THE MUSICAL
Around the world, there have been over 10,000 performances of the Peace Child Musical, with each one set fifty years in the future in a peaceful and sustainable world.
Index:
INTRODUCTION
Scroll through these pages about the Peace Child musical and you enter a world where miracles happen. Over the last 40 years, Peace Child has transformed young peoples’ lives and the history of our world. From the UK, it went to the USA and Russia: the Cold War ended. It went to Central America: Peace broke out. It went into ex-Yugoslavia, Ireland, the Middle East, South Africa, US inner cities – and everywhere it went, its energy and vision of a positive future sowed seeds of peace in the hearts and minds of peoples caught up in conflict – whether local, national or international.
This archive includes those early scripts for we can learn from all of them. But today, the Peace Child story explores all major threats to all life on earth: climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss and the lack of a global governance system that protects future generations from the greed of current consumers. For today, the struggle for survival of Life on Earth is no longer an abstract concept: it is a very real threat to us all. Why does the Peace Child musical makes such a powerful impact? 3 reasons:
1. Story: The story is set 50 years in the future by when, we believe, the children of today will have solved the major challenges facing humanity. So Peace Child is always upbeat, funny & positive.
2. Empowerment: Peace Child empowers young people to make the story their own, by inviting them to tear up my script and write their own. They call their characters by their own names, research the issues through its Lesson Plans, and create their own stories, scenes, dialogue and solutions. By the end, it is their show. Several have also written their own songs for their shows.
3. Music: The powerful songs of David Gordon have driven every Peace Child story. Their timeless majesty, and the grandeur of their lyrics, move audiences of any country and any age to tears of joy and anguish in equal measure. Listen to them, adapt the lyrics, arrange the music, translate them – but build on them. Because they will power your show as they have powered most of the thousands that have been produced across the world.
If you love children and have a talent for producing shows, – if you know the business of blocking, teaching parts, setting dances, sewing costumes – you can change the world by doing Peace Child.
At the very least, you will change yourself. I know. I did!
David R. Woollcombe, June 2024
1. The Peace Child Scripts
This website is an archive, so contains 14 scripts, from the very first Peace Child Albert Hall script – through the 20-minute Time-travel chat show to the current UN Centenary scripts, with many exhilarating short- and long-form scripts in between.
2. The Peace Child Songs
The power, the passion and the majesty of its songs is what everyone remembers about Peace Child. You can select as many or as few as you like: we encourage casts to compose their own songs for new scenes they create. Our’s are open to any kind of arrangement and re-writing, the songs drive every Peace Child story, capturing the essence of the human struggle towards peace and constructive, loving relationships between peoples of all kinds, colours and creeds.
3. The Peace Child Videos
This is a random collection of Peace Child videos collected over the last 40+ years. We are working on a “How To….” Video that introduces new producers to the challenges of producing the show – but meanwhile, watching some of these will give you a sense of the electrical energy generated by the show.
4. The Peace Child Production Notes
The Logistics of putting on a Peace Child show are relatively simple to anyone used to producing theatre shows: minimal sets, few costumes, almost no props. BUT – if you have never produced a musical show before, the challenge is considerable. Work through the Check List (below) – and then internalise these Production Notes.
5. The Peace Child Study Guides
“First Inform yourself, then take ACTION!” – this is the instruction Peace Child Intl. gives to young people coming into every Peace Child Action programme. Putting on a Peace Child show is a major ACTION – and we encourage casts to deep dive into the issues to make sure that everything they say on stage is completely accurate and well-thought through strategically. These Study Guides, Vignettes, games and lesson plans provide a wealth of ways for young people to do that.
6. City at Peace
Families from the inner city and the suburbs explore what they can do to bring peace and end the knife crime in their cities;
7. Peace Child - Alpha Omega
The story of 4 x young people (a Christian, an Atheist, a Muslim and a Jew) marooned in a cathedral with no mobile phone signal after their city has been evacuated following the crash of a train carrying nuclear waste. As they face imminent incineration and death, they explore what their faiths and life experience mean to them. The musical links the original Alpha Omega oratorio – which tells the story of the human family from the dawn of history to the final apocalypse – with contemporary youth-generated human and religious values.
8. The UN Centenary Peace Child Stories
The UN Centenary Peace Child script(s), to be launched in 2025 on the occasion of the 80th Anniversary of the United Nations, feature stories of how, in the next 20 years, today’s generation of young people deliver on promises made by the UN these last 80 years but failed to keep. Those failures - to prevent the scourge of war, to deliver Education, Health & housing for all, to end Poverty for all and create a world that leaves no one behind are reversed by youth action. And, building on the UN Declaration on Future Generations, these stories secure the ability of future generations to meet their needs, while we meet our own.
