And then Alex turned up...

The ‘test of courage’ is filmed and shared via social media with other pupils and eventually sent to Alex himself. The next day, he enters the school armed, determined to make his classmates admit that they forced him to commit the act. His plan fails. After spending several hours locked in a classroom, he decides to take his own life. This is where the play begins: Alex starts to tell his story.

Alex is both narrator and protagonist. From the moment he raises the gun, the play jumps back — several months into the past. From then on, he guides the audience through his story as a ‘knowing narrator’: he knows the outcome, he can comment on and reflect upon his own actions, and he can also identify the motives of the others, which he did not know at the time or did not want to understand.

We meet his mother, who believes she is a caring mother, and perhaps is — in her own way.

The audience meets his father, whom Alex despises and whom he wants to avoid becoming like at all costs. They meet Jeanette, with whom Alex is secretly in love and who belongs to the clique that bullies him — without striking him herself, but without stepping in either. And they see how, in an exaggeratedly portrayed funfair scene, Alex addresses the audience directly and draws them into the logic of ‘the strong against the weak’.

The scenes flow into one another. Two actors play all the roles — one actress takes on all the female characters, whilst the actor plays Alex throughout. After the final scene, both address the audience directly.

Themes

The play does not pose simple questions — and certainly does not provide simple answers. The character of Alex is deliberately ambivalent: he is the victim of years of humiliation and, at the same time, someone who has harmed a defenceless person, who has taken people hostage, who has entered a school armed with a gun. Both are true. The play forces us to keep both perspectives in mind simultaneously.

Alongside this are specific questions that run through the play: What does years of silence do to a person — and why do some young people never learn to talk about themselves? Where does the line lie between being a bystander and sharing responsibility? What does it mean to be part of a group that excludes someone — even if you yourself never take part in the violence? What role do mobile phone videos and social media play when a local conflict becomes a matter of public interest within hours? And what does someone mean when they say they want to ‘take justice into their own hands’?

These questions are not new. But they have changed — due to the speed of digital communication, the pressure that school leavers face today, and a public that reflexively seeks simple explanations when violence occurs in schools. The play refuses to offer such explanations.