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Themes & Moments
Build performance ideas from moments you can locate in the text
Text source: Find Me by Olwen Wymark. This page mainly uses scene evidence rather than quotations; the few short quoted phrases are there to identify specific staging moments.
Turn theme into performance
Start with a moment you can locate securely in the play. Then make one precise vocal, physical, spatial or design choice and explain what you want the audience to understand. These cards deliberately use scene evidence rather than an unverified quote bank; add exact quotations from your own prescribed script edition where your teacher requires them.
Interactive theme bank
Interview / professional voices
Different professionals question and describe Verity, but the family still lacks a clear solution.
Performance choice:
Try a controlled relay of questions between actors, with focus passing rapidly from one professional to the next. Keep diction clear and decide whether Edward and Jean remain still, turn between speakers or become physically crowded. Explain how the pattern makes institutional process visible.
Try a controlled relay of questions between actors, with focus passing rapidly from one professional to the next. Keep diction clear and decide whether Edward and Jean remain still, turn between speakers or become physically crowded. Explain how the pattern makes institutional process visible.
Social worker / placement search
Jean is told that no suitable residential placement is available; Edward later writes repeatedly to centres seeking help.
Performance choice:
Use repeated positions, envelopes, voices or a recurring sound cue to make rejection accumulate. The repetition can show pressure on the family without requiring the actor playing the official to be a cartoon villain.
Use repeated positions, envelopes, voices or a recurring sound cue to make rejection accumulate. The repetition can show pressure on the family without requiring the actor playing the official to be a cartoon villain.
Locked ward / consultant
The consultant acknowledges that the locked geriatric ward is the wrong environment and that suitable facilities and staff are lacking.
Performance choice:
Contrast calm professional delivery with Verity’s restricted space. A measured voice can make the admission more unsettling than shouting; alternatively, use a visible pause before the acknowledgement. Tie your choice to status and audience focus.
Contrast calm professional delivery with Verity’s restricted space. A measured voice can make the admission more unsettling than shouting; alternatively, use a visible pause before the acknowledgement. Tie your choice to status and audience focus.
Jean’s direct address
Jean questions whether she is responsible for Verity’s condition and exposes her own guilt to the audience.
Performance choice:
Direct address can reduce the distance between Jean and the audience. Decide whether she seeks eye contact, avoids it, moves or becomes still; then justify how that behaviour changes our relationship with her rather than prescribing one “correct” emotional delivery.
Direct address can reduce the distance between Jean and the audience. Decide whether she seeks eye contact, avoids it, moves or becomes still; then justify how that behaviour changes our relationship with her rather than prescribing one “correct” emotional delivery.
Edward’s letters
Edward keeps trying to secure residential care while explaining the effect that the situation is having on the rest of the family.
Performance choice:
Let each reply interrupt or overlap the next attempt, or deliberately leave silence between them. Either rhythm can work: the important thing is to show how repetition changes Edward’s behaviour and the audience’s sense of time.
Let each reply interrupt or overlap the next attempt, or deliberately leave silence between them. Either rhythm can work: the important thing is to show how repetition changes Edward’s behaviour and the audience’s sense of time.
Mark and Nicky
The play repeatedly shows that Verity’s situation affects her brothers as well as her parents.
Performance choice:
Use proxemics rather than a stock “upset child” voice: who is pulled towards a parent, who moves away, and who gets left outside the main family grouping? A small repeated spatial pattern can become more useful than a fixed gesture.
Use proxemics rather than a stock “upset child” voice: who is pulled towards a parent, who moves away, and who gets left outside the main family grouping? A small repeated spatial pattern can become more useful than a fixed gesture.
Swimming gala
Five performers share Verity’s swimming-gala monologue; swimming is presented as important and safe for her before the teacher refuses her entry without a cap.
Performance choice:
Experiment with handing the text between performers, brief unison, or one actor taking focus while the others hold a shared physical rhythm. The change to rigidity and silence after the teacher’s decision gives you a strong contrast to stage precisely.
Experiment with handing the text between performers, brief unison, or one actor taking focus while the others hold a shared physical rhythm. The change to rigidity and silence after the teacher’s decision gives you a strong contrast to stage precisely.
Hospital admission
During Verity’s admission, chairs are placed in a circle around her “like a cage” before she turns away from her parents.
Performance choice:
This is a text-supported chair moment. Control the spacing and timing of the circle so the image remains visible to the audience, then decide how Verity’s turn away lands. Do not confuse this scene-specific action with a rule that the whole original production used five chairs.
This is a text-supported chair moment. Control the spacing and timing of the circle so the image remains visible to the audience, then decide how Verity’s turn away lands. Do not confuse this scene-specific action with a rule that the whole original production used five chairs.
Opening / ending
The ending returns to the narration from the opening, followed by the five Veritys calling “Find Me!” one after another.
Performance choice:
Choose a clear relationship between performers and audience: direct address, different positions, accumulating volume, or deliberate restraint. Justify the pattern you choose and how it reframes what the audience now knows at the end.
Choose a clear relationship between performers and audience: direct address, different positions, accumulating volume, or deliberate restraint. Justify the pattern you choose and how it reframes what the audience now knows at the end.