by Rebecca

Was just thinking about what some people said, about how Standing was a good description of the status quo but didn’t really talk about where to go from here. i realise that a lot of you probably haven’t been privvy to the various email discussions that take place between Siv and me but I was talking about this idea of dominant stories. In family therapy we often talk about the dominant story of a family. So that you get some families who believe that life is conflict and bitterness and don’t ever consider anything different. But if you dig a little bit, you find all these little ways in which this screwed up family has shown love and care and kindness to one another. By concentrating on these times you “thicken the alternative narrative”. When the family entertain the possibility that they are capable of other ways of living, that’s when you see change. So that’s what I’d like to do in Grounded. I’d like to look at not only the stories of sadness that never got heard but also how migrants can get it together in ways we’d never expected. Be nice if some of you research kids could think about that side of things too. I know it’s not what you all had in mind but I’d like it if it was part of it. I found this little thing in a short play I wrote a year or so ago and thought it kind of said what I’m trying to say now:

Maybe there is a place in the sky for all things gone. Where they
huddle together, bulky and massive; their gravity exerting its
rightful pull on the waters of this earth. But maybe, before he can
become a man, a boy must do what it takes to defy the tides.