SIBLING DINNER? I BARELY KNOW HER

Hi, gang. It's time to finally get into what Sibling Dinner is - and what we've done so far.

The idea of Sibling Dinner came from the first group pitch for 2024's shows back in November 2023 - with the original version of the show coming from Dan, with the show being a more comedic show akin to our work with the clowns. The more the conversation went about the show, the more it changed. It went from being a comedy about 4 brothers inheriting a drug empire from their rich distant father into a more autobiographical show about our own experience of having brothers, coming together over the death of their father.

This is what gave the show the working title "Your Father is Dead", which was the title used in all discussion going forward.

In December 2024, the four of us sat down and did a writing exercise following these questions:

• Where are you in the sibling line-up?

• Do you feel responsible for your sibling?

• Do you trust them?

• Who is more like your parents?

• Were you raised the same?

• Do you see them as part of yourself?

• Are you friends? If you weren't related, would you be?

• Do they give you insecurities?

• Are they better than you?

• Do they look up to you?

• Would you change them to be older/younger?

• Is there a favourite?

After taking a week to write these out, we met to read them together; we swapped all our answers so we could hear our words be spoken from someone else's mouth, which did change the perspectives and content written down. This exercise then made us realise that hearing other people/s experiences spoken from a different person allowed the creation of characters to come easier. With this in mind, we turned the questions into a Google Form, and on the 1st January 2024, we released the first Freshly Squeezed open call, asking for people to detail their experiences. This was wholly anonymous and allowed us to gather more experiences outside of our own. This was something we REALLY wanted to dive into, as our previous shows (Everything, Always, Everything, Always: The Memorial) was primarily focused on our own personal experiences and we thought this would be an interesting change of pace!

Work on Your Father Is Dead then died down for a little bit as we all started to work on JUICED! 2024 and our other projects we had in development. The gang also thought it would make sense to leave it for a bit as we waited for responses to the Google Form to come in.

Since then, there's been mini individual updates on Your Father Is Dead. We're all very busy people. And forgetful.

First, we came up with the idea of the show taking place in two rooms - the bathroom and a dinner table, where the brothers are gathering for a catch-up over some grub. The story thread then revolved around the play being split between group ensemble scenes taking place over dinner, with the vibe being realistic, piss-taking conversation. Then, whenever we wanted to do a monologue and have a character replay a memory, they'd move to the bathroom and speak into a "mirror" - just a frame, as the audience acting as the glass. Dan was the genius behind this idea - I then scribbled down multiple ways to create the mirror in question.

In our multiple late night discussions interspersed with talking about how bloody good Joe looks in Grove Theatre's production of Macbeth, we landed on how to introduce the show, in classic, weird, abstract, Freshly Squeezed fashion.

The other big idea was to meet up and do a series of improv sessions using the responses to the Google Form to create characters. We'd make a three course meal and just make up stories and scenes on the fly, crafting jokes and solidifying character personalities. We playfully called this Sibling Dinner.

THE MORE AND MORE WE TALKED ABOUT THIS, WE REALISED HOW PERFECT OF A TITLE THIS WAS. (And we clocked that the show wasn't about a father dying anymore.)

Thus, Your Father is Dead was metaphorically given cement shoes and thrown in the sea, as Sibling Dinner was officially born - a narrative using elements of verbatim about 3 brothers going down memory lane while attempting to reconnect.

Since then, it's been lots of back and forth at midnight to chat about the show - character archs, content ideas, prop making thoughts and more. I can't say anything more specific without spoiling more of the plot - but it's very, VERY GOOD.

To end this lil post, this show is meant to be a big change of pace for Freshly Squeezed as the TWO YEARS of Everything, Always is coming to a close. We're very excited for it and now we have this - a new, nice way to chat about the show!

See you soon!!!