Charlie

Male | Teen | 3 to 5 minutes
Starts on page 1

EXTRACT: Jasper Jones has come to my window! Jasper Jones needs me! You have to understand, I've never snuck out before. I'm a virgin to this kind of thing. Actually, I'm pretty much a virgin to every kind of thing. Except books. So me sneaking out with Jasper Jones, who is known throughout Corrigan as the worst kid in town, well, it's fair to say this is particularly out of character for me. In this town, Jasper is the first to be blamed for everything. Whatever the misdemeanor - nicking lollies from the store, throwing lit matches down the mines, or sneaking through fences to push over cows - no matter how clear their own child is guilty, parents ask immediately, ‘Were you with that motherless half-caste Jasper Jones?'. And the kids always nod, because Jasper's involvement instantly absolves them. Their parents think their poor little child has somehow been waylaid by a demon. Momentarily led astray. And so the case is closed with just one simple instruction, 'Stay away from Jasper Jones". So me being here, under a full moon, being led by Jasper Jones past the brown lawns and gardens of my sleeping neighbourhood, past the cricket pitch, past the railway, past the power station, over the bridge, through the farm district, and knowing what my mother would do if she found out where I was … Well let’s just say this is something way more adventurous than anything Huckleberry Finn ever did.

Mrs Bucktin

Female | 30s | under 3 minutes
Starts on page 66

EXTRACT: Your father and I don’t love each other anymore. We … lost it somewhere. He’s more in love with that bloody book than he is with me.You think he’s sitting in that nursery mourning our dead child? No. That’s my job. He’s writing a book. [It’s] the Great Australian Novel, Charlie. I reckon it’s set in a town of never-ending fucking silence. Silence and space. Dead paddocks and dried-up dams and a bunch of ghosts covered in dust walking around a place where nothing ever changes. It just doesn’t fucking change.

EDUCATION RESOURCES

STATE THEATRE COMPANY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Study Guide & Activities from the State Theatre Company of South Australia