenes and play to their heart's content, whereas students who aren't particularly keen on acting only have one role to master in one single scene.
Every scene deals with a key, big keys and small keys, new keys and old keys, keys that lock doors and keys that open hearts, keys that are lost and keys that are found, keys that bring people together and keys that bring people apart.
There are monologues, dialogues and scenes with as many as eight or nine performers.
The themes are geared to the experiences of students today – such as friendship, bullying, infatuation and rejection – and offer young actresses and actors the opportunity to discover a wide variety of feelings while performing.
The plots are believable and understandable, the language is idiomatic and easily accessible for English learners.
KEY CHAIN works well when performed for smaller audiences: parents and other classes. But it can also be highly entertaining for a large audience. Performing time: about one hour.
Of course, it is also possible to select individual scenes and perform them as simple skits outside the context of the KEY CHAIN. In that case it is still recommendable to create a suitable setting for presenting the skits to an audience.
The true joy of performing a foreign-language play is to feel it click, to realize that the people watching the performance don't only "get the picture", they are also delighted to see a story come to life when presented in English by non-native performers.
By purchasing the play, one automatically obtains the stage rights.
