Protest

Hope is a superpower.

Running is Alice’s happy place - you might even say it’s in her DNA. She’s the best runner at her school but is struggling to prove her worth. Jade is slowly coming to realise that prejudices can be found everywhere, even in the most surprising places. Realising that her education is ill-equipped to encompass her own history and heritage, and taunted by bullies at school, she knows it’s time to tell her own story. Meanwhile, litter is piling up in the local forest, and all over the world an environmental crisis is looming. Chloe is determined to make a change, starting with the town.

Three girls prepare to stand up for what they believe in despite the injustices stacked against them in this new play exploring what it takes to make a difference, the power of friendship, and the importance of believing in your own voice.

Co-commissioned by Fuel, Imaginate and Northern Stage. Developed and supported by the Scottish Government’s Festivals Expo Fund and Imaginate’s Accelerator programme. Protest is published in Methuen Drama’s Plays for Young People series which offers suitable plays for young performers and audiences at schools, youth groups, and youth theatres.

Hannah Lavery is a playwright, poet, performer and director. Hannah is one of Imaginate’s Accelerator Artists and an Associate Artist with the National Theatre of Scotland as well as Writer in Residence at Lyceum Youth Theatre. Her play for children commissioned by Imaginate was shared as a work in progress at Edinburgh International Children’s Festival in May 2021. She won the 2021 Adopt a Playwright Award (Off West End Plays and Playwrights); her adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde was produced at Pitlochry Festival Theatre and her highly acclaimed play Lament For Sheku Bayoh was revived at the Royal Lyceum Edinburgh, both in August 2021. In 2020, she was awarded a New Playwrights’ Award by the Playwrights Studio Scotland and selected by Owen Sheers as one of his Ten Writers Asking Questions That Will Shape Our Future for the International Literature Showcase, a project from the National Writing Centre and the British Council. She was also selected as one of the Scottish Voices for the BBC Writers’ Room. The Drift, her autobiographical lyric play, toured Scotland as part of the National Theatre of Scotland’s Season 2019.