PLAY OUTLINE

TITLE:    A GREAT LOSS

AUTHOR:  ANA BELÉN LÓPEZ

( Image taken from: http://pixgood.com/thinking-drawing.html)

LEVEL: 1º Bachillerato (ALE)

SYNOPSIS
Sandra is an extremely tidy teenager who believes she has strict control over her little world, but she doesn’t, indeed.

For the first time in her life she happens to have lost something, the key to the trunk of her secrets and lucky charms.  In her desperate quest for the key she comes across a much more important discovery through a conversation with her senile granny and through past memories related to her grandfather. Granddad’s wisdom shows her that we lose things because we ignore them, mistreat them or because they simply have decided to leave us.

After her discovery, she is determined to begin a new exciting quest (the talking objects box that belonged to her granddad), but most important of all, she starts wondering deeper things: if people also disappear when we ignore them, mistreat them or fail to believe in them.

CHARACTERS

Main characters.

Sandra, Mrs Shanks and Mr Shank

Secondary characters

Chris (Sandra's brother) and Sandra's parents

Narrator

Chorus

CHARACTER OBJECTIVES

SANDRA:
Description; A thirteen-year old girl, slim and medium-height. She's got long dark hair in a pony tail. Dressed in casual clothes: jeans, T-shirt and sneakers. She’s tidy, determined, confident and also sweet with the elderly.
She has a bewildered look all throughout the play. First, when she is hopeless in her quest and then after the discoveries she comes across.
Aim: to find her little key at any cost and gain knowledge on different aspects in life.  

MRS SHANKS (granny).
Description; Sweet-looking lady in her mid seventies. White hair in a modern style. Dressed in colourful classy clothes. 
She’s funny, moody and senile. In fact, she suffers from senile dementia which enables her to recall past things but not present ones. She spends her time reading and reciting nursery rhymes.
Aim: to help her granddaughter in a relevant discovery through past memories.

MR SHANKS (granddad). 
Description: Sweet man in his late seventies. Tall, slim and smartly dressed in a suit or any other formal clothes. He is dead. He appears in the ladies’ memories as a loving, intelligent, skilled man. A jack-of-all-trades. He appears as a spectre.
Aim: to teach her daughter what the important things in life are through metaphors and his infinite wisdom.

CHORUS.
Description: three students dressed in black standing up on the right hand corner of the stage. They appear when granny is on stage.
Aim: to recite nursery rhymes with granny.

NARRATOR.
Description and aim: Narrator is offstage and aims at helping with the storyline and flashbacks in the play.

SANDRA'S PARENTS.
Aim: They are offstage and aim at accounting for Sandra´s quest and supporting the idea of an ordinary modern family. They can be heard but never seen.

CHRIS (Sandra's brother).
Description: A 10-year-old boy. Short, slender, brown-haired and with freckles on his face. He wears glasses and is dressed in casual clothes: jeans, a hoodie and sneakers. 
He is playful and seems concentrated on his video games. He's passive as regards the other characters’ action in the play. He’s accused of losing Sandra’s key. Relationship with Sandra is not very good due to the age difference
Aim: to account for Sandra’s quest and for the typical arguments between brother and sister

SCENE BREAKDOWN.
Scene1. Sandra’s family place: in her bedroom. 

Characters: Narrator, Sandra, Chris and the children’s parents.

Sandra is seen moving nervously from one room to the other in a hopeless quest for the lost key. Sandra’s brother, Chris, is playing video games in her sister’s bedroom unaware of everything but his games.

Their conversation is not very friendly. Chris makes fun of her trouble. They don’t get on very well, probably due to the age diference.

Sandra’s parents can be heard when asked about the key she’s looking for, but never seen. We learn they’re busy in other rooms.

Scene 2. Living-room. There’s a fireplace, a sofa, a table and a couple of chairs around it. A warm, cosy atmosphere.

Characters: Sandra, Mrs Shanks and Mr Shanks (a spectre), narrator.

Mrs Shanks is sitting on the sofa, reading a nursery rhymes book. She shows herself absent-minded and quiet when Sandra appears and asks her a few questions. In fact, she only manages to mutter some grumpy-like noises for being interrupted by her granddaughter.

Then she starts reciting a couple of nursery rhymes aloud until she gets to focus on recalling and talking about her dead husband, Mr.  Shanks.  We can see images of him as an inventor, a storyteller, even as an intellectual. The narrator tells us about him.

Scene3. Flashback. Living-room. 

Characters: Sandra and Mr Shanks. 

Sandra is having a conversation with her granddad in a flashback. It is then when she happens to discover that he keeps a box of little talking objects somewhere at home, which she can’t wait to find.

She searches all around the places which she suspects the box could be hidden in, unsuccessfully.

Mr Shanks disappears.

Scene 4. Living-room. 

Characters: Sandra and Mrs Shanks. 

Sandra asks her granny where her granddad might have hidden the box, but Mrs Shanks has come back to the original state by being quiet and absent-minded, concentrated only on her iPad.

Sandra promises herself to find the box, but after observing her granny for a while she asks aloud what happens to people when we fail to believe in them, ignore them or mistreat them.

The question is addressed to the audience in a dreamily way.

Granny and Sandra stare at the front.

CURTAIN.