Logline
A family emergency causes three middle-aged men to confront the bullying they received when they were younger.
Synopsis
Dave, Les and Fergie are three men in their 40s who meet every morning in a coffee shop before the working day begins. They spend their time reflecting on better days before failed marriages, estranged children and Internet speak took over their lives and, in Fergie’s case as the self-proclaimed only black person in town, before the Eastern Europeans arrived in their droves to make things far too diverse for his liking. Most of all they retain a fascination for the lives of their former schoolmates and the various forms of bullying they received from them. When Dave’s beloved teenage daughter, Amber, starts dating the sort of guy who believes it’s his right to hit her when she speaks back to him, Dave is caught in a quandary between that of the strong father who is supposed to step in and defend his daughter and the quiet boy in class who just kept silent and put up with it when it was he who was getting the beatings. The only way he feels he can make things right for his daughter is if his fellow Messed Up Dads are able to let go of their own issues and back him up when he confronts her thug of a boyfriend and attempts to teach him the type of lesson he himself should have taught the bullies all those years ago.
Additional details
Stage play, dramedy, 100 pages.
This is a play about bullies and bullying. It focuses on those feelings you have when you’re young, lacking in confidence, and just want to run away and die in a quiet corner alone. Even though you get older, you get wiser, and physically you get stronger, those feelings of helplesness, frustration and powerlessness when you were bullied way back when never really go away. You may get married and have children and become the head of a household and therefore the de facto dominating, powerful force in that space…but outside of that space that old vulnerability’s still there. And you’re always aware at the back of your mind that some day you may find yourself in the same situation you once did, when you were young and weak and unable to fight back against those who were stronger and less sensitive than you. Only now, you have those depending on you seeing how weak and vulnerable you are to make matters even worse! This play highlights that life changes your external circumstances, but some things within in you never change, especially when the damage has already been done, and done hard. This play focuses on how you acknowledge this fact and deal with it going forward.