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