brainstorming and braving

After today’s positive start to the new term working with our new client group, we began discussing what we would like our final piece to look like. We began thinking of the type of themes it should have instilled into it and what message we would like to portray to the audience. It became a very varied discussion and we had people share their own personal stories from both groups, BRIT and TurnAround.

We had next to no idea about how we wanted the final product to look like, it was more like an experimental term for all of us as we would produce the piece as we went along. We decided that we wanted some bits to be recorded and filmed and other parts to be performed live so that we have a contrast. We then heard a story of how one boy had lost his brother to gun and gang violence, it was a tragic story and touched all of us, and we then knew that we would be able to build a story that would shake people as much as it moved us. I feel as though we should commend the young man who shared his story with us so early on in the process of developing work, it shows that he has put his trust in us and has faith that we will portray the message that violence solves nothing. The story really laid the cement for the fundamentals of our piece, we then had a direction in which the piece would move towards and we could begin to see a rough course that we could follow.

With the sharing of the story, I feel as though it brought us closer as a unit and we became more like a family that day as we had a girl from BRIT expose a personal story which she didn’t have to, the young man’s bravery then altered something in others to feel as though they were in a safe enough place to ensure that their trust wouldn’t have been broken.

The discussion we were having then lead us on to talking about various other things such as if life is prepared for us, do you believe in fate and are the choices we make critical to making up our life’s journey. It was a rather deep conversation to have on only the second of being together in a group but it then opened us all up and allowed us to let barriers down that we may have had up to explore the different opinions and ideas of other people.

It was amazing to see the different views of different people and how their own life journeys and experiences allowed them to believe that life is already planned for us or if we all produce our own fate and luck in the world.