Recap of Google Group posts made

In response to Vanessa's questions posted:

--There is no intermission because I think an intermission would break up the flow of the show. But I could be wrong...if anyone has any strong opinions about a place where an intermission would be a good idea, speak now.

--I would love to know that the Mother's job is....Kathi, any thoughts? (No pressure right away, something to think about, haha)

--The play is timeless. We discussed it vaguely being set somewhere between 1997 and 2005, which I think still holds true, but in terms of season, I don't think we need to narrow it down. These people don't leave the house enough to care what season it is.

--The Father's mental illness doesn't stem from any specific event or series of events, it would exist whether or not he had a perfect childhood, or was beaten as a child. That being said, opening up a discussion about the Father's past with Zen would be interesting, and will be important character development.

Heyhey!

I think the relationships between all the characters are really
interesting and complex, and it will be interesting to work on
enhancing them through the visual aspects of the show. I'm especially
interested in how the growth and changes in Child's character will be
able to be illustrated visually- because I know you'd said in the past
it's not really about the passage of time. I do have a couple of
questions, though.

~Is there something specific in Father's past that makes him depressed/
angry? It's alluded to in scene 2, but do you leave it with so few
details on purpose? It's just a bit unclear to me whether that's there
to try to explain father's actions in such a way that the audience
might have some level of sympathy, or just for depth of character or
as an interesting added detail or something?

~Is there a specific season the play is set in? Christmas is mentioned
once, is the whole play set in wintertime, or just that season? Even
if you don't want there to be a specific time of year or anything,
some sort of guidance on season/climate/weather ish things might be
useful.

~What does the mother do for her job? Is it some sort of temp. job
sort of thing?

~This is just logistical, but there's no intermission, and the
characters don't really leave the stage much at all, except when
Father is taken away, right?

Peace,
Vanessa

New Plan

Okay team. The google group has failed me...I was really hoping that it would work out, but it looks like we're going to have a blog. We can't organize it in quite the same way, but at least we can really easily share images, which is really important. That being said, here is a review of the image bank post I tried to make earlier:

One of the first things I would like us to start doing is creating an image bank! I know you've pretty much all done this before, but just to make sure we're all on the same page: the goal of creating an image bank is to start creating a visual conversation between us. I want us to start translating all of the initial reactions and feelings we have about the play into visuals.

For this first round of image banking I want us to be as uninhibited as possible. Sometimes searching things like "family" or "home" can yield useful results, but try following your gut feelings and looking
for things out of the ordinary. Clearly I didn't have a fish in mind when I wrote this play, but while going through a magazine I saw this image and it spoke to me. I find that, if you can, using things like
magazines and books can be really helpful in this first stage as opposed to the internet, because you have tangible pages you can flip through and it's a little easier to not over-think your image choices. That being said, use whatever method you feel most comfortable with.

I'd like to put a little deadline on this, just to make sure we're all working at the same time. If you can all have some images posted to this group in a week (so by Tuesday 7/12), that'd be great. As always,
email me if you have any questions/concerns/wanna have skype date, etc.