Session 8 - 27.01.12 - First Rehearsal and Dramatising the Script.

Check In
Check In was a little different this week; each choosing a body position that reflected our mood. We all seemed a bit deflated and tired after a busy week, nothing like a good warm up to get our energy levels up!

Warm Up

We kicked off with a physical version of Zip Zap Boing, an exercise to assert our body language to your peers around a circle at a competitive speed, one wrong mistake and you're out!
We then replaced the actions with quotes from Eastenders. A reminder that when you're speaking to a crowd, you have to use your body in your language. "Sort it out!" "''ave it!" "Shut it!" "Where's Peggy? Get out my pub!"



Dramatising the Script

We were all assigned a character while Tunde narrated. After each scene, we reread the script as a different character. This proved to be a very successful technique to give a full insight of the whole picture. Each character gained a huge amount of strength because of this.

A few lines felt unnatural or rushed, Tunde recommended that we could alter the prose so it sounded more natural if need be. Or if we found it difficult to read, we should just slow down and take a breathe...The line will not disappear!

The script shows a lot of interruption between characters, which is hard to put into practise. The secret is to improvise the line onwards, giving plenty of opportunity to your opposition to intervene!

Next week: We need to go through the last scene and make sure everyone is there!

Check Out
We all checked out with much more energetic body language, hands in the air and eyes looking up, which proves a successful session!

Session 7 - Looking At The Script And Choosing A Name - 20/01/12

Check In
We all checked in using a number between 1 and 10 on how we were feeling. Generally everybody checking in at 6-7 (1 being bad and 10 being great).

Looking At The Script
Tunde wrote up a script for us all to give feedback on. The script is a great idea in case anybody is absent, then somebody else could step into the role.

We all agreed that the script looked really good. Tunde had used some of the quotes and ideas from the last session's scenes.

We all thought that the script didn't need any changes except the first part of the assault in the park scene. We wanted to change the word 'Hey' to 'Oi' or 'Yo' as this is more likely to be said by a young person.

Quotes From The Script


Assault in the park script:
"Relax man, ain't nothing gonna happen. What you getting all shook for"

"We just wanna make sure you're safe, you get me. So if you live round here, then you one of us - like family innit. You do for us, we do for you.

Suddenly Dan brings out a knife and without thinking stabs y3. The others are shocked...

Police visit script:
"I'm afraid it's a bit more serious than that. It's a stabbing."

"Danny's a good boy. There's no way he'd be part of that."

Mum's mind is racing. She barely hears PC and is too distracted to speak.

Mum and Dan script:
"Danny, tell me what happened. Why didn't you buy-"

"Mum, stop. It's not my blood."

"You couldn't talk your way out of it - or if need be use you fists."

Paperwork
We went through the proposal for the project and finished it all off.

Choosing A Name
We all discussed a name for our play. We chose ten names that we all liked and had a vote. We voted by writing our top three on a piece of paper and throwing it into the middle. The results were all put together and we had a top two, which were the ones with the lower numbers and more votes.

1. Knife or life
2. The trouble with knives...

So the main name for the play is now 'Knife Or Life'.

We discussed that:
- We were now going to just take the play into schools
- That we want to make it more interactive so that the schools can be involved with the play to
- That we can freeze the play at certain places and ask our audience what they would do - give them three options

Check Out
We all checked out with higher numbers and the session ended.

Session 6 - Putting Some Scenes Together - 13/01/12

Checking In
We started the session off by checking in. We all sat in a circle and gave how we felt a number out of 10 (10 being really great and 1 being bad).

We had a recap of the last Wednesday's session. The aim of the session was to put together the scenes that had been thought up already.

- 2 scenes - parent and child
- 1 scene - parent and police officer

Warm Up
We did some warm up activities to get us active. The first one was where everyone had to walk around and when 'stop' was shouted, everyone had to freeze. Then it was made harder by making stop mean go and go meaning stop. It was a little tricky but was great to see everybody taking part.

The second warm up that we did was a points of contact game. We had to walk around until Tundai told us how many parts of contact we had to have with the floor. It was really fun to see how creative everyone was with the different numbers.

Finally we all did a paired points of contact activity where we had to work in teams of two connected to make points of contact with the floor. Tundai called out numbers and everybody had to touch the floor with that amount of parts of their bodies.



Group Activities
We all split into groups to act out the three scenes that we had planned out together, to give our interpretations of them. It was good to see how everybody acted out their's differently.




Finish
We all checked out with higher numbers than at the beginning of the session.

Session 5 - Putting Ideas Together - 16/12/11

The session kicked off with everybody sitting in the circle and telling each other what number we rated our moods (between 1 and 10 - 10 being really great)


Warm Up
As a warm up and team building exercise we had to keep a balloon in the air. By working as a team we had to tap it in the air and on the fifth hit, we had to hit it with anything but our hands. The point of the activity was to show the importance of team work.

Team Exercises
We all stood in a circle and had to pass a beanbag in a sequence. We had to keep eye contact to be able to throw the beanbag to the catcher. More beanbags were added and we had to concentrate and work as a team to keep 4/5 beanbags in the air at all times. This was another team building exercise to emphasis trust within the group.

Planning A Trailer And Advert For Our Play
We split up into two groups to put our ideas together and produce an acted out trailer and an advert for our play. It was challenging, but we all worked together and they both looked great.




Reviewing Our Ideas
We all discussed our ideas and decided that it would be a good idea to merge both together in some way.

The Advert Idea: A boy stabs somebody and his conscience haunts him all the way through, he then has the challenge of telling his mum, who begs him to hand himself in.

The Trailer Idea: A girl has her phone stolen by a boy at a party. She is with her gang and she sees him at a bus stop. Her gang put pressure on her to stab him. We hear her conscience deciding whether she will use the knife or not at the end.

Warm Down:
We all reviewed how we were feeling and generally everybody's numbers had gone up, which meant that we were all feeling a lot more positive.

We all need to bring in our ideas after Christmas to show Tunde how our ideas have progressed.

Session 4 - Image Theatre - 9/12/11

Check In
Today’s session started with everyone choosing a colour to suit how we were all feeling.

Group Activity
We were then each given a piece of paper with a word each, which were RESPECT, SAFETY & COMMITMENT. Tunde asked everyone to create a spider diagram around each word and write what came to mind when we thought of the word.

Warm Up

Tunde got everybody to participate in a warm up exercise, where we had to throw beanbags to one another in a sequence and repeat it without dropping them. This was to help everyone understand the importance of working as a team. We had to add another beanbag in but this time they had to reverse the sequence. This made the exercise more difficult and everyone was confused easily but determined to get it right.

Improvisation
After the warm up exercise the group then learnt about creating image theatre. We had  to improvise with still images of the words RESPECT, COMMITMENT & SAFETY. We created three unique still images of the words and worked very well as a team completing the exercise successfully.

Planning A Trailer
We began working on the trailer for our play. We all had to produce a thirty second piece which highlighted the best parts of the play to intrigue our audience. As we haven't worked on the play yet, it was an interesting task as we were starting from scratch.

Check Out
To finish the session we had to see if  our mood and colour had changed. The majority of the group's colours had changed.

Session 3 - Scenarios, Making It Happen - 02/12/11

For this session we had a new group member, Melissa, and were also joined by theatre professional, Tunde, who will be helping us with the play campaign.

The group filled the newcomers in on their ideas so far.

We talked about the idea of starting a mock fight in the playground to get people's attention, then have teachers come in to break it up and do a short interactive theatre piece with the children who come running over.

What steps do we need to take to create the play?
1. Research
2. Write the script/scenario
3. Choose director/actors/characters/music
4. Sort locations and props
5. Do advertising/promotion

What do we need to make this happen?
- An experienced campaigner - Katy Dawe from Art Against Knives?
- An experience playwright and director - Tunde
- Experience of knife crime

With the experiences of knife crime the group have had and Tunde's experience in theatre, we have all the experience we need right here in this room.

If we want to bring in artists/celebrities we need to have the idea more tailored and make a direct approach. We need to think about what their involvement will say about us as a collective. They might want to catch a ride on OUR reputation.

We discussed the age of our audience and whether it's better to target younger children, as young as Year 6.



Everyone had a story to tell so we thought it would work well if we could incorporate this into our play.



In creating the story we decided we wanted it to be:
- True
- Based on real life experiences (our experiences)
- Simplified so that young people can understand the message.

Session 2 - Planning A Campaign - 25/11/11

We started off the session with a recap just to make sure that everybody still wanted to do a play. We all agreed that we all still wanted to do a play/street performance. We discussed the proposal form and went through it. Some of the answers to the questions were great, so I wanted to share them.


The campaign's purpose:
- To raise awareness of knife crime and its impact among young people aged 10-18 years old.

Reasons for the campaign:

- Get people's interest

- Be role models to others

- When people see something for themselves they think about it more

- Opportunity to talk about the issues afterwards

- To get feedback

We all discussed ideas for the play:

- Go to schools - not on the street - send out letters to parents prior to the play

- Trailer for kids on YouTube and leaflets to families and teachers

- Play starts with a fight in the playground

- Participative theatre (Punch Drunk is a good example of this).

- Social media is key!

- Play out scenarios - say stop - let the audience decide what happens next

- An interactive multi-choice PowerPoint presentation - primary schools

- Performance - secondary schools

-  Show them a video - who wants to be the hardest? like a quiz game

We talked about stories that have alternative endings and/or that you can choose the ending:

- Goosebumps books

- Sliding Doors film

- Final Destination film

We discussed things that we may need and our thoughts:

- One way or the other you get caught 

- being neek (cross between a nerd and a geek) is good

- Knife crime affects everyone in some way

- Get hard facts and stats! - on injuries, deaths (hospitals, police, YOT, courts), crime on the geographical map (what parts of London are worse?) and anecdotal evidence (what people have told you)

Interview activity:

We went into another room to work on interviewing each other and what everyone wants to get out of the project.

To finish up the session we looked at some video campaigns that have used plays and/or some kind of performance to demonstrate their purpose:

- Brighton coal power station

- Romeo and Juliet - modern - with gangs (Verona Road)