Things I Know To Be True

PLOT/THEMES

• Rosie comes back from her trip in Europe to see her family who live in Adelaide.  We are then introduced to her overprotective mother, loving father, business savvy sister, brother who wishes to transition and criminal brother.
• Rosie's sister, Pip, decides to move from Adelaide to Canada to take up a job for 12 months and has to leave her entire life behind.  We then find out she'd been having an affair.
• Rosie's brother, Mark, tells his family he wants to move to Sydney and transition to Mia.
• Rosie's other brother, Ben, has been stealing money and spending it on cocaine.
• Rosie's parents, Bob and Fran, try to help all the children with they problems.
• The children don't appreciate their parents' concerns and excessive worry which is why they needed to move from Adelaide in the first place.
• Rosie then decides to take up a creative writing course in Brisbane.
• Soon after she left, Fran with all her stress and fatigue, fell asleep on the expressway and flipped her car and died on impact.  
• The family then reunites in Adelaide to attend her funeral and support Bob.
• Relationship, family, marriage, heartbreak, sense of belonging, tragedy.

STRUCTURE

• Naturalistic and non-naturalistic - moments of dialogue as well as moments of direct audience address and physical theatre.
• Linear timeline - chronological, with ellipses - shown through physical theatre, direct audience address monologues, music
• Sort of cyclical structure - Rosie talking about the things she knows to be true before coming back to Adelaide and after her mother died.

SIGNIFICANT MOMENTS

• The first scene of Rosie explaining her trip to Europe - heartbreak she felt foreshadows the events in the play.
• Meeting the family - sets the base of the play, we get some exposition on the relationships of the characters.
• Pip explaining she wants to go to Canada - after she's left, Fran reading the letter Pip wrote admitting to having her affair - Fran lies to Bob about the letter - foreshadows lies that the family keep from each other.
• Mark telling his parents and Rosie about transitioning to become female - a lot of selfishness is shown from both parties - Mark wants the entire conversation to be about him coping and doesn't think about it being hard for his family to deal with all this information at once.  
• Finding out Ben is a criminal - see a scary and threatening side to Ben - "I want mum" shows he relies on his mother for help but almost abuses it 
• Fran dying - so tired from trying to help her entire family and just as things appear to be getting better, she falls asleep on the expressway and dies.  

ACTING / MOVEMENT

• First scene physical theatre - shows relationships between family members and portrays the way Rosie was feeling without her needing to say it.
• Table when Rosie gets home - transitions from garden to kitchen in a smooth way.
• Physical theatre - showing the passing of time.
• Fran and Bob dancing - the proxemics of how close they are emphasises the love they have for each other (even if it wasn't always there).
• Monologues - providing exposition on the play and also showing the situation from a different point of view.

TECHNICAL DESIGN

• Different lighting - sometimes a low light with a spotlight (usually during monologues) - sometimes a brighter light covering the entire stage (when the family were in the kitchen in the beginning) - sometimes a blue light (usually during times with physical theatre).
• The garden - signified the passing of time (through the seasons with the rose bushes) - at the end, when Bob had lost everything (his wife dying and the children all leaving him) ripping out the rose bushes.
• Bridge - only used once for Mark's monologue - water signifying rain drops coming down on him.

Dealing with Clair

PLOT/THEMES

• Clair, a real estate agent, is helping the couple, Mike and Liz, sell their house.  They ask Clair to accept the first offer.  A perfectly good offer is made, however, then a potential buyer, James, enters the scene and offers a higher bid.  All ethical notions go out of the window and Clair is stuck in the middle of the couple's double dealings and receives too much male attention from both the buyer and seller.

STRUCTURE

• Non-linear - The story wasn't in chronological order from what I saw.  It was quite hard to tell as there appeared to be 2 story-lines, however some points seemed to be as if these 2 story-lines were happening at the same time, like when the Italian girl and the investigator wire up the house to hear all conversations going on in the house.  At the end there was a jump in time from when Clair appears to be dying on the floor to when Mike and Liz get another estate agent to help them sell the house.
• 2 narrative story-lines - What occurs within Mike and Liz's house and the investigator.
• Dramatic irony (audience knows outcome but characters don't) - There are a few lines during Clair's phone call that signify something will happen and then this is anchored by the unwanted male attention from the buyer and seller of the house.  There is also a very poignant part when Liz says to her husband that he would "rape" Clair.  Even though the husband isn't the one to kidnap her or rape her or whatever happens at the end, it still foreshadows events.

SIGNIFICANT MOMENTS

• Clair's phone call - seems to be studied by investigator and foreshadows events later on - also sets mood and tone for play as eerie and ominous.
• The Italian girl's Italy call - find out she's involved in the investigation.
• Mike and James giving Clair too much attention - foreshadows events later on in play.
• James and Clair playing snap - clearly unprofessional and they both know it - finally seems like a tipping point which it is.
• James on the phone - see Clair on the floor barely moving - find out what happened to her.

ACTING / MOVEMENT

• The set was a model village with a room behind it and a walkway on top of the room.
• The actors would use the model village space as if it was a room in a house and interact with the model houses as if they were seats, rooms and props.
• The first scene, containing Clair's phone call had interesting movement as it portrayed a passing of time.
• The proxemics of the character revealed a lot without having to explicitly say - for example, James and Mike would get very close to Clair indicating their interest in her.

TECHNICAL DESIGN

• As I said before, they had a model village which they used as if it was furniture and seats etc in a house.  
• The stairs to the bridge were used as part of the house and underneath that was the investigators room.
• There were also model trains behind the wall upstage to signify Clair's house by the railway. 
• Most of the time there was quite a plain white lighting, however, right before the very end, all the lights went off and there were people in masks with torches on stage and walking around in the audience to make it more interactive. 
• Liz's shoes were set in a parking lot of the model village as if they were parked there but she changed her footwear when getting changed for James to come over.  Clair wore 3 outfits, a towel, blazer and skirt and blazer with trousers.  The investigator wore a plumber's outfit as a disguise to get into the house.