Sources:
Questions:
As part of a workshop at the National Theatre Studio on Friday 29th January I asked the participants to write down four questions, one each for any four of the following possible interviewees: someone you love or loved romantically and is no longer around; an extra-terrestrial; a teddybear or plushy toy you’ve ever had; a dead film star; a cat or dog or goldfish; someone you used to sit next to in class and haven’t seen since; your doctor or dentist; anyone whose picture you had on your wall as a teenager; anyone else in this room. The sixteen questions above were taken from the 32 that the workshop participants wrote. This writing exercise was part of making a short theatre work, and at that stage had nothing to do with the idea of this post.
Images:
UK residents reported as missing persons since the start of January 2010.
This must have been a very thought-provoking exercise, and I like your decision not to explain it until the bottom of the post. The question about “How many words do you have for ‘earth’” struck me as oddly profound on its own, and then I realized afterward that it was probably addressed to an extraterrestrial, which gave it a whole new meaning. There are a few of them like that. Very interesting.
Also, if these people whose pictures you used are still missing, I hope they’re ok.
What’s missing is where you were not.
There is something emotionally devastating about the juxtaposition of these questions and photos. And, when you read the last part of the post, the fact that these people are missing seems to rip something from your gut while the source of the questions seems to insert something back into the hole that the pictures left. That doesn’t make any sense. But it feels incredible.
This is a pretty incredible post. The ‘do any of my choices seem kind?’ line almost had me in tears. The whole post has this blind mans bluff disorientating quality, or like when you’d open your eyes after playing it and it took a few moments for your eyes to adjust to the quality of light. That post felt like those moments to me. i dunno.