Discover youth culture with Happy Dave at Pleasance Courtyard

Following on from Smoke & Oakum’s 2015 hit show Cornermen comes Happy Dave, also by Oli Forsyth – a show questioning what youth culture today really means and the ethos of Generation Y.
David Blessed spent the 90s DJ-ing in fields during the rave era, dropping beats for thousands of young revelers. But now, aged 45, he’s working a dead-end job in an advertising firm selling things he hates. However, old habits die hard and soon Dave leads a group of disenchanted young millennials back into the fray.

In 1992, nearly 50,000 people gathered for an illegal rave at Castlemorton that lasted a week. Two years later, the new Criminal Justice Act brought that entire movement, one that had marched on Parliament and occupied Hyde Park, to a close. Out of the ashes came the ‘millennials’ – a generation characterised by its uncertainty.

The rave scene has now changed – today youth culture is centred around expensive festivals, headlined by aging rockers with tickets costing hundreds of pounds. It seems the millennials are a generation that is constantly recycling things rather than forming their own identity. As David Blessed says in the play, It’s ’cos they’re lost. Whole lot of ’em. I see an entire nation, full of young people who have no idea what’s happening to them. They feel no sense of unity or belonging… They’re just lost.

Writer Oli Forsyth comments,"Happy Dave came from the experiences I’ve had growing up into what would later be labelled ‘Generation Y’. It struck me that from the birth of modern jazz to rock’n’roll, punk and eventually rave there was a familiar pattern of each generation bringing to the fore its own genre of music and expression which was at once exciting for them, and unnerving to older generations. Generation Y are marked by uncertainty, by a materialistic drive and by a culture of overwork. I think we need a shake-up."

PERFORMANCES
Performance Dates Wednesday 3rd – Monday 29th August (not 16th), 16:15
Running time 75 minutes
Location Pleasance Courtyard (Beneath), 60 Pleasance, Edinburgh, EH8 9TJ
Box Office Tickets are available from www.pleasance.co.uk
Previews: £6.50
Early week: £8.50 (£7.50)
Midweek: £10 (£8.50)
Weekend: £11 (£10)