The Chicken
Run
A
play for young people 11 to 16 to read and perform
Slim
McKee, turning sixteen, wants more than anything to be a member
of the local black-leather motorcycle gang. He does a newspaper
round to earn money for a motorbike. At home there is a blustery
father and a cosseting mother. Slim submits to the entry test
for the gang - the chicken run, a brutal and dangerous trial
of courage. Meanwhile, the other news round kids, led by David
Jones, carry on with their own lives, until they cross Slim's
and the motorcycle gang's, when one of the gang is proved by
David Jones to be a thief. Then Slim finds himself involved
in a different kind of chicken run, one that tests his moral
as well as his physical courage. A study, with a comic sub-plot,
of teenage relationships, written with the co-operation of the
young actors who performed in the first production.
Though
over thirty years old, The Chicken Run is still read
and given studio performances by less experienced young readers
and actors in early secondary school years.
First
published by Heinemann, 1968
Frequently
reprinted
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All
contents are ©Aidan Chambers unless otherwise stated.
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