The room is cold. Uncomfortably cold. The audience are sat in a semi circle facing the corner of the room. The lighting is neutral covering both the stage area and the audience. Everyone is sat tight together, uncomfortably close and enclosed. On the wall in front of them are photos. From childhood to adulthood. The wall is covered in them. On stage right there is a small table with a pile of notebooks and diary’s on it. There is a very faint spotlight on them that is unnoticeable in the current lighting but is there throughout the performance and becomes noticeable during different lighting changes.
The performer walks out and stands in the middle of the stage smiling and pleasant. “Hello Ladies and Gentleman, Boys and Girls.”
The lights on the audience fade out so they are in darkness. A Banging/knocking is heard getting louder and louder until it is uncomfortably loud and then just stops. The performer on stage is completely oblivious to the noise and just stands, still staring at the audience with a completely neutral face. After the banging they smile.
“I want to tell you a story. A story about life. A story about childhood and adulthood. Just a story. No harm in a story.
I imagine our lives as one big story. One big story being told by someone far away. Maybe we aren’t real. Maybe that’s what they want us to think. Just a figment of their imagination.
Anyway, that’s not the story I want to tell you. No. That’s not the story. Its a story about a little girl. A little girl who grows up not knowing. Not truly understanding. Always asking why?
‘Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there lived a little girl. She lived with her mother and father in a beautiful castle. Her father was the King and her mother the Queen and so yes, that made the little girl, a Princess. They were all happy. Very Happy. So happy and life was good. Very good. So good. And they all lived happily ever after.’
Lovely wasn’t it? The little girl was 5.”
This was an idea for the start of a performance. I like the elements of the cold temperature and the idea of having photos as a backdrop on the stage, the confined space and the silence as the audience enters and are waiting for the performance to start. The text however, I am not happy with as so far it doesn’t give any indication as to what I want my performance to be about.
When reading this out to the group I received some ideas that have given me food for thought.
Having a child onstage, of about 5 years old like the child is, in the first part of the monologue gives the audience someone to connect with and her age would give the audience a sense of worry/concern for the child. If the child was to be sat onstage for the whole performance then the audience have a visual focus and a character to see.
My voice can be a narrator. I am telling the story of her life like my ‘belief’ that someone is telling our stories and controlling us.