Yellow Moon by David Greig – A Study Guide

Yellow Moon is a play about two young people, Leila and Lee, who are ‘on the run’ after Lee kills his mum’s boyfriend. It is a love story, but there is also hate, conflict and violence – and a fascination with music.

Our guide has been created with SQA National 5 English in mind and can be used by English teachers in the classroom and by students for individual study. It contains interviews with the play’s author, David Greig, and commissioning director, Guy Hollands. It also looks in detail at Yellow Moon’s plot and structure, characters, settings and themes.

Read extracts from the guide below. Download the full guide at the bottom of the page.

Interview with playwright David Greig

What were your initial aims when you were planning to write Yellow Moon?

Guy Hollands, the director of the play, and I had talked for a couple of years about doing a play which would tour secondary schools. We were excited by the possibility of a group of actors arriving in school and telling a story without having to set up or pretend to be in a theatre. We thought about the issues that had most affected us when we were in our school years – sex, the way boys and girls relate to each other, the pressure on boys to be macho and the pressure on girls to conform to stereotypes. We thought those issues would still be around today. So, I suppose, those two strands were what I began with. I wanted to find a way of telling a story that could be played without stage set and lights, etc. And I wanted to explore what it was like to be seventeen.

It is almost 20 years since the play was written. Are there any aspects/ideas from the play that you think have particular/increased relevance now?

I’m always amazed when my plays survive through time. It’s never something I expect. It’s also fascinating when time shapes and changes their meanings. Writing this play I responded to issues flagged up for me by my friend Alan Wilkins, who was then a guidance teacher at a Scottish high school. We spoke about elective mutism – silence – and he said that the school was sometimes so stressful that if a girl was silent it might go un-noticed. More noisy problems would be attended to. That seemed interesting to me. I think issues around mental health, social anxiety, unguided masculinity, and family breakdown remain as big an issue for young people now as they were then. Social media is huge now and this play doesn’t really tackle that side of modern life. But I think the ’nature cure’, the running away to the Highlands to be clear and reinvent yourself is perhaps even more relevant as a result? In the long run, it’s a love story. For that reason, I hope it will remain relevant whatever else happens in the world.

Key scenes from the play

When you are studying a play, it is important to think about the characters and how they get on with each other. You will find that they often come into conflict with each other. This conflict is what makes the drama interesting and what makes it work.

It is a good idea to try to build up a profile of the main characters. One way to do this is to try to note down the main things (or key incidents) that happen to each main character throughout the play and then go deeper into each key incident, analysing what happens and any interesting language that the writer uses.

Scenes 1 and 2 (pp. 3–6)

It is worth having a very close look at scenes 1 and 2 because they give us very important details about both Lee and Leila – a clear picture emerges of both of them.

Some questions to think about:

• What are we told about Lee’s hat? Remember this because his hat is important as the play goes on.
• Lee is described as ‘a celebrity’. In what ways is Lee a ‘celebrity’?
• How would you describe Lee’s relationship with his mum’s boyfriend, Billy
• Pick out and explain some of the writer’s language from page 4 that tells you this.
• What first impression are we given of Leila? Again, pick out some of the writer’s language from the play and explain what it suggests about Leila.

Characters

When you are trying to understand the characters in a play it is a good idea to jot down your ideas about them at key points in the story. You might find that your ideas change as different things are said or happen. You could make up a timeline for the two main characters. Try to find evidence from the play (either quotes or references) to back up your thoughts.

Leila and Lee

Here are some statements about Lee and Leila. Which ones do you agree with and why?

• Leila and Lee helped each other to deal with difficulties.
• Leila and Lee are too different to be together.
• Lee put pressure on Leila to run away with him.
• Leila regretted running away with Lee.
• Leila and Lee wouldn’t see each other again after what happened at the end of the play

Setting

Where a play is set, or where the action takes place, can be important when trying to understand a play. In Yellow Moon the setting changes as the story of the play moves on. The two main characters go on a journey from the place where they live (and where their families are, and where they go to school, etc), to somewhere far away: the Scottish Highlands. They move from a town, where everyone knows Lee – ‘He’s a celebrity’, to the remote countryside where they will be with nature and very few people. So, for Leila and Lee, the setting changes from the familiar to the unfamiliar.

In one sense Lee and Leila are running away from something that has happened. Lee is ‘on the run’ from the law or the consequences of his actions of stabbing and killing Billy. But they don’t just run away aimlessly, Lee has the idea of finding his father:

I’ll maybe go up north,
Maybe go and see my dad.

(Yellow Moon, p. 15)

Lee carries a postcard that his dad has sent to Lee’s mum. From this postcard Lee has an idea where his dad might be. It is clearly important to Lee that he finds his dad at a time when he really needs him.

Themes

What would you say are the main themes or ideas in the play?

Here are some to think about:

• Relationships (family relationships, loving relationships, friendship)
• Growing up (do Lee and Leila seem to ‘grow up’ as the play goes on?)
• Parenting (Lee’s relationship with his mum, his dad and his step-dad; Leila’s relationship with her parents)
• Trauma (according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary this means ‘deeply distressing experience’ – there are several of these in the play)
• Self-harm
• Violence
• Celebrities and role models (are celebrities good role models for us?)

Do you agree with these, and do you have any others to add? Try to find examples (quotes or references to things that happened) that show when these themes or ideas come across.