Sorting the storyline

Abby's lesson had the aim to get a 'hanger' in which a basic structure was set. The beginning of that week had involved a lot of discussion around the narrative of our piece, but not enough decision making, so the afternoon provided a substantial amount of time to get a structure down that flowed well and everyone agreed on.
We wrote down all the stories we wanted to include from the people in Age UK and picked the main parts that were of most significance and that would link well.
- Henry jeweler
- Roy War
- George prisoner of war
We wanted to interlink all the stories, adapting and slightly altering them so they all became life events for a couple, we felt this would enable an audience to grow more attached to them as they got to see their whole lives unfold, the good and the bad, instead of snippets of many different people.

We wanted to base the piece around a couple, starting the piece when their old in their home, and go back in time to where they first met, and you watch their lives unfold, to portray the message that behind the person there is a great story.
The original structure was: evacuation, couple meet at a dance, drafted to war, love letters, hospital and reunited, re drafted to war, prisoner of war, no memory section, remembering and ending.
We hadn't discovered where we would flick between the past and the present, but we all agreed that we'd add and integrate as we went along. Everyone pitched in their ideas and we made sure everyone's were considered before we wrote them down. It allowed everyone to voice their opinions and made the structure a collaboration of all of us.
After a long afternoon, we finally came to our decision of the basic section, where it became far easier to begin devising, being able to pick a section, whichever we wanted.
The order of the piece changed dramatically from this which I will discuss with other sections of the process. But we discovered very early on, within the next two rehearsals really, that the evacuation was going to be removed from the story, it didn't fit with the rest of the play and we only had forty five minutes to fit our story in. So we decided to scrap the evacuation firstly, and start the past at the moment the couple first met, which meant we could start acting the ages of late teens, instead of children.