MY NAME IS TOM: Press Release...
My Name is Tom –
New Hard-Hitting School Play Script
Puts Today’s Teenage Life Under the Microscope.
Media Contact: Alan Spence.
Email: theatreisreallife@live.co.uk
My Name is Tom is a powerful and timely play script that explores the lives of teenagers growing up in a world dominated by smartphones, social media, and academic pressure. Set in North London, it follows the emotional journey of Paris and Darnell, highlighting the digital and social challenges young people face — and the silence of the adults around them.
A powerful new release, published on 21st August, 2025, My Name is Tom invites readers into a world where digital distraction threatens real human connection and puts the dark and often dangerous aspects of 21st century teenage relationships centre stage.
Reflecting the social and emotional pressures facing today’s youth – from peer pressure, teenage pregnancy, children being the major consumer of pornography, sexting and more – this play script is so much more than a coming-of-age story. Now being made available to school, colleges, youth theatres and the wider community, the handbook includes: a fifty minute script, full production details and education materials. It also takes a ‘mini-bus’ ride from the 1960’s through schooling, sex education and drama in the curriculum to the present day.
Readers will be inspired by
interviews with leading professionals, such as Vicky Ireland, Dr Geoff Readman
and John Berry, which is followed by a powerful testimony in support of a
National Plan for Drama and Theatre Education.
This book will appeal to GCSE / A Level students of Drama and Theatre, History, Sociology, Politics, Economics and English.
The author’s intention is to offer
an educational and creative programme around his narrative designed to get
young people and adults talking, spark critical discussion about sex and
relationships; and to help reinvigorate drama education across UK’s secondary
and special schools. Future plans include workshops and collaborations with
educational institutions to bring the My Name is
Tom project to life in classrooms and theatres across the country.
Leaving readers with a deeper
understanding of the complex and often overwhelming challenges young people
face in today’s hyper-connected world, My Name is
Tom sheds a powerful light on the silent consequences of adult
disengagement, while offering invitation to foster empathy, spark meaningful
conversations, and promote critical thinking across pupils, parents, caregivers
and educators
Synopsis: In a world driven by technology, teenagers get lost in their relationships with computers, mobile phones and social networks. While all the time, parents are playing catch up or too busy with their own social networks. The play explores the problems of a typical community through a range of characters and relationships, around the central narrative of Paris and Darnell’s love story.
Paris fancies
Darnell, but he is too shy to see it. Paris doesn’t give up and they finally
date, to become the ‘talk of the town,’ most of it unrepeatable. When Paris’s parents
go away for the weekend, her plans for a romantic party and a much-needed break
from A-Level revision, goes all wrong. When she and Darnell are exposed, they
are not the only ones. The action takes place in North London in 2011.
This book will also appeal to anyone who has been
to school, been a teenager and / or a parent.
The author says:
“My Name is Tom is a multi-faceted project that unapologetically
exposes the dangers and darkness that teenagers face every day in this digital
world. My hope is
that the play not only encourages discussion, to reflect on the world as it is
now and all the inherent problems. But also
to act as a powerful rallying call in support of a national plan for drama and
theatre education, because Drama is the ideal subject to explore many of the
issues young people and adults face, while providing possible strategies and
solutions to help deal with them. ”
The play premiered in January 2016 in Enfield, North London and Alan is well aware that for too many teenagers and families, the situation has got worse. A succession of Government initiatives that have failed to provide a realistic and healthy RSHE that addresses the needs and emotional well – being of young people. The handbook explores some of these issues and draws on the guidance and advice of organisations such as the Sex Education Forum, Oak National Academy, the United Nations. Today, there is a growing number of suicides because of ‘sextortion’ among young people (often males), it is a damning statistic that shames us all.
About the Author:
Alan Spence was born in South Bank, Middlesbrough and after failing the 11+, redundancy from British Steel in 1980 enabled Alan to go to Middlesex Polytechnic and study for a BEd in Drama and History, achieving a 2:2.
This is Alan’s third published play, following The BORO’s 37mins (2022) and Nowt Like this in America (2023). Alan is currently working on Epilogue, the follow up to Nowt Like this in America and a one person play about Hamish Mann, Black Watch Officer, playwright and poet, who died in WWI, just five days after his 21st birthday.
Link:
MY NAME IS TOM: THE EDUCATION PROJECT FOR SCHOOLS,
COLLEGES, YOUTH THEATRES AND COMMUNITY GROUPS.
My name is Tom is now available from Amazon and Ingram Spark for all bookshops and secondary schools.
Playwright. Author. Publisher.
Director. Workshop Leader.
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