Collaborative debriefing

For our collaborative Me and Olivia have come up with some great ideas and concepts! After about a week of ideas back and forth, discussions, agreements, and disagreements, we have come to a final standing. For the collaborative piece, we will focus on the conceptual theory of nihilism and existentialism. We will set up small and big scenarios to show how each side takes on life and how they behave. (These are going to be to fictional characters representing the two sides soo nothing that the characters do is set in stone, it is merely going to be our interpretation of how a nihilist and an existentialist could react and behave on a magnified scale)  We will have them set up on a very small stage, we want to make the experience to be very intimate and intense for the audience. Something that would be very hard and difficult to set up if we have a piece play out on a larger stage. The reasoning for having a small stage is also due to how the movements are going to be very small. The props are also going to be small. So the Audience has to be right there with us to be able to see what we want them to see. What we know for sure is that we are going to have a Newton Crattle as a ground zero for the moment. It will be placed center stage and the true meaning of it we are still discussing.  

Overall pitch, Directors notebook

For this project I have chosen to work with the play Clybourne park (2009) by Bruce Norris.

The play takes place in the same house and the 2 acts are split up with the first act taking place in 1959 and the second act in 2009. The first act very much focused on how biased many in the white community at the time were against the black community. What interests me is Russ and Bevs son Kenneth who takes his own life after coming back from the Korean war, he is such an interesting character I feel and I really want to showcase him as being “better” than his parents in those few scenes that he has. And when we get any flashbacks of Kenneth I want him to be the most likeable person of all the characters. The Reason for this is because I want to throw in a little more connection between the audience and Russ & Bev. When Karl tries to convince Russ of not selling the house to a family just because they are black I want Russ to have multiple motives as to why he won't do what Karl says. And when he says that he won't “protect” a community that didn’t try to save his son I want it to be a really powerful moment. Then there is the racist aspects of the play, I want all of these to be highlighted but not as hate, as fear. Racism is just people being scared, and I want it to show. Characters that show themself to be very openly racist, the audience must be able to see through their “confident-hate” and see them for what they really are, scared. The second act is going to follow along with the same themes as the first act, I might still add a few more focal points after I have studied the script further and in more detail.