$5.40 – $15.00
An estranged couple is forced to come together when their teenage son is involved in a brutal assault. One boy is in custody. Another is in a coma. Neither Ellen nor Andrew knows how to respond – either to the event or to one another. What can be said or done in the face of such pain? Can you take responsibility when you didn’t throw the punch?
This is a lean, bare, intense play for two actors.
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Male | 40s | 3 to 5 minutes
Starts on page 26
EXTRACT: And you're right, it is a fucking disgrace. We should be in mourning. We should be at the boy's bedside. We should be at his family's house, begging on our knees for forgiveness for what our son did./ Understood./ But there will be mourning. There will be pain. There will be a whole world now of self-recrimination which will quite possibly go on forever for you and me, I don't know. But I know it, I've felt it, it's real.
Adult languageFemale | 40s | under 3 minutes
Starts on page 1
EXTRACT: It was a school night./ The other boys were waiting at the bottom of the hill. They were planning to go to the place where they go: The skate park./ I know they go there, I know he goes there, I know they go there at night sometimes./ I know he goes out the window./ That's not ideal. But you choose your battles. This was a battle I chose not to have right now./ Believe it or not, this was not the priority./ Regardless of that, I didn't know. I thought he was in bed.
"Directed by Chris Thompson, Distance comes into focus over two parents who are dealing with their son having been arrested after an incident in which another child has ended up in a coma. They grapple with the repercussions of what their son has done, and attempt to deal with their own guilt and grief as parents who have ‘failed’."
"I saw this show with a room full of teenagers. As a play about their parents, I expected a few eye rolls and whispers, but they were silent and glued to the stage. This says so much more than I ever could."
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