Sam and Bronia’s notes for the Frozen Memory Project pitch for round table discussion, Pygmalion lab 2, 9th-11th December 2008
Introduction
We would like to present our project, ‘The Frozen Memory project’ is our working title. We have initially developed it as an interactive theatre piece, however, the feedback that we have received whilst developing the idea has encouraged us to pursue the development of the concept out onto other platorms too. So we would like to give a brief presentation of our project , and then we’d welcome feedback and your thoughts about what next steps we should take.
This project has at its core something that is very valuable and also delicate - memories.
The central premise of our project is based around a very simple metaphor; the idea that memories could be captured by freezing them in ice-cream.
Whenever you want to share a memory, or to remind yourself or someone else of something important, it is simply a matter of eating some of this special ice-cream and, as the ice cream melts in your mouth, the memory is released and comes alive, the original experience of that memory is relayed to you.
Valuing the memories of real, ordinary people is central to our project, and an important part of our development process so far has been to conduct research interviews with real people about their memories of the past. We have developed this core concept originally as a theatre project which would tour to schools and festivals, and also as a children’s book, for which we’ve received positive feedback from a children’s literary scout.
Story
We now have strong characters and a story engine that we believe give us the potential to roll the idea out across a number of media platforms including a tv series, a website and possibly also a feature film.
[Before we go any further, we’d like to tell you briefly about a true story that has inspired us]:
Sam Born was a Russian scientist and inventor who emigrated to America in 1910. He built his fortune in America through a series of inventions that transformed the art of confectionary - he invented a machine for putting the sticks into lollipops, and another machine for creating marshmallows, and although he arrived with nothing, he soon became wealthy and successful.
This story is the inspiration for our character, Mori. He emigrated to the UK from Russia in the 1930s,as this was a difficult time for scientists in his native Russia. Mori survived in England by building a career as a confectioner and ice-cream maker. His heyday was in the 1950s and 60s when he had a string of thriving ice cream parlours.
Lately, however, Mori has hit tougher times. His flavours have become increasingly esoteric (Balloon flavour ice cream, for example, had a niche market but was considered by most to be simply too rubbery). He lives by himself in a dilapidated house and he now sells his wares from a solitary and ancient ice cream van that is always breaking down. Worse still - Mori himself is also getting old. He is aware of the ravages of time and knows that his mind is no longer as clear as it once was. He realises that he is becoming forgetful in his old age.
Mori is the most important person in Matt’s life. Matt is his 10 year old grandson, and looks up to Mori, and strives to be an inventor too. Matt has no other family and lives with his grandfather, and hence if Mori loses his memory to the extent that he is unable to function, there is a very real danger that Matt will find himself being placed into care.
There are also strains on Matt and Mori’s relationship caused by Mori’s forgetfulness and subsequent ill-temper.
One day Matt discovers his grandfather has a hidden secret,he has invented a way of preserving his fading memories by freezing them in ice-cream, using a special machine called the ‘Remembrificator’. He has a whole freezer full of carefully labelled tubs with different categories of memory. Mori has been using his invention for mundane tasks, such as remembering where he left his van keys. But Matt sees a greater potential, and soon has Mori creating more exotic flavours. Matt is able to explore Mori’s past for the first time and Mori himself is reinvigorated by the experience. Becoming passionate about the possibilities offered by his invention he decides to try and resurrect his business by stocking the new ice-cream in his van. When he takes the ice cream out into the community, he realises that it has a wider potential to positively affect other people’s lives, and even to bring whole communities together.
Mori and Matt’s relationship is a strong one and they are mutually dependant on one another – Mori is Matt’s carer and provides him with a home, love, affection, but in his increasingly frail state he sometimes needs Matt to remind him when certain things need doing, exactly how to operate the Remembrificator, and so forth. Matt’s enthusiasm for Mori’s inventions helps to sustain the older man, and quite literally gives him back his youth.
Platforms
Interactive touring theatre production
This project was originally conceived as an interactive toring theatre production. The theatre experience will take place inside a real ice cream van, the interior of which has been coverted into a theatre space. The van will tour to schools and arts festivals, the target age group will be 7-11 year olds and (in the case of festivals) their families as well.
Inside this ice-cream van, small groups of audience members will meet Mori, who will be played by an actor. The audience will be given special flavours of ice-cream that contain memories, and these memories will come alive through an interactive performance involving film, sound, digital technology and puppetry.
TV series
Matt and Mori’s story could provide the engine for a TV-series. In each episode, Matt and Mori arrive in a new place and meet people facing some sort of difficulty. For example we could have an episode in which Mori and Matt visit a town in which the council wants to tear down a building that has a lot of importance to the local community. Matt and Mori are able to collect memories from a number people who can remember special things that happened to them there. When the councillor tastes the resulting ice-cream, he realises how important this building is for the first time.
Matt and Mori might encounter problems with their own technology breaking down, which could considerably complicate their journeys. Mori’s increasing forgetfullness about basic everyday functions requires Matt to find creative solutions to help his grandfather. Where did he store that particular memory – for example? This might lead to Matt seeking help from a mysterious librarian character to create an ‘index ice cream’ to help his granfather navigate the memory archive. And there would be challenges to preserve certain memories ‘before time runs out’…. Fragments of a memory which are uncovered one by one over the course of an episode to reveal a complete picture which helps to solve a puzzle could provide the structure for an episode, with portions of a larger puzzle being revealed episode by episode over the course of a series?
Book
A children’s book written from Matt’s perspective will tell the story of the invention of the Remembrification process and Matt and Mori’s adventures resulting from it.
The book will take as its visual style the aesthetic of an inventor’s sketchbook –the inventor in this case being the boy Matt, aspiring to be like his scientist grandfather. It will contain Matt’s cartoon-speckled diary entries about Mori’s inventions and his own, his photographic evidence, notes, diagrams, formulas, ice cream recipes, doodles. The reader will be invited to ‘dive in’ to a selection of the individual memories collected by Mori, and at these points, the pages will fold out to reveal flaps/hidden layers detailing these stories within the story.
Website
People can upload their memories to a website and they can be ranked by the online community to find the ideas that might make the most exciting flavours of ice-cream for Mori and Matt to develop. Users can play with this idea creatively by suggesting names and flavours for the each ice-cream, and by suggesting different memories that might go well together. The ‘top 50’ memories could go through to be frozen in ice cream by Mori – and elements of these could be filtered into episodes of the TV series.
Film
This project could possibly also be expanded into a feature film. One scenario we’ve thought about is one in which Mori has a hidden memory that Matt accesses without permission - a tub at the back of the freezer with ‘do not touch’ written on the lid. Matt is unable to resist this and discovers that Mori has an evil brother who once betrayed him - and the tub contains Mori’s painful memory of this betrayal. The evil brother then enters into the story and steals Mori’s ice cream making machine. He makes ice-cream that is too potent and is almost like a drug, making his customers behave hysterically and as if under hypnosis. Matt now has to repair his damaged relationship with Mori - as he has also betrayed Mori’s trust, and he has to help recapture the remembrificator from Mori’s evil brother.
Conclusion
The ice-cream van is an iconic aspect of childhood, particularly in British culture. The sound of the ice-cream van chimes has resonances with carnival, festival, something special and out of the ordinary. We want to play with these existing associations and take them to the next level -creating a magical space where the imagination is permitted to take great leaps from one world to another. On the one hand the audience will be taken ‘somewhere else’ - into a world beyond the mundane everyday, where memories can be transferred from one person to another via a mysterious cryonic process. On the other hand, the rich content of The Frozen Memory Project, which will be based on memories collected from real people across generations and cultures, will provide fascinating and thought-provoking insights into the very real, diverse world in which we live, and will promote communication and understanding between generations and cultures.
