Story Telling Unit- A play review of ‘Grandma, Remember Me?’

As part of my research for my short film, I discovered there was a play touring across the country. It was called ‘Grandma Remember Me?’ from az2b theatre company, written by Belinda Lazenby. After reading short synopsis I found it has a similar theme to my own short film, and could give me possible ideas, so I went to see it. After watching, I particularly liked the way they showed the decline of the Grandma, played by Belinda herself, in the way her clothes became scruffier and her speech gradually became nonsense; yet we still understood what she was saying. The use of puppets for the child and dog were interesting as it gave the audience an insight to Grandma’s life as she struggles to remember people and the puppets represented this well as they’re just wooden objects, not people: we see them as Grandma does. This was particularly helpful as afterwards they did a Q&A in which the audience were allowed to ask Belinda and the other actors questions. I asked ‘How did you go about developing Grandma’s character?’ and they said they mainly used their own experiences with dementia and real cases and applied them to their character. This was so similar to what Simon and Steve had told us when it came to writing our own short films; we were all told to write about something based on our own experiences.

 The clever use of inanimate objects to evoke such emotion shows illogicality in human existence; real-life actors weren’t needed. This got me thinking how I too could use puppetry to portray characters. Its often very exaggerated so perhaps something more suited to theatre. I feel that for my film I will need actual actors for all characters, unless William was to have a dog, in which case I might b able to get away with it, given the one used in ‘Grandma, Remember Me?’ was very realistic.  It may appear overly comedic in film form. Film quality standards are so high today, that if I was to use puppets it could risk looking cheap and amateurish.