Ivan Lee Y9 Peace

Proposal Plan
Request for The Importance of
Being Earnest

Presented to
Bob Smith, Chief Executive Office, Hong Kong public schools

Prepared by
Ivan Lee and John Smith. Cover version of The Importance of Being Earnest,
with assistance from the consortium on Hong Kong school research

March 2019
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English Creative Task 2

You will need to write a proposal to a film or TV producer, suggesting a new version of the
story of The Importance of Being Earnest.
It should be structured neatly and clearly, with subheadings and examples.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like having a second episode of The Importance
of being Earnest? Can you imagine what it would be like if The Importance of Being Earnest
was a horror play? Well, in this document, I will just tell you exactly how this would work and
why it would be successful. Please take your time reading this as I’m sure you will find this
interesting. Thanks!

Plan (Mind Map)

Two
Jack
Jack has
suffers

Set Them
in e:
the Ideas Escap

‘Ernest’ Ernest
only Additi (the
onal
Background of the play
Jack has autism and dissociative identity disorder, a disorder the totally changes the
person, including their personalities, their hobbies, their thinking… basically changes
them into a whole new person. When Jack feels tired or constantly pressured, the
other side of him, “Ernest” comes out. This Ernest is the total opposite of Jack, he
enjoys killing people and is in general a terrible person. Whenever Ernest takes over
the body, Jack goes into a blackout, not remembering a single thing that he has
done or said. Ernest would only come back his original and normal personality, Jack,
whenever he feels tired. Jack himself wasn’t aware of this problem which explains
why he isn’t taking any treatments or finding any solutions to this problem.

Scenes
(p.28) When Algernon talks about Cecily (Jack’s “aunt”), but I will be changing it to
Algy asking Jack about the murder.
(p.23) when Algernon was playing piano and Lane was arranging afternoon tea, but I
will be changing the room to a college room where Algernon and Jack slept and
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there is where the movie starts and Lane, Algernon and Jack will be meeting up
there to introduce all 3 important characters.

Theme
The theme is still escaping reality, and escaping responsibility. Since in the original
story, Jack created a person called “Ernest” and used “Ernest” as an excuse to
escape his responsibilities. I will be creating a story where Jack has dissociative
identity disorder so that he will be able to escape responsibility much more easily. I
did this because in England, if a person committed a crime and has a serious
disorders such as this, his punishments will not be as harsh and he could possibly
escape prison time.

Characters
Jack
During his days in secondary and high school, Jack has always been bullied by his
fellow schoolmates becauses of the way he looks when he was younger and the way
he acts because of his autism. As his life moves on, his life continues to go
downwards, suffering from harsh physical harassments. This is how he develops his
dissociative identity disorder. Jack’s role in this play is very important because he is
the first main character in the original play, therefore it would give the audience a
better understanding of the difference between the original and the cover version of
the play. Jack is also the one who is constantly escaping responsibility and reality
but in this case, he has no idea of the situation he is in.

Algernon
Algernon is a person who is very sociable, friendly and kind. He studies chemistry
and biology; and is now a doctor. He is known as a person who usually makes good
decisions and is quite reliable to the people he know. Algernon is known as Jack’s
roommate a person who knows him very well. Algernon would sometimes wake up
at night and witness the strange things that Jack/Ernest is doing. Since Algernon is a
good friend of Jack, he can talk easily with Jack’s second personality “Ernest”.

Plot Summary
The original play is a Trivial Comedy, but I will make my play a kind of detective story
or a simply dark/horror story so there won’t be a lot of comedy in it.

Jack during his days in primary and high school has always been bullied by fellow
schoolmates becauses of the way he looks when he was younger, now his face
completely changed naturally. But this triggered “Ernest” so Ernest decides to come
out at night and avenge Jack. Jack studied law in university then met Algernon
where they were roommates in university and then became close friends. After
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university they needed a place to stay, and came out with an idea of continuing
being roommates. After university he became a lawyer.

Algernon finds out that Ernest has been killing people, he talks to him and asks him
why he did that. But then Jack has no clue what Algernon is talking about. Algernon
shows a video of Jack committing a murder but Jack still has no clue and begs
Algernon to not tell anyone before he has any idea of what is actually happening.
Algernon finds his friend Larry who is a psychologist, Algernon then takes Jack to
Larry.

At Larry’s psychologist office they will try and talk with Ernest and ask why he did it.
Ernest did it because the guys who he killed are guilty of committing crimes. And
then admits he was “created” because Jack was overly depressed when he was
younger and didn’t like the people who did bad things especially bullying. Most of
Ernest’s victims are bullies.

The story will be taking place in the modern world because I want Jack/ Ernest to be
killing people with dissociative identity disorder (the victims are people who during
his cases were bad guys) so that (according to England’s law) he won’t be charged
of murdering to stick to the theme of escaping responsibility. And bullying in schools
are a major problem nowadays therefore it will be a good setting for the play and a
good subject for audience to reflect on.

Moodboard
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Conclusion
This interpretation could work because the theme still remains the same, and the
people nowadays mostly don’t like movies that are old schooled or about history.
Most of the movies are either modern, future, horror or sci-fi that mainly interest the
modern audience. Another reason this proposal might be granted is because bullying
till this day still exists and is showing no sign of improvements. So by creating this
movie, it could show the people what bullying can actually do to people and to
encourage them to stop bullying.

Reference