Act II Scene VIII: Her Own Story, Drawn Into the Book
from The Forgotten Kingdom

Note

In this video demonstration, the sand animation is a single, continuous video.However, in the stage production, the video is cut into 24 shorter segments. Each segment is triggered by the projections operator, once a particular moment in the musical score or script is reached. The segment plays and then holds, until the next cue. Each new segment picks up at the exact frame as the segment preceding it, to create the illusion of a single, smoothly flowing video, similar to the one you see below. This theatrical projections treatment results in unity and synchronization of projections and live performance while enabling variation in the pacing and delivery of each performance, like a play in which actors vary their delivery night-to night.

• See stage layout of theatrical performance

About the Scene

1953, England, recalling 1943-44 journeys from the family’s Mediterranean village to England.

The Book of Memory contains more than just stories of family and neighbors. It also includes the young woman’s tale. In 1943, when she was just a child, she hid in the forest when the soldiers came. Through luck she was not discovered. She emerged to find her home, and her entire village, in ruins. But in the rubble, she found her family scrapbook.

To the family story in its pages she has added snapshots of the many small decisions, kindnesses, and fortunes that, in the end, enabled her to begin again in a new home. As her journey continues, she adds memories to the book.

Background:

The music in this scene is based on a wedding song from Salónica, from the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, celebrating a young woman who leaves behind an older life and steps into a new one. This song, and its theme of beginning again, is a metaphor for the young woman in The Forgotten Kingdom and the community she represents. 

This final sand animation shows the London street on which Guy’s father grew up after the war, as the city rebuilt.

Sand Roles in the Performance

The Forgotten Kingdom — Sand Stories consists of 6 Sand Stories and 13 Digital Set Pieces. There are two acts and an interval. 

• Related: Sand roles in the show