Idea 1
The Genre will be drama.
The play will be about a teenage girl whose mother dies and she starts to rebel.
The other characters involved are her father and younger brother. The Father doesn’t know what to do for her while she is grieving and she begins to pull away from him.
The play will flash from her memories in the past before her mother died to the present and her personal thoughts.
Voice will be first person and third when having conversations.
Research shows for a child/teenager, the death of a parent, without support to manage the effects of the grief, may result in long term psychological harm. Therefore, it is important that the emotions the child feels are worked through completely and discussed openly.
A TV programme on recently is one called Single Father. Although it focuses on the husband’s grief as he loses his wife and has to look after children, it can be related to my idea. This is because the idea about having it from the daughter’s point of view will work and because it has her personal thoughts it will make it more interesting to an audience and relatable. However, as my idea features a teenager who has pulled away from everyone and can’t deal with this death at this point in her life it will be more interesting and the plot could be added to and show the events following the death.
The film Billy Elliot is relevant as he loses his mother and is struggling to get over it; this then leads him to doing the opposite of what his father wants. Also, films like Thirteen and Remember Me both feature a teen that has had a change in their family life or some problem resulting in them acting out or doing things they wouldn’t normally do. This type of plot is very popular and there are lots of films out today that follow this format.
Coming of age genre
A similar type of genre of movies and books is the Coming of age genre where the central plot revolves around a person suddenly facing a life changing experience, trial or tribulation. That person once was naive or childish or pre-pubescent is now suddenly older and wiser because of the experience.This is related to my idea for a radio play as the main character faces a life changing experience, e.g. a parent’s death. This means she will have to grow up more and deal with the loss.
Nearly all of them follow people between the ages of 10 and 20 as they go through the experiences which define them. Certain of these experiences, which are upheld as being very important culturally by their repeated portrayals in media, can be classified together as "coming of age events.
It is very popular genre and is seen in films and books in the past and today.
