The Christmas Family

So, I'm venturing into a new acting project, with five other professionals and we are putting this piece on around the Christmas period. We decided to explore the idea of a random group of people coming together, and being a family. The most unlikely of characters kind of thrown together. We are taking inspiration from 'The Royle Family' 'Morcombe and Wise' and 'Absolutely Fabulous'.

At this stage we are in the very early beginnings of character exploration and experimenting with various ideas. The idea mainly is to go with the comedy route, and have various 'window into the soul' moments for these characters. There has to be a reason that they came together to be a family, every Christmas. It leads me to think about my own individual experience at Christmas, and what family means to me. Who in my life would I consider to be like family, other than my own genetic family? What does family mean to us? Why do we gather together at Christmas? What would it be like without these people in our lives?