Gone Missing

In many ways, Gone Missing was a live/multimedia version of the Tiny Stories assignment.  Essentially, the only thing that kept continuity within the several different parts of the performance was the overarching theme.  Granted, some stories were longer than others, and I don't believe any of them were 30 words or less like the tiny stories assignment, but none of them were long enough to be considered a play in and of themself.  They communicated a message, often with an unspoken, inferred backstory which must have existed because all the dialogue was taken from actual interviews being re-portrayed by the actors.  I think that is a good reminder for future scripts that I will write – I need to have a back story I can allude to, but it will appear more lifelike if I don’t tell it explicitly unless I have to.

The way the stories were arranged was almost in a collage or montage format.  One story would start and take a pause while the other stories took their turns, then the first one would continue again where it left off.  Some of the musical numbers, in particular the one with the dancer who lost her cell phone, it was similar to the music mosaic assignment – telling some type of story or communicating an idea or emotion via images.  The way the constructed the tweets told the importance of the phone.

I am so grateful to TMA 102 which taught me about un-linear narratives.  There have been several films that I have come to think are beautiful that I would have slighted had I not understood their methodology for telling the story.  I feel similarly with this theatrical performance.  My Dad liked it, but said it was interesting.  “I just went to see a play with no plot” he said, and really, he’s right.  Plot wasn’t part of the story structure.  Theme was.