.:Choosing our stimulus:.

We spent the who two periods today being introduced to the stimuli provided by the IB for our PPP. We have four weeks from now to prepare our pitch, rationale, and our other sources which influenced us.

There were 5 stimuli to choose from: A slow, inspirational song, a cartoon regarding the understanding of death, a poem, a Balinese story and maps of Atlantas! We all had different views on each stimulus, and for a while there, it looked as though we were going to ALL choose the song!! However, when re-evaluating our options, Ronelle chose the poem, Ashleigh chose the maps of Atlantas and I chose the comic!

The comic is quite lengthy, and it is a story of a boy and his tiger who find a racoon. The racoon is sick, so the little boy calls for his mum to come and help. They put it in a nice, warm box overnight and wait to see the outcome in the morning. Much to the boys’ unhappiness, the racoon had passed away. He then comments on death and how he does not understand it, both the mother and the tiger explain it.

So after finding the right stimulus, my mind immediately began buzzing with different ideas and concepts! I forreged around for a big piece of butcher’s paper, reached for my highlighters, and began a big brain storm diagram. I began with the heading ‘Loss’ and then listed all the different types of loss I could think of. (I’ll put a photo of my diagram up here once it is completed). But, pretty much after the two lessons, I had come up with a war setting/clinical psychologist setting which involved a man going to war and experiencing loss. Also, a letter theme came up, so I was hoping imaging this play having transissions from the man’s memory of loss to the therapy session now through letters that perhaps a narrator would read, or maybe that would be the script-it would give it a really set way of speaking in that the script would not really be all written for spoken voice, but written as though someone the soldier had written it! I think Wilfred Owen inspired me a bit, but I also want to look at so many options which I thought of throughout the two sessions! Oh-and I was also looking at the dementia side of the man’s life and the anger and frustration invovled in that-so will be looking up the symptoms of dementia. Have thought of colour schemes already, I want the war ‘memory’ scenes to be full of dark greens, browns (mud) and somber, underlying tones to help create a relentlessness in the effect and to highlight the futility of war.

Will keep writing as my ideas keep formulating!

~ by kateibtheatre on May 24, 2009.