Ollie Maddigan reflects on the making of The Olive Boy — a play shaped by teenage grief, humour and the complicated ways young people protect themselves when pain feels too large to name. He talks about finding the play’s distinctive voice, balancing comedy with emotional truth, and what he hopes audiences, teachers and students might take from it.
What was the first image, moment, or line that unlocked The Olive Boy for you?
The starting point wasn’t a plot so much as a voice. I kept thinking about the particular way teenagers talk when they’re trying very hard not to talk about something painful. That mix of humour, deflection and bravado felt very truthful to my own teenage years. Once I found that voice – someone speaking quickly, joking, changing the subject whenever things got close to the bone – the play started to form around it.
The piece is drawn from experiences of teenage grief and growing up. What did you most want to get right in the play about grief at 15?
What I wanted to get right was the confusion of it. At fifteen you don’t have the language for grief yet. You’re still learning who you are anyway, and suddenly something enormous happens that completely reshapes the landscape. I didn’t want grief to look tidy or noble or even particularly wise. I wanted it to look like what it often is at that age: awkward, contradictory, sometimes funny, sometimes selfish, sometimes deeply sad, and often expressed in ways that don’t obviously look like sadness at all.
What surprised you during early performances about what audiences (especially younger audiences) responded to?
Younger audiences tended to respond strongly to the humour and the honesty. There are moments where the character says something quite blunt or awkward about grief or about trying to fit in, and teenagers immediately recognise that. I think they can sense when someone isn’t talking down to them or trying to tidy their emotions into a neat lesson. There is no answer at the end of the show really. There’s just a sense of hope, I guess.
What do you think humour is doing in the play: distracting from pain, revealing it, surviving it or all three?
Probably all three. Humour is one of the most common ways people cope with difficult emotions, especially teenagers. In the play it’s often a shield – a way of avoiding the thing that actually hurts. But sometimes the jokes also reveal the truth accidentally. The character might be trying to deflect, but the audience can hear the pain underneath it. That tension between the joke and what’s really going on felt important to me.
There are moments where bravado collapses into honesty. How did you decide when the mask drops, and how far to let it fall?
I wanted those moments to happen just when the audience felt most comfortable — when they felt like they were beginning to understand who the character was. Just as they settled into that understanding, the play reveals something that shifts it. When they think they know why he’s in pain, something else emerges that complicates it.
Teenagers are often very good performers in their own lives. They learn quickly which version of themselves works in different situations, and they adapt to that. But grief eventually cuts through those performances. In the play, the moments of honesty tend to arrive when the character runs out of ways to joke, distract or impress. And when the mask finally drops, the truth that appears isn’t always neat or well-expressed — sometimes it’s simply the absence of the performance.
The play shows grief as something messy, inconsistent and sometimes absurd. What myths about grief did you want to challenge?
What I wanted to show is that grief isn’t really governed by universal “myths” or rules. Everyone experiences it differently, so what might feel true for one person can feel completely wrong for someone else.
What interested me more was the reality that when something huge like losing your Mum happens at 15, you don’t suddenly stop being 15. You’re still the same teenager — still reckless, still trying to impress people, still going to parties, still making bad decisions — except now you’re doing all of that while carrying grief as well. The play tries to sit in that contradiction: that you can be dealing with something profound and painful, while at the same time still behaving exactly like a teenager.
If you could summarise the play’s perspective on grief for a teenager in one sentence, what would it be?
Grief isn’t something you “solve” – it’s something you slowly learn to live alongside.
The ending frames grief as “the price for love” rather than something to “get over.” How did you arrive at that idea?
If I never grieved my Mum, I would have never loved her. And I loved loving her. So in that way, I will love grieving for her as well.
Why did you choose to include THE VOICE and the therapy/practice scenes as a structure for the story?
Structurally, it allowed the play to move between reflection and memory. The therapy voice creates a kind of container where the character can revisit moments from the past. It also mirrors something real: sometimes it takes an external voice – a question, a pause, a moment of silence – to make someone confront things they’ve been avoiding. Lastly, it’s also the only time in the show where The Olive Boy is not in control of the scene, he doesn’t have power in what the audience do or do not find out anymore.
Did writing those exchanges change how you think about listening, silence or the questions we avoid asking young people?
It made me think a lot about silence. In conversation, silence can be uncomfortable, especially when someone is young and struggling. But silence can also create space for honesty. Sometimes the most important part of listening is simply allowing someone the time to reach what they’re trying to say.
Without spoiling too much, the play explores how grief can reshape identity: “the kid with the dead Mum.” What does that label do to a teenager?
Labels can shrink a person. When something big and tragic happens, people often start to see you primarily through that event. For a teenager who’s still figuring out their identity, that can feel quite defining. Suddenly one part of your life story becomes the thing everyone associates with you. That’s what The Olive Boy is running away from – being identified as his tragedy.
There’s a strong theme of searching for substitutes (friends, parties, romance, “comfort blankets”). Why is that such a teenage response to loss?
Teenagers are naturally looking for belonging and reassurance anyway. When something destabilising happens, that need becomes even stronger. So it makes sense that someone might look for distraction, closeness or validation wherever they can find it. It’s a way of trying to rebuild some sense of security.
How do you balance comedy timing with emotional truth when you’re writing for (and performing as) a teenager?
The key is making sure the comedy comes from character rather than from trying to be funny. Teenagers often use humour instinctively — it’s part of how they communicate. If the jokes grow naturally out of the character’s perspective, they can sit alongside emotional moments without feeling forced.
Humour is also a way teenagers hide. In the play, the character often uses comedy as a kind of shield — a way of pretending he’s fine or keeping people at a distance. Not all the jokes are supposed to land, and that’s deliberate. For most of the play it isn’t the playwright trying to make the audience laugh; it’s the character trying to make the audience laugh. That distinction felt important to me. His jokes are part of the performance he’s putting on, a way of avoiding the harder truths underneath.
In fact, there are probably only two or three moments in the whole piece that I wrote purely with the intention of making the audience laugh as a playwright. Most of the comedy exists because the character needs it — it’s how he protects himself, and how he tries to convince everyone, including himself, that he’s doing okay.
The play uses real videos/memories in performance. What effect did you want that documentary element to have on an audience?
The first one plays before I even enter the stage. It’s there to show the audience, right from the start, that this is real — that I’m not playing a fictional character so much as myself.
The second one is more personal. When I was writing the show, I knew I wanted to build in a moment that was just for me — a moment where I could forget about the audience completely. Sitting and watching that footage of myself with my Mum allows that. It becomes a pause in the performance where the character, and the performer, can simply sit with the memory.
If a school or youth theatre is staging extracts, what are the key things you’d want them to protect in the storytelling?
Nothing. Don’t protect anything. The key to the show is to be FREE, HONEST, and to PLAY.
Play with the text. See what works for you. Think about how you want to approach the character. Grief is universal, but the way people experience and express it is completely different for everyone. The same is true for the words in the play. What a line means to me might mean something entirely different to someone else — and that’s okay.
There isn’t a single correct way to perform it. There’s no right or wrong. The most important thing is that it feels truthful to the person performing it.
What conversations do you hope the play starts in a classroom about grief, masculinity and emotional literacy?
I hope it opens space for talking about how young people express emotion differently, and how boys in particular are often encouraged to hide vulnerability behind humour or bravado. Emotional literacy is something people learn, and theatre can be a really useful place to explore that.
I also hope students don’t look down on The Olive Boy for his grief. I hope they see a kind of bravery in the fact that he’s talking about it at all, and that it might encourage others to feel able to do the same.
At the same time, I don’t think the character always says or does the right thing — and that’s important too. Part of growing up, and part of dealing with grief, is making mistakes. I’d hope students can look at some of those moments and think about them critically, learning from them in their own way.
For teachers working with teenagers, what should they know about how grief might show up in behaviour (banter, anger, risk-taking, withdrawal) that the play dramatises?
Grief doesn’t always appear as sadness, especially in teenagers. Quite often it shows up in ways that look completely different on the surface. It might appear as banter, constant joking, irritability, anger, or even risk-taking. Sometimes it’s the opposite — withdrawal, quietness, or a sudden lack of interest in things they used to enjoy. In the play I wanted to explore how those behaviours can actually be coping mechanisms rather than signs that someone isn’t affected. A teenager might joke constantly because humour helps them avoid something painful, or they might act recklessly because they don’t know how else to process what’s happened. For teachers, it can be helpful to recognise that behaviour is often communication. What might look like “acting out” can sometimes be someone trying, imperfectly, to deal with something very difficult.
Are there particular scenes or moments you think are especially useful for students to study (voice, status, subtext, shifts in rhythm, unreliable narration)?
I think within the text, I’d be particularly intrigued to see how people approach pages 5–8 and 23–27. There’s a lot of emotional hiding within those sections — the character is constantly bouncing back and forth, saying one thing but meaning something else. The humour, deflection, and shifts in tone are doing a lot of work there, so it’s interesting to see how different actors interpret those layers and where they allow the truth underneath to surface.
That said, I’d always recommend that people work on the scenes they feel most connected to. The moments that resonate personally with an actor are usually the ones that lead to the most honest and interesting performances.
The character often performs versions of himself to fit in. What can students learn from playing “front” versus “truth” on stage?
The idea of “front” versus “truth” is really useful for actors because it’s something people do in real life all the time. The front is the version of yourself you show the world — the confident one, the funny one, the one who seems fine. The truth is whatever is happening underneath that performance. In the play, the character is constantly presenting a front to the audience, often through humour or bravado, while something more vulnerable sits just below the surface. Playing both at once creates tension, and that tension is where a lot of interesting acting lives. For students, it becomes an exercise in subtext: understanding that a character might say one thing but mean something very different. Learning to hold those two layers together is a valuable skill in performance.
If you could set one practical challenge for student actors working on this text (or on a monologue inspired by it), what would it be?
First, play it as if the character is desperately trying to impress someone — maybe a group of friends, or an audience he wants approval from. In that version the jokes might come faster, the energy might be higher, and there may be a sense of performing. Then perform it again as if the character is speaking honestly to someone he trusts. Notice what changes: the rhythm may slow down, the pauses might become more important, and the body language may soften. The words stay the same, but the meaning shifts. That exercise helps actors realise how intention, status, and emotional truth can completely transform a piece of text. Afterwards, find the balance between the two.
How do you look after yourself when performing material that carries personal weight night after night?
When a piece of work draws from personal experience, it’s important to remember that the performance itself is still storytelling. Over time you learn how to step into the role and step out of it again afterwards. For me that means recognising the difference between the memory and the performance of the memory. Theatre creates a kind of structure around those experiences, which can actually make them easier to hold. Having that boundary is important — once the performance ends, you have to allow yourself to leave the stage and return to your own life. Like any actor working with emotionally demanding material, it becomes about care, routine, and remembering that the show is a crafted piece of art rather than a direct reliving of events every night.
What do you most hope a teenager in the audience takes away after the final moment?
More than anything, I hope they leave feeling a little less alone in whatever they might be carrying. Growing up can already feel isolating, and grief — or any difficult experience — can make that feeling even stronger. If someone watches the play and recognises a part of themselves in it, even in a small way, that can be powerful. Theatre has the ability to create that sense of shared experience, where you realise other people have felt similar things. I’m not hoping the play gives clear answers or solutions. Instead, I hope it creates a sense that complicated emotions are allowed, and that talking about them — even imperfectly — is a brave and worthwhile thing to do.
