Today I watched Dreams of a Life, a film I had watched a few years ago (it came out in 2011), I forgot how haunting and sad it is. 

It is a Documentary/Re-enactment Directed by Carol Morley. Morley saw the story about Joyce Vincent in the Sun newspaper. A woman of 38/39 who was found dead in her North London flat after 3 years! The TV, heating and lights had stayed on the whole time and no one noticed. Even the Sun article didn’t say a lot so Morley contacted people who new Joyce and as you’ll see in the trailer, she was well liked, was considered beautiful and popular. she died wrapping Christmas presents. 

The film made me revisted an idea I was already interested in: Our own needs for legacy, that we are all scared of being forgotten and it reminded me that tragically it is a very real fear. 

 

The music video to Alex Winston’s Careless makes me feel the same way the film does (Not the song though): 

 

When it comes to theatre I am very interested in atmosphere and tone, as I said in previous posts I like to add humour to what I do. But, I do take seriously the source material, although I wouldn’t include Joyce Vincent and the piece would be fictional, this is as I said a very real thing, and I think loneliness is real for everyone and so I wouldn’t want to make it light as much as slowly move towards the tragedy, allow the audience to laugh and find the “characters” loneliness humorous in places, then sad in others and then bring the show to a sudden  end. 

It is a bleak idea, but I will use it also to unit people, saying very clearly that we all worry about these things.

 

The Character -(Which is what I would play)   He would be the humour, a funny man, who has had something sad happen to him. 

Where this idea differs to my one on perception is that the audience would not be included, the character will be separate from the audience. But saying that it would be important for me that the audience like him, so I would have to find away to achieve that without any other actors or any communication with the actors.

 

Music – is also a big thing that I think of when I find ideas, one song that I thought works very well with the need for Legacy is Fame  originally by Irene Cara but I would use the Mree cover: 

This idea is a very big step away from perception but it is something I think would be interesting and challenging to show honestly and also to give an audience an 8-12 minute show about the idea of death and being forgotten without it being bleak and heavy. 

It would also give me (selfishly) a chance to create my own character and move him through a sort of fragmented story.