Come unto these yellow sands
Literature Circle Activities.
These activities are designed to be completed by a ‘literature
circle’ group. Rather than three people reading the play aloud
while others listen, these activities are designed to support
group readings of the play. Each group member then takes
responsibility for one activity and becomes the expert on this
aspect of the play.. The first two activities are for the actors
playing Sam and Chris.
Maximum group size for this activity is five. There is an Activity
#6 but these are challenging activities designed for Gifted and
Talented students. Each Activity is designed with a mix of
easier and harder questions so that teachers can differentiate
as needed.
The activities are designed to develop a broader understanding
of the play’s action, characters, setting, language and themes.
All activities are © Stewart McGowan but are free for use in
classroom settings providing copyright is acknowledged.
Copyright notices may not be removed.
© Stewart McGowan 2015
Activity #1. Character. Sam.
1. Search for or draw an image that you think matches your idea of Sam.
2. The script describes Sam as: ‘Older, a survivor, hard-nosed and realistic.
Confident in his/ her ability to sense trouble and respond.’ How do
Sam’s actions at the start of this script support this description?
3. What other things do we learn about Sam as the play progresses? List 35 points
4. How is the ornament he/ she takes out of the bag significant?
5. How much of what he/ she says do you think is true?
6. Actors like to find contradictions in their characters. Contradictions make
characters more real and give them depth. What contradictions are
there in Sam’s character?
© Stewart McGowan 2015
Activity #2. Character. Chris.
1. Search for or draw an image that you think matches your idea of Sam.
2. The script describes Chris as: ‘Younger, high-spirited, adventurous but
unskilled.’ How do Chris’s actions at the start of this script support this
description?
3. Where has Chris come from? How has he ended up at the old school?
4. Writers of short fiction often leave ‘gaps’ in a character’s story. We don’t
know who was chasing Chris in Kotara, for example. What else don’t we
know about Chris’s ‘back story’?
5. What will happen to Chris after the end of the play?
6. What effect, if any, does the ‘gender neutral’ nature of the main
characters have on this play?
© Stewart McGowan 2015
Activity #3. Action
1. This play is written for a standard ‘proscenium arch’ stage. Sketch the
set for the play. Label the key features. Where is the stairwell? The
door? Where is Sam at the start of the play?
2. If this play were to be performed ‘in the round’, how would the set
change?
3. Short fiction often concentrates on one main event in a larger story.
What is the major event in this play?
4. What is the rest of Chris’s story? List four or five other events that are
important to the action of the play.
5. In performance, the sound designer of the first production chose to
add a piece of music at the beginning of the play. What piece of
music would you use?
© Stewart McGowan 2015
Activity #4. Language.
1. The stage directions describe Sam as being like ‘an old swaggie.’ Find
two or three examples from the play where Sam’s language is like
that of an old swaggie.
2. The writer has used some unusual conventions in the play, such as
putting unspoken dialogue in brackets. These are outlined at the
beginning of the script. Find some examples of these conventions in
the play.
3. Do you think these conventions add to the play?
4. Some sections of this play are written in verse. Sam’s first speech, ‘It
used to be a classroom here’, is an example. What is another
example?
5. The playwright chose to put part of the play in verse for a number of
reasons. One was that he believed it made the descriptions of the
world more effective. Do you think the descriptions are helped by the
verse?
6. What other effects do you think the use of verse has in this play?
© Stewart McGowan 2015
Activity #5. Themes.
1. Science fiction stories have to build up a world that is different from
our own. In this story there are several differences, including
 Traders
 Iron Barges
 people living in Wrecks
 people using old-fashioned rope ferries to get across flooded
lands
 morse code
Using words, pictures or diagrams, define each of these
2. About how far in the future do you think this story is set? Ten years?
One hundred? Give reasons for your choice.
3. At one point Sam opens a tin of food. Chris is surprised by this. Why?
4. What other things that are familiar to us are unfamiliar to Chris?
5. At the end of the story, Chris is on his/ her way to Swansea. What is
he going to do there? What does this tell us about the world of the
play?
© Stewart McGowan 2015
Activity #6 Challenges. Your group may choose to answer
some of these questions. They are designed to build a
deeper understanding of the play.
1. When you read the play for a second time there are a range of clues that
Sam is really a Trader. What are these clues?
2. There’s references in the play to Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Sam
quotes a passage. What is this passage and what is it about?
3. The playwright said about links to The Tempest: ‘the links between my
play and Shakespeare’s are pretty indirect. Even the lines I’ve quoted
I’ve given a different spin.’ Research Shakespeare’s play with a view to
finding how it is different.
4. Science fiction aims to do more than predict the future. It sets out to
warn us about problems in our world today. What problems of today
drive the action of this story?
S
5. ‘The story came from a number of places but most of all it was about the
Syrian refugee crisis. The idea that people who’d led relatively peaceful,
stable lives could have their world fall apart so comprehensively moved
me to write Come Unto These Yellow Sands’ (Stewart McGowan) Is this a
successful play about refugees? What else is it about?
© Stewart McGowan 2015