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 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)