Day: April 7, 2015

So we always wanted to focus on one aspect of our very seemingly large topic of adulthood. We went through many variations and routes of this subject including what constitutes to be an adult, the lies told to children and the hypocrisy. Myself and Ollie, as the writers, decided to conduct a short interview with the rest of Forefront to try and deduce their feelings on the prospect of growing up.

Attached is a copy of the interview questions.

We collected many surprisingly similar results. Everyone agreed that it is yourself who decides when you become an adult as everyone is different and their situations can sometimes make one person grow up faster than another. One thing that we found particularly interesting were the responses to the question regarding role models. This led us to become intrigued by the idea of how different people feel about filling their parents’ shoes. We collected words such as “proud”, “excited”, “intimidated”, “cautious”, “terrified”. The latter feelings particularly interested us. The notion that someone really doesn’t want to follow in their parents’ footsteps was something that we suddenly felt needed to be explored further, needed to be told. By landing on this idea, the title for our performance was hit upon: SHOES TO FILL.

Now that we had our title we could then explore different routes within this idea. We came up with the following:

• Wanting to fill the shoes of a parent/guardian/sibling
• Being scared of filling the shoes of a parent/guardian due to personal reasons within the relationship, perhaps an addiction
• Feeling restricted and forced to fill the shoes that society deems as the “norm” – one’s sexuality perhaps, going to university
• Looking up to celebrities in the media or television/film characters – wanting to fill the shoes of a role model, fictitious or real – the ideal life

A poem had previously been written by Clare, our lighting designer, about someone feeling like that had to go to university but even though they have certain adult qualities, they would rather be a child again. This poem was edited by myself and Ollie to also relate to the notion of feeling worried and intimidated to fill other people’s shoes. During this process, we thought of other phrases that we associate with feet and shoes, for example:

• Filling someone’s shoes
• Following in someone’s footsteps
• Footprints in the sand
• Stepping up to the plate
• Standing on your own two feet
• Hit the ground running
• Baby steps
• First steps
• Tying shoelaces

We found that all of the above provide a variety of connotations that relate to feet, but they seem to all come back to the notion of wanting to be good enough – the idea of always comparing yourself to someone else and needing to feel worthwhile.

These phrases then provided the stimulus for the main bulk of our following script writing, which I will discuss in the next blog!

Hannah

From the beginning we all decided that it would be a good idea to include original music within our piece. Having played the piano since early childhood and having written a few songs before, I started to write the lyrics to a song that I intended to be sung from the opinion of children. Their innocence is shown through their hopes and dreams for what they want their lives to be like in the future: the perfect job, husband or wife, car. However, the song ends on a darker note as the children start to wonder what would happen if they can’t live up to their parents. Can they fill their shoes? How do they even begin to do this?

The song went through a couple of edits, including the additions of less realistic, fantasy jobs like Santa. This idea links to a notion that we discussed quite often in workshops, regarding the lies children are told by their parents – things such as Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy. Why is it okay for parents to lie if we are constantly told when growing up to always tell the truth? Are these stories told as a way for children’s imaginations to grow and as an escape from the often harsh realities of life?

Attached is a photograph of the musical arrangement that I have put together.

Hannah

In one of our past workshops, our director Tamsyn created an exercise where we improvised a scene using a stimulus, for example an object being stolen. We were then all given different ages to work the scene around and note the difference in our actions, body language and voice. When given a particular age such as five, our behaviour became a lot more childish, loud and immature and then when dealing with the same situation a lot older, we noticed we became a lot more practical and mature when trying to find a solution. This was a useful exercise to experiment with the physicality and behaviours of embodying different age groups. In another workshop, we started to develop a “chair duets” scene, playing with the idea of the progression of a relationship as the characters pass through childhood, to the teen years and through to adulthood. It was interesting to play with altering our behaviour, facial expressions and movement to reflect the stage of life that the characters were facing. This movement scene prompted the further idea to write either a narration or a song over the top of this to highlight what was being shown – more on song writing in my next blog!

Hannah