Unit 5, 6 and 7- Immigration
Context
This Project is combined with three units, 5,6 and 7. In these Units we will be going through all the aspects of the play container.
This Project is combined with three units, 5,6 and 7. In these Units we will be going through all the aspects of the play container.
This unit was supposed be the one where many things were planned and supposed to be done but due to a few circumstances we couldn't make the most out of this unit because of something that had happened to our drama teacher Rob.
Therefore Rob's cover has been Sheenagh who has been taught everything that Rob knows but because she's still getting to know us and doesn't exactly know what it is that were supposed to be doing or what is the best thing to start on so therefore we end up being quite behind.
There are three things we can do, we can do a topic on immigration which we have been doing the last few weeks, the second alternative is to something to do with script-reading for a play which was what we were supposed to be doing if it hadn't have been for Rob having an issue with his health all of a sudden and the last thing that we could end up doing is having to do something with the play UGE.
The topic of the Unit that we are currently doing is about "Immigration". I feel like everyone in our class can somehow relate to this unit since they either have parents who are immigrants themselves or they may have migrated to England while they were still young.
Our first lesson was with a cover teacher and our task to do in that lesson was to form a group out of five people and come up with a sketch that had something to do with migrating to a country whether that was being in a country for the first time or receiving citizenship for that country you're in.
I was put with a few boys and girls that liked things to go their way and they would always want to be the one that either gets hurt or be the victim of something bad that happens.
I don't think most people in my class takes me seriously but at the same time, I'm person with a great sense of humour so I like adding comedy, whether it's in conversations or when we are doing improvisation games.
So I portrayed someone that ended up swimming from a country in South America to the US. Once I got to the US I was then stopped by two American guards that ended up shoving me down the floor to arrest me so that they can bring me to the immigration office and then deport back home.
There was many things in that sketch that I couldn't get over off and that didn't really feel realistic in our piece.
I'm not one to hold a grudge and it's not that meaningful either but the things that didn't make sense in our piece was
the fact the two guys in my group wanted the plan for me to swim from South America to US, when in real life if someone was to do that they would die due to the strong tides and the temperature of the water. Even if I swimmed from Cuba which is the second nearest Hispanic country to USA I still wouldn't be able to survive, so i think that our piece lacked that creative edge and that realism that is needed in pieces.
There was many things that I didn't agree with such as having to beat me up and leave me in the ground which I found totally unnecessary. There was even a point where people kept on constantly changing roles which is no wonder why our piece wasn't a success in the end.
Two of the people that was heavily involved in the piece decided to cut the piece, making it more shorter which lead two other people having their lines cut. Which in my eyes seemed unfair.
Rebecca covered one of our lessons that Rob was supposed to be teaching and what we did during that lesson was that we went on our phones and searched up stories on immigration and come up with a character that we searched up. Whether that character was fictional or non-fiction.
I originally thought about a story of the Maghreb diaspora in France but then I couldn't find a specific a person that I could use. So I then came up with a person from WW2 who's name was Wladyslaw Szpilman while everyone else in my class came up with more modern people that they could get inspiration from when they perform their piece.
The following week, we had to come up with a monologue where we look through a window and we have to come up with what we see out of that window or anything that comes up in my head when it comes to immigration.
Since I'm an avid football fan and since the world cup that was on last year was won by France which had a large amount of players with different ethnic backgrounds whether they were from the former colonies of France or just any other sort of countries.
https://theundefeated.com/features/france-2018-fifa-world-cup-last-standing-african-team/
Learning about CRPPE
CRPEE is an acronym for Context, Researching, Planning, Problem solving and Evaluation.
CRPEE is what we learnt during Becca's lesson
These things are to help us when we are about to write a
blog and we will also be using these methods throughout our course. This will help us improve and make sure that our blog is up to a high standard.
These acronyms aren't just words but they are ways to help us put in good information into our blogs. It even reminds us of having to look up the right information, making sure that you can back up your point and what you write is accurate.
During the time I used to write my blog, I have taken notice of the CRPPE system so that blog work can be much easier and it has paid dividends.
Doing my monologue on Africa's European team France/Hearing Shabir's story for the first time:
In this lesson we had to write a monologue about what we would see when we look through a window and the thing that we would need to write about would have to relate to immigration. In many previous lessons that we have had with Sheena on immigration I couldn't help but to think about last years world cup in which the winners France had a large amount of players of immigrant backgrounds, which were either nations that were part of the colonies that were part of France such as Algeria, Senegal, Mali, Guadeloupe, etc. Even from countries, where immigrants have come from during the second world war. European countries such as Portugal, Poland, Spain, Italy and much more.
So a large part of my monologue was inspired by this piece.
After I read out my piece, Sheena got a piece of paper right in front of her while Shabir the student who she had been working with during the lesson had went outside. I instantly guessed that there what was about to be read would be something hard for him to contain.
Sheena took us from a war-torn Afganistan to what would be an unexpecting sanctuary in Dover. No matter what place we would imagine or picture ourselves Shabir's story had managed to touch the hearts of many of the people. There were many things mentioned that had surprised and that I would never foresee.
All sorts of things happened to him from going into the fridge of a speedboat and having to jump into another boat to be able to go to another country. He even witnessed the deaths of some of his family members
I never would expect that Shabir had went through such a tough experience.
It made me notice how lucky I am to be able to have such a protected childhood.
7 Object Exercises
Fairytale: Cinderella:
This was one of Mandy's unique lessons where she would get us to do something unfamiliar that was to do a role-play of fairy-tale stories. The options was either Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast. Mandy had put me with Tiana and lastly we were given the option of doing Cinderella. We were given a certain amount of time so that we can prepare a drama to show to the rest of the class. Since all three choices would be quite obvious since they have almost similar type of characters yet different storylines, Tiana and I decided to have opposite gender roles so that the our class wouldn't guess to easily what story we were trying to attempt. It went well except for the part when we were doing the waltz where we ended up getting confused due to where each gender should have their hands.
Me and Tienna's story:
After everyone else had done their fairytales we were asked by Mandy to create a peice that lasted for one minute. Just like for the last one I was with Tienna and since she couldn't come up with any ideas, I decided to take the reins.
There was three fairytale stories that Mandy had selected for us to do. Our task was to create a sketch in pairs.
I was partnered with Tienna and the fairytale that we ended up needing to do was Cinderella. We were then supposed to present our piece to our classmates in which they had to guess which Fairytale were we presenting towards them.
In order to make it less obvious we decided to switch to roles that was different to us.
Doing Cooking
Context
We did an activity that was done to help us bring our emotions and gestures more to life. This excercise required one half of the class to sit down and the other half to sit down. I was part of the group that had to stand up first in the middle of the class. We then had to mime that we were cooking something which was part of the excercise. There was then three options that we then had to pick on who could we cook for.
We had to pretend that we were cooking for any of these people.
Research
For Gordon Ramsey I would have to seem like if I'm afraid because he shouts and swears alot directly to those who are employed or judged by him in terms of the food they make.
For both my mum and girlfriend it would be a privilege for me to cook for them so I would put in all my effort into making something nice.
But overall for all three people it would be likely that you would try your hardest to make an impression towards these people.
Planning
I decided to go with cooking for Gordon Ramsey because it would be more easier to show. I thought that I should try and look sophisticated as possible because that's what Gordon would want from whoever is cooking for him.
At one point I may even show that I'm cooking for Gordon by pretending that i'm being shouted at by looking scared and upset with my head down.
Problem Solving
After we have finished with our exercises our teacher decided that we should do our cooking exercises because it can be improved by making our actions much more larger. I think by making my actions more larger and more obvious I could spread my arm more further to create the shape of a bowl so that I could then use my other arm to spin above my arm that is in the shape of a bowl to make it seem like I'm mixing something in a bowl.
Evaluation
I really enjoyed this excercise and it's quite different from what I have done and what we usually play when we are all together as a class. This excercise has linked to all the other movement exercises that we have done before in class. This is similar to the time when we had to come up with three gestures and for every gesture we made, The next one had to be bigger than the last one.
We need to apply this sort of techniques and other teachings so that we can portray our characters from the container with more emotion and intent. Other ways of being more realistic with this excercise was by over-exaggerating the part when I'm using this ingredients to show that I was carrying and maybe I could've done some facial expressions to show heavy it was. The idea of using situations e.g. Cooking for Gordon Ramsey, mum, etc was a good way of showing our teacher Sheenagh how we would react if were in this sort of situation or in another event where we had to an errand for someone that is close or important to us.
Getting Inspiration from Shabir's story
Before the play container was a concept, there was Inspiration from Shabir's story that was read in front of the class by Sheenagh when we were all writing our monologues that was based on Immigration. This is what persuaded Sheenagh to come up with a play that was based entirely on Shabir's story. We even tried to recreate the memorable parts of the scenes during the rehearsals. However after a while it was scrapped after the whole class agreed that this was too much for Shabir to take considering how he was quite emotional when Sheenagh was reading his monologue out loud.
Kaliyah's story- From when she was in the funfair
Researching what happened in Afganistan from 2010- Current year.
Talking about the Taliban in Sheena's class- Research
What I wanted to tell a friend from church- That I feel like I can't express myself and get the most of my course:
Hot seating:
Mandy (1 Min sketches and 10 secs)
Recap: Immigration UNIT 5
Step 1: Brainstorming conversations about our own families and what the word immigration meant:
We were asked to go in a circle and we each spoke about what background we are from and how our families got here and where they ended up settling once they had arrived to the country that they had arrived to. We even made notes on words associated with Immigration. Aswell as giving our intake on how immigration has changed the world that we live in.
Step 2: Created Scenes based on Immigration: A group was formed which consisted of me Altin, Ahmed, Joey, Tienna and Chinzia. We were tasked with having to do a sketch of someone trying to migrate into another country.
The purpose of doing this activity was so that if we were to show people if we knew what it takes someone to migrate to a foreign country.
What I didn't like about doing this activity was that many people in my group kept on changing the plot and focus of the story. I felt like my opinion and my ideas weren't really considered. It got so bad that when we wanted to show one of our teachers our piece, it ended up falling apart. Some of the people in my group ended up having their lines cut. I know that this is performing arts where having an imagination is important and I respect and try to be considerate of other peoples idea but the options that the members of my group were coming up wasn't really realistic. One of the things that they wanted me to do was to swim to the country of migration.
But they told me that the background story of my character was that he came from a country in South America and that the country that I was planning to swim to was the USA but we have to be realistic aswell. It's almost near impossible for any sort of person to swim from a country in South America to the United States without dying.
Step 3: Wrote Monologues: We all had to come up with monologues that was related to Immigration for the purpose of Sheenagh being able to know if we can see life from an Immigrants perspective
Step 4: As a group we made a decision we would use Shabir's story as inspiration.
Step 5: Research
Step 6: Begin Devising in order for the play to be written.
The Stanislavsky system
Pretending, Creativity and Imagination.
Given circumstances
-Emotional recall
An objective is a goal a character wants to achieve in each given scene.
They achieve this objective by actions they do. These can be described as transitive verbs.
Persuade, plead and Cajole- Chairgame
With Sheena we were on point to doing our first lesson where we would do anything script related. Miss gave us scripts and just like when we read Dumbwaiter for the first time, As a group we went in a circle and we were all given roles each and we even had our own pages to read. I was given the role of Ahmad a former Pakistani businessman who is inside the container along with the other refugees. Because he is old and has a muslim background, I had to imagine myself as a South-Asian looking man with a moustache and has grey hair.
Therefore Rob's cover has been Sheenagh who has been taught everything that Rob knows but because she's still getting to know us and doesn't exactly know what it is that were supposed to be doing or what is the best thing to start on so therefore we end up being quite behind.
There are three things we can do, we can do a topic on immigration which we have been doing the last few weeks, the second alternative is to something to do with script-reading for a play which was what we were supposed to be doing if it hadn't have been for Rob having an issue with his health all of a sudden and the last thing that we could end up doing is having to do something with the play UGE.
The topic of the Unit that we are currently doing is about "Immigration". I feel like everyone in our class can somehow relate to this unit since they either have parents who are immigrants themselves or they may have migrated to England while they were still young.
Our first lesson was with a cover teacher and our task to do in that lesson was to form a group out of five people and come up with a sketch that had something to do with migrating to a country whether that was being in a country for the first time or receiving citizenship for that country you're in.
I was put with a few boys and girls that liked things to go their way and they would always want to be the one that either gets hurt or be the victim of something bad that happens.
I don't think most people in my class takes me seriously but at the same time, I'm person with a great sense of humour so I like adding comedy, whether it's in conversations or when we are doing improvisation games.
So I portrayed someone that ended up swimming from a country in South America to the US. Once I got to the US I was then stopped by two American guards that ended up shoving me down the floor to arrest me so that they can bring me to the immigration office and then deport back home.
There was many things in that sketch that I couldn't get over off and that didn't really feel realistic in our piece.
I'm not one to hold a grudge and it's not that meaningful either but the things that didn't make sense in our piece was
the fact the two guys in my group wanted the plan for me to swim from South America to US, when in real life if someone was to do that they would die due to the strong tides and the temperature of the water. Even if I swimmed from Cuba which is the second nearest Hispanic country to USA I still wouldn't be able to survive, so i think that our piece lacked that creative edge and that realism that is needed in pieces.
There was many things that I didn't agree with such as having to beat me up and leave me in the ground which I found totally unnecessary. There was even a point where people kept on constantly changing roles which is no wonder why our piece wasn't a success in the end.
Two of the people that was heavily involved in the piece decided to cut the piece, making it more shorter which lead two other people having their lines cut. Which in my eyes seemed unfair.
Rebecca covered one of our lessons that Rob was supposed to be teaching and what we did during that lesson was that we went on our phones and searched up stories on immigration and come up with a character that we searched up. Whether that character was fictional or non-fiction.
I originally thought about a story of the Maghreb diaspora in France but then I couldn't find a specific a person that I could use. So I then came up with a person from WW2 who's name was Wladyslaw Szpilman while everyone else in my class came up with more modern people that they could get inspiration from when they perform their piece.
The following week, we had to come up with a monologue where we look through a window and we have to come up with what we see out of that window or anything that comes up in my head when it comes to immigration.
Since I'm an avid football fan and since the world cup that was on last year was won by France which had a large amount of players with different ethnic backgrounds whether they were from the former colonies of France or just any other sort of countries.
https://theundefeated.com/features/france-2018-fifa-world-cup-last-standing-african-team/
Learning about CRPPE
CRPEE is an acronym for Context, Researching, Planning, Problem solving and Evaluation.
CRPEE is what we learnt during Becca's lesson
These things are to help us when we are about to write a
blog and we will also be using these methods throughout our course. This will help us improve and make sure that our blog is up to a high standard.
These acronyms aren't just words but they are ways to help us put in good information into our blogs. It even reminds us of having to look up the right information, making sure that you can back up your point and what you write is accurate.
During the time I used to write my blog, I have taken notice of the CRPPE system so that blog work can be much easier and it has paid dividends.
Doing my monologue on Africa's European team France/Hearing Shabir's story for the first time:
In this lesson we had to write a monologue about what we would see when we look through a window and the thing that we would need to write about would have to relate to immigration. In many previous lessons that we have had with Sheena on immigration I couldn't help but to think about last years world cup in which the winners France had a large amount of players of immigrant backgrounds, which were either nations that were part of the colonies that were part of France such as Algeria, Senegal, Mali, Guadeloupe, etc. Even from countries, where immigrants have come from during the second world war. European countries such as Portugal, Poland, Spain, Italy and much more.
So a large part of my monologue was inspired by this piece.
After I read out my piece, Sheena got a piece of paper right in front of her while Shabir the student who she had been working with during the lesson had went outside. I instantly guessed that there what was about to be read would be something hard for him to contain.
Sheena took us from a war-torn Afganistan to what would be an unexpecting sanctuary in Dover. No matter what place we would imagine or picture ourselves Shabir's story had managed to touch the hearts of many of the people. There were many things mentioned that had surprised and that I would never foresee.
All sorts of things happened to him from going into the fridge of a speedboat and having to jump into another boat to be able to go to another country. He even witnessed the deaths of some of his family members
I never would expect that Shabir had went through such a tough experience.
It made me notice how lucky I am to be able to have such a protected childhood.
7 Object Exercises
Fairytale: Cinderella:
This was one of Mandy's unique lessons where she would get us to do something unfamiliar that was to do a role-play of fairy-tale stories. The options was either Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast. Mandy had put me with Tiana and lastly we were given the option of doing Cinderella. We were given a certain amount of time so that we can prepare a drama to show to the rest of the class. Since all three choices would be quite obvious since they have almost similar type of characters yet different storylines, Tiana and I decided to have opposite gender roles so that the our class wouldn't guess to easily what story we were trying to attempt. It went well except for the part when we were doing the waltz where we ended up getting confused due to where each gender should have their hands.
Me and Tienna's story:
After everyone else had done their fairytales we were asked by Mandy to create a peice that lasted for one minute. Just like for the last one I was with Tienna and since she couldn't come up with any ideas, I decided to take the reins.
There was three fairytale stories that Mandy had selected for us to do. Our task was to create a sketch in pairs.
I was partnered with Tienna and the fairytale that we ended up needing to do was Cinderella. We were then supposed to present our piece to our classmates in which they had to guess which Fairytale were we presenting towards them.
In order to make it less obvious we decided to switch to roles that was different to us.
Doing Cooking
Context
We did an activity that was done to help us bring our emotions and gestures more to life. This excercise required one half of the class to sit down and the other half to sit down. I was part of the group that had to stand up first in the middle of the class. We then had to mime that we were cooking something which was part of the excercise. There was then three options that we then had to pick on who could we cook for.
- For Gordon Ramsey
- My mum
- My Girlfriend (At the time of writing I'm single.)
We had to pretend that we were cooking for any of these people.
Research
For Gordon Ramsey I would have to seem like if I'm afraid because he shouts and swears alot directly to those who are employed or judged by him in terms of the food they make.
For both my mum and girlfriend it would be a privilege for me to cook for them so I would put in all my effort into making something nice.
But overall for all three people it would be likely that you would try your hardest to make an impression towards these people.
Planning
I decided to go with cooking for Gordon Ramsey because it would be more easier to show. I thought that I should try and look sophisticated as possible because that's what Gordon would want from whoever is cooking for him.
At one point I may even show that I'm cooking for Gordon by pretending that i'm being shouted at by looking scared and upset with my head down.
Problem Solving
After we have finished with our exercises our teacher decided that we should do our cooking exercises because it can be improved by making our actions much more larger. I think by making my actions more larger and more obvious I could spread my arm more further to create the shape of a bowl so that I could then use my other arm to spin above my arm that is in the shape of a bowl to make it seem like I'm mixing something in a bowl.
Evaluation
I really enjoyed this excercise and it's quite different from what I have done and what we usually play when we are all together as a class. This excercise has linked to all the other movement exercises that we have done before in class. This is similar to the time when we had to come up with three gestures and for every gesture we made, The next one had to be bigger than the last one.
We need to apply this sort of techniques and other teachings so that we can portray our characters from the container with more emotion and intent. Other ways of being more realistic with this excercise was by over-exaggerating the part when I'm using this ingredients to show that I was carrying and maybe I could've done some facial expressions to show heavy it was. The idea of using situations e.g. Cooking for Gordon Ramsey, mum, etc was a good way of showing our teacher Sheenagh how we would react if were in this sort of situation or in another event where we had to an errand for someone that is close or important to us.
Getting Inspiration from Shabir's story
Before the play container was a concept, there was Inspiration from Shabir's story that was read in front of the class by Sheenagh when we were all writing our monologues that was based on Immigration. This is what persuaded Sheenagh to come up with a play that was based entirely on Shabir's story. We even tried to recreate the memorable parts of the scenes during the rehearsals. However after a while it was scrapped after the whole class agreed that this was too much for Shabir to take considering how he was quite emotional when Sheenagh was reading his monologue out loud.
Kaliyah's story- From when she was in the funfair
Context
In a lesson in where were in the dance hall we did an excercise where we put into pairs and my partner was Kaliyah who is one of the most quietest of the group makes a good balance between the both of us. We had to speak about something that happened that was embarrassing or about a situation that went wrong.
The day prior we actually spoke about this in our last lesson
of that day. Kaliyah and I had already been coming with events that we have gone through that was based on what Sheenagh asked us to come up with.
Research
Kaliyah had a story which involved her playing bulldog in her primary school but she decided to scrap that story so she instead told me another story in where something wrong pans out. I found out so far that when she was around four or five years old she was with her dad at a funfair in Finsbury Park where she ended up going to a ride that she was too small for.
Planning
I decided to start by looking excited and pretend that I'm eager to go on my first ride of the trip since she told me that when she was about to go on a ride she was pulling her dad's hand eagerly so that he can take her to the ride as quickly as possible.
Researching what happened in Afganistan from 2010- Current year.
Talking about the Taliban in Sheena's class- Research
Doing the concept for the stage in Becca's production
class.
Hot seating:
Mandy (1 Min sketches and 10 secs)
Recap: Immigration UNIT 5
Step 1: Brainstorming conversations about our own families and what the word immigration meant:
We were asked to go in a circle and we each spoke about what background we are from and how our families got here and where they ended up settling once they had arrived to the country that they had arrived to. We even made notes on words associated with Immigration. Aswell as giving our intake on how immigration has changed the world that we live in.
Step 2: Created Scenes based on Immigration: A group was formed which consisted of me Altin, Ahmed, Joey, Tienna and Chinzia. We were tasked with having to do a sketch of someone trying to migrate into another country.
The purpose of doing this activity was so that if we were to show people if we knew what it takes someone to migrate to a foreign country.
What I didn't like about doing this activity was that many people in my group kept on changing the plot and focus of the story. I felt like my opinion and my ideas weren't really considered. It got so bad that when we wanted to show one of our teachers our piece, it ended up falling apart. Some of the people in my group ended up having their lines cut. I know that this is performing arts where having an imagination is important and I respect and try to be considerate of other peoples idea but the options that the members of my group were coming up wasn't really realistic. One of the things that they wanted me to do was to swim to the country of migration.
But they told me that the background story of my character was that he came from a country in South America and that the country that I was planning to swim to was the USA but we have to be realistic aswell. It's almost near impossible for any sort of person to swim from a country in South America to the United States without dying.
Step 3: Wrote Monologues: We all had to come up with monologues that was related to Immigration for the purpose of Sheenagh being able to know if we can see life from an Immigrants perspective
Step 4: As a group we made a decision we would use Shabir's story as inspiration.
Step 5: Research
Step 6: Begin Devising in order for the play to be written.
The Stanislavsky system
- Who am I?
- Where am I?
- When is it?
- What Do I want?
- Why do I want it ?
- How will I get it?
- What do I need to overcome?
- Objectives
- Fourth Wall
The magic "if"
What if?Pretending, Creativity and Imagination.
Given circumstances
- Cooking Exercises
-Emotional recall
- Childhood memory exercise
An objective is a goal a character wants to achieve in each given scene.
They achieve this objective by actions they do. These can be described as transitive verbs.
Persuade, plead and Cajole- Chairgame
Container- Project 01/02/19
I'm glad that I ended up being given the role of Ahmad because out of all the male roles, Ahmad is the only that doesn't swear during the lines that I've read compared to the other masculine characters that tend to be foul-mouthed.
So that is why this role is more suited to me. Although you can imagine this character to be religious due to how he grew up and where he also grew up which can make an impact on the person you are, I would say that he is muslim yet I wouldn't say that he is to consecrated because when one of the characters have ran out of money he decided not to give anything at all despite the necessary funds to provide for himself and another person.
But after a while my role was changed from Ahmad the travelling businessman to the worrying agent.
That wasn't the only change that was made but many of the lines had been cut because many weren't able to learn the whole lines and because Shenagh thought that many of the lines especially mine felt like long monologues.
I was kind of happy with Shenagh scribbling out a lot of the large lines and many scenes since I've got issues with learning my lines off-by heart especially in our last performance which was Dumbwaiter.
I need to add more pics through my phone.
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