11th June 2011
Today I received an email from Libby saying:
Develop a plan/ script for your Independent Project. If you are doing Option A (devising) you must come back with a script. Please remember how hard it is to write completely original material; I recommend you to take it on only if you have a real love of, experience of or skill at it. You may choose to adapt or work from an existing play, novel, story, poem or news item, or do a piece that is not primarily text based. Do not forget that you must demonstrate some kind of theoretical or research ‘underpinning’ and that you are recommended to show how your IP has grown out of an interest developed in your first year.
At first I was really excited about receiving email, but after a while I realize that it was actually time for me to start working on something.
Fortunately enough I had my new theatre journal. I wrote on it, I wrote a lot without even realizing. My favourite moment to write is while travelling, either just taking a bus to downtown or better, while travelling around Europe.
- I wrote about a man, who I will always meet in the same line n°51. He would be always dressed up, as if he was going to work, and I always thought that he worked or live next to the physic centre in Trieste. On day, it was late afternoon when I feel asleep in the bus and a did a entire round trip journey in that bus. So, I noticed that the man was still in the bus, so I thought that might be his home. For the following days, although that bus takes longer to drive me home, I would take, to see, observe and write about him. I called him Simon, but I was sure that was not his name. it was a really situation, also because when he was not in the ride, I would go to the bus driver and ask him more and more about that man, because I wanted to dream and write about why and what led him to this lifestyle. I didn’t end up discovering a lot about him, but for me he was the dreamer. He was the one who wouldn’t accept simplistic and incomplete answer that was given about the mysteries of existence and the universe in which we live, he simply wanted to discover and know what’s over our capacity. But he went too beyond, and now he is anymore able to communicate and build a contact with those of us who chose or couldn0t go beyond.
- I wrote about a woman I saw the 11th of June 2011, the day I left for my trip in Europe with Derek. I know nothing about her, but I observed her because she was too fascinating to me. People would say that she was crazy, but I wanted to give an explanation to her craziness. Here what I came up with. Jane; 1,50cm tall, Caucasian women in her fifties, blond and short hair, and a surly person.
“My name is Jane and please don’t sit next to me. I don’t like people because they constantly judge me, they say I am crazy. One I was beautiful, men couldn’t stay away from me, and I loved it, but they ruined me. I have been since a week, or maybe more; this is life. I think I have been doing this since the past 10 years. I have always been a perfectionist who was afraid of failure, and once I failed. Since I wasn’t able to accept it, I decided to give up and let life drive me; and so here I am. The best of moment memory I ever had is the journey I did with the only man I ever loved in my life; it was the hot summer of 1982 and we went to Oslo with our motorcycles. I remember every single moment, day, of that journey; I loved those years. I was brilliant and happy; I knew what I wanted, until I feel from the motorcycle. There is nothing else I can remember, the beauty and perfection of my life was gone, and so my soul. And today is just me, the crazy blond woman.”
- I wrote about Roxanne, the lady of the day. She was from Barcelona and she had to learn how to survive. She like many of us, she was one of us.
- I wrote humans and their instinct, while travelling with a train from Rome to Venice.
- I wrote about beauty; about the harmonic fusion of azure, bright gold and coral pink that illuminates Venice at 7 in the morning. I wrote rare and delightful experience; I wrote about love and poetry.
Writing made me happy and made me wanting to write more, about me and my story. I wanted to share what I’ve got to share, through theatre.
So I wrote about being abandoned by my mother when I was two years old, I wrote about my mother traveling around Europe as an immigrant of the ‘90s. I wrote about my disappeared sister in Turkey, the death of those I loved, the birth of those that are not part of me, my family and my future. I wrote about growing up by myself while my mother was gone for eight years, without me knowing where she was. I wrote about the only father I was able to love, who was arrested, and who I never saw again. I wrote about being the first black kid in my school and I wrote about my first and only love.
I was ready to share and open myself, but I realized I couldn’t do it. It was too much, for me and for my audience. It wasn’t necessary, not now, not yet.
21st September 2011
I took this decision a few days before arriving at Pearson, so I had to think of something else. I had to write about something else, because I wanted to write. So I decided to tell the story of someone I love. The story I was ready to share was about someone close to my heart who had to grow up and live alone, taking care of his dad suffering of Alzheimer. I immediately realized how challenging this was, but still I wanted to write about it. English is not my first language and not all of us are gifted enough to be able to write for an audience. This was my challenge and I was ready for it.
Once we got back, I associated my play, with the genre domestic drama and I started researching more on this genre, until I discovered the genre Kitchen sink drama (or kitchen sink realism), coined to describe a British movement which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, that used a style of social realism, which often depicted the domestic situation of the working-class in the United Kingdom. While researching, Libby suggested me the lecture of “A taste of honey” by Shelagh Delaney and after reading it I felt a connection with the book. The story as a whole was not directly related to my story and the story I initially wanted to share, but the environment was exactly the same. The relationship between the two main characters of the play, Helen and her daughter Jo was what would have been the introduction to my personal story.
So, Here we are, a parallelism between the story of Michael and his dad Edward, who suffers from Alzheimer disease, and Jo and her mother Helen.
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