Title: Sonder

Logline

A cynical commuter lost in a sea of strangers, stumbles upon a ticket revealing a boy’s suicide. Guilt forces her to confront the complexities of the world around her.

Synopsis

In the confines of a London Underground carriage, Kim spends her commute journaling and silently judging strangers, dismissing each passenger as a shallow caricature figure in her everyday life. Among the faces, one boy’s lingering stare unsettles her, but she brushes it off without a second thought. The train halts unexpectedly, disrupting her journey and fuelling her frustration, worrying if she’ll make her interview on time. But when she discovers a crumpled ticket left behind, she uncovers a desperate cry for help. The truth reveals the boy took his life moments after leaving the train. Faced with the fragility of life and realising that every stranger has unseen burdens and intricate lives, Kim is forced to reevaluate her outlook on people. Overwhelmed by guilt and grief, she understands her actions or inaction can change the trajectory of strangers.

Characters

Kim – Solitude (S)

Scene Breakdown

S - Solitude

O - Observing

N - Noticing

D - Discovering

E - Empathy

R – Realising

Unnamed characters: - Observing (0)

Passenger 1:

Businessman, mid-30s,  in a black suit, slicked back hair.  Kim views him as materialistic, interested more in stocks and football scores than his girlfriend beside him.

Passenger 2:

Yoga instructor – Early 20s, flawless skin, influencer-worthy type. Kim sees her as a self-absorbed hypocrite.

Unnamed suicidal boy – Noticing (N)

Setting Description

The tube is a microcosm of society, encapsulating its diversity, indifference and shared humanity. Dim lighting and rattling carriages create an immersive atmosphere, with the opening and closing of doors conveying the rhythm of a typical tube journey. Kim’s headphones symbolise her emotional detachment. Removing them becomes a pivotal metaphor, as snippets of passengers' lives and fragments of her thoughts breakthrough. Layered white noise intensifies as her inner turmoil escalates, resulting in a breakdown as she confronts the overwhelming realisation of sonder—that she is one story among millions. The journey ends with her removing the headphones, embracing her epiphany of humanity’s interconnectedness.

Genre, Style and Conventions

The drama explores the concept of sonder, the awareness that everyone has lives as vivid and complex as our own. It combines symbolism, challenging us to see beyond the surface, with realism and naturalism reflecting a real-life contemporary world often too hurried to care. Set in the round, each stop presents a vignette of her critical observations.  Forgotten items, including notes, crumpled tickets and photographs prompt her internal monologues. Blending mundane details with profound emotions in a mock verbatim style, physical theatre utilises props, movement and storytelling for comedic relief and direct engagement. As the play unfolds, these imagined narratives become personal, symbolising her loneliness and unspoken desires,  revealing the depth of her internal struggles.

Context and Influences

Cockfosters (2023) explores modern urban life on the London Underground to show characters navigating busy lives while reflecting on isolation and connection. Its comedic dialogue reflects the changing dynamics on a tube journey, as well as the character’s ignorance of the inner lives of people around us, resonating with themes throughout Sonder. In Cockfosters (2023), characters pass through spaces without truly connecting, like how Kim in Sonder initially judges others from a distance. This relates to Sartre’s idea that the ‘other enables me to pass judgment on myself as I might pass judgment on an object’ (2021, p.168), reflected in Kim’s initial opinion of people being simply ‘objects’ in her life, denying their complexity. She notices and understands people are like herself only after she confronts this outlook. While Cockfosters (2023) uses the busy environment of public transport as the microcosm of isolation and modern life, Sonder confronts the consequences of that isolation and urban alienation, with the protagonist's disregard for another person's life leading to an irreversible event.

The subtle emotional depth in Aftersun (2022), where familial bonds and the internal struggles of the characters unfold gradually, is influenced by Sonder’s themes of emotional awakening. Sartre’s idea that ‘for a long time, morality aimed to provide man with the means of being’ (2021, p. 280), reinforces this image for a deep exploration of personal transformation. Aftersun (2022) tends to deal with grief and memory, while Sonder focuses on a more sudden, external catalyst. The boy’s suicide forces Kim to confront her disregard for others and reflects her deeper existential crisis.

Like the protagonist in Sonder, Fleabag is a cynical character who grapples with her self-worth, guilt and relationships with others. Phoebe's use of humour as a defence mechanism is influenced in Sonder but leans more towards a tragic reckoning and a revelation. Sonder has a more serious poignant tone, placing less emphasis on humour and more on moral transformation and understanding. The bystander effect, described by Darley and Latane (2021) as ‘a reluctance of individuals to offer help to someone at risk when other people are present; the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely one of them will help’, is influenced in Sonder’s themes of contemporary societal and moral isolation. The presence of strangers creates a sense of detachment for Kim, showing her lapse of judgment reflects this phenomenon. Similarly, Jenkin’s concept of identity as a process of ‘being’ or becoming’ (2008, p.17) is also symbolised through her characterisation, as Fleabag’s protagonist starts in a state of detachment.

Sonder confronts the audience with a direct moral challenge. Whereas After Sun and Fleabag use nostalgia or humour as tools for emotional insight, Sonder leans into the raw emotional consequence of not understanding others'  complexities until it's too late.

Bibliography

Aftersun (2022) Directed by Charlotte Wells (Feature film). Mubi (United Kingdom) A24 (United States): BBC Film Screen Scotland Tango BFI Pastel Unified Theory

Jenkins, R. (2008) Social Identity. London: Routledge.

Ngo, N.V., Gregor, S.D., Beavan, G. and Riley, B. (2021). The Role of Bystanders in the Prevention of Railway Suicides in New South Wales, Australia. doi: https://doi.org/10.1027/0227-5910/a000804.

Sartre, J,P. (2021) Being and Nothingness: an essay on phenomenological ontology. Artria Books

Waller-Bridge, P. (2016) Fleabag. Nick Hern Books

Woffenden, T, Clayton, H. (2023) Cockfosters