31 Plays in 31 Days, #6 - “An Interesting Life”

Ugh, this one is very rough. I focused on hammering out the structure of the scene rather than making it sound even a little bit good. Here we have some of the building out of the London side of Hawking part 7, which is basically about getting Mrs. Hawking to the point where she finally owns the mistakes she made with Mary (and others) and comes to a place where she can be open to another way forward with her life. But setting that up needs to be done properly, and I’m still working to make the progression of it make sense.

A key part of that is Beatrice, Nathaniel and Clara’s daughter who has been mentioned several times up to this point, but we’ve never met her. She’ll be like thirteen or fourteen by 1890, and is interested in the cool shit her great aunt does. But Mrs. Hawking has been avoiding any kind of relationship with her because she can’t emotionally deal with another bright young girl she could disappoint. I’m also priming an eventual clash with Clara over her fear of losing her daughter to Mrs. Hawking’s world, but that I’m saving until part 8.

I’m also working to establish how physically rundown Mrs. Hawking has become, to the point where even Beatrice is very aware of it. What I’m hoping to build to is an “out of the mouths of babes” moment where Beatrice forces Mrs. Hawking to deal with her and explain why she’s been shutting her out, and Beatrice tells her something that hits her so hard that she can’t pretend things are working anymore. I’m not sure I have a strong enough thing for her to say yet, but I’m making an effort to set it up here. I plan on posting that scene later in the month, so you can see for yourself how I’ve done.


Photo by Jacob LaRocca

( Day #6 - An Interesting Life )