I have made the decision to pre-record my poem for the final section of my piece rather than speak it. I feel that it would be more effective and easier for the audience to hear every word. Below is the poem:

Sometimes you were kind, sometimes you were fun
Sometimes you were a mum
You were exactly what she needed, you knew all the right things to say
Sometimes just sometimes you brightened up her day
She has boxed it up and buried it in the ground
Then you and her dad started to argue and things turns bad
She just wanted a family what everyone else had
Just know she did love you
You were her queen with a crown
But all that turned to shit you let her down
She doesn’t know why you left, she doesn’t know where you went

She has boxed it up and buried it in the ground
But just think of what you have missed out on
Think of the time you could’ve spent
Going shopping and talking about unimportant stuff
But no, even though she was your daughter
That reason wasn’t good enough
She has boxed it up and buried it in the ground

Behind your shadow, she stands and falls
It’s a tough battle, in which she feels so small
Her feelings toward you, you might think are dumb
Sad, upset, confused, angry, hurt, and numb
When she needed a mum, you were not there
to talk about boys or to fix her hair

She has boxed it up and buried it in the ground
Yes, you did call, every once and a while
but an ocean of tears hides behind her smile
She sees other girls laugh with their moms
She goes dizzy with swirls, and crashes like a bomb

She has boxed it up and buried it in the ground

Tell her how to love someone
who doesn’t love her back
Tell her how to respect someone
who doesn’t deserve her respect
Tell her how to trust someone
who betrayed her so badly
Tell her how to get along with someone
who brought her nothing but endless tears
Tell her how to forgive someone
who hurt her so severely
Tell her how to open her heart to someone
who broke it to pieces too many times

She has boxed it up and buried it in the ground

She has grown up before everyone’s eyes except yours

You don’t see that kind of thing behind closed doors
So she will continue to smile and move on without you

While you sit there and do whatever it is you do

She is not going to dwell on the past, cause her conscience is clear
She doesn’t even know who you are anymore, but she has one fear
That one day her phone will ring, and you’ll be on the other end
Trying to tell her sorry I love you, but she’ll know it’s all pretend

She has boxed it up and buried it in the ground
She doesn’t need you anymore, she’s doing perfectly well
Her dad has stepped in as mum from that position you fell
You don’t deserve that label, you have abused its meaning
If you think she will ever love, miss or talk to you, you need to stop dreaming
She is stronger, happier and more confident too
All of that came from her dad, none of it was you

Because it’s too late to be a mummy she is all grown up now

And she is making it somehow
And she will continue to make it through

Just like any other day without you

She has boxed it up and buried it in the ground
Boxed it up and buried it in the ground
burned it up and thrown it away

The above picture is my final set design. The space in front of the tech box is the audience area. There will be blankets, pillows and teddies. Then there are boxes in front of the audience, one side good and one side bad with bandages draped over the top of them. I will be mainly placed in the middle of the boxes with a box attached to my ankle by a chain. I have decided to cut the studio off after that. Due to the piece being of intimate nature I want the audience to be very close to me. I want the set to be as simple as possible.

For my tech, the opening scene will be a pink wash with the sound of birds tweeting to set a calm and innocent atmosphere.

The second part of my piece will be a split lighting to reflect the bad and good side. The bad side will be a dark blue and the good side will be an orange/pink colour. Due to the second part of my piece being heavily spoken, I will not have any sound.

The final part of my piece will be rainbow lighting. I want this as its the part of the piece where I dont really feel any specific emotion. Due to the mixed emotions, I wanted to reflect that through mixed lighting. I will also have a quiet rumbling sound behind my poem.

After finding the song lyrics, the song Come into my world by Amy Grant really stood out to me. I am thinking of using those lyrics to open my piece.

However changing them slightly as I dont want my piece to be in the first person. I want the audience to think that I am telling someone elses story. So instead it will be:

Come into her world
So lovely from the outside
So dark in here the demons dance and twirl
And find their pleasure frightening this girl
If you are brave then come into her world

I have also been thinking about my piece and rather than my piece being about divorce as a whole, the piece being about how my mum let me down and it all started during the divorce. Once again though, I dont want to say ‘I’ or ‘me’, it will all be spoken as if about someone else.

When I was younger, I always used to ask my mum if she would love me forever. This gave me the idea of asking questions with really obvious yes questions. For example, Is the sky blue? and Is the grass green?

All of the above will be the beginning of my piece.

I still want to keep in the idea of the use of bandages. So I have decided to have boxes all around the space with bandages on top of them. I will also have a box attached to my ankle by a chain that will have items to do with how my mum let me down. I will then tell the story that is attached to that item.

I then want to recite a poem that I will write, while saying the poem I will be packing up the boxes to show that I am moving on from the pain my mum caused and getting on with life.

I have made some changes. I am thinking of having the boxes around the space, labelled.

I will have the boxes labelled: numbers, identity, stories, changes and people.

The things inside of the boxes will link my experience of divorce and will help to push the story along.

Throughout the stories, I will be putting bandages on but then with the revalation at the end, I will communicate to the audience that the bangages only cover wounds, not heal them.

A quick update on my previous post.

To have a flow for each story I am thinking of having my dads voice pre-recorded saying something that links into the story I will tell.

So something about bullying – my dad always used to say that they only bullied me because they were jealous.

Divorce story – things that my dad said to me during the divorce to ake me feel better.

And then have my dad say something positive about the future to lead into the end of the piece.