Oceans, like highways

Abstract

This coming-of-age screenplay of loss, forced confrontation of one’s past, and self-discovery tracks a young female protagonist who runs away from a life in her family’s touring circus. Her story begins in a vivid, unorthodox environment and moves into a more mundane setting as she builds a life of her own, navigating the world outside the circus and away from her family. Through a series of trial and error, she pursues a career in journalism, seeking to honestly tell the stories of others. Eventually, she is presented with an opportunity that seems perfect in almost all dimension— except this commission requires her to confront her own story rather than deferring to those of others. The thesis aims to explore a story of emergence from the enclosed bubble of one environment to the entrance into a reality where only some of the prior rules now apply. The protagonist explores the question of how to reconcile with one’s past when forced to, despite her best attempts to avoid doing so. Through the many possible lenses to think about a past lifetime— nostalgia, gratitude, regret, among so many others— this story grapples with who we are in the midst of leaving everything we know behind, and how we process our past experiences while in a new stage of our lives.