Today was our first Triple Performing Arts and it was very enjoyable. Despite our class being small we still work well together and have a shared attitude towards learning and performing!
We started our lesson by discussing the London Riots and how they affected everyone involved. This brainstorming session helped us understand our new topic and enabled us to talk about it more confidently.
Following this activity we searched for news stories related to the London Riots. This further increased our knowledge on these tragic events and having a better knowledge will enhance our performances in the future.
I performed this research task with Toby and we found a large archive of stories on the London riots on the BBC News website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14450248
This article documented some of the carnage and events which took place during the riots. These included:
- Several fires broke out in Croydon, including one at a large sofa factory which spread to neighbouring buildings and tram line.
- Police found a 26-year-old man in a car in Croydon suffering from gunshot wounds. He is in a serious condition in hospital
- At Clapham Junction looters stole masks from a fancy dress store to hide their identity
- More than 100 people looted a Tesco store in Bethnal Green, the Met said, and two officers were injured
- Cars were set on fire in Lewisham
There were also many eye opening quotes from witnesses of these events:
"It looks like a war zone - I have never seen anything like it in all my life,"
"There was a bus on fire and huge black clouds were coming out of the bus and people were racing away and everybody seemed quite terrified and fired up, people were becoming aggressive."
"There were a few people crying. The driver didn't want to open the doors but a few people forced them open so they could get out."
"For the kids, it's their only way of venting their anger. There were too many people and not enough police."This research task helped us understand the utter carnage these events had caused to the lives of the victims, police and even the rioters!
After this, we read the lyrics for the song, "Ill Manors," by Plan B. This song by the London rapper is all about the London Riots, the events leading up to them, the people involved with them and the community involved, otherwise labeled as, "Chavs." This exercise brought our attention to more the actual people involved rather than the events.
10/09/15
This lesson we continued to work on our London Riot unit and further looked at how the community named, Chavs, are portrayed as animals. We created a piece of physical theatre using our main stimulus music piece, "ill manors," by Plan B for background music. We started wearing hoodies, bandanas and caps to represent ourselves as, Chavs. We started off in stereotypical chav/roadman poses to signify to the audience that we were rioters. As the song entered the first verse from the beginning instrumental, we all slowly morphed into gorilla like figures and acted like gorillas. This included movements such as walking low down whilst dragging our knuckles on the floor, jumping around on the floor and throwing objects across the room. We also interacted with each other like apes too; we would occasionally confront each other and slowly rise up to show who had more dominance (pounding our chests aided us in portrayal of power) and then who ever backs down would run away while the dominant ape would bask in his glory. We did this to mock the comments of the media who portray the working class rioters as animals.
In the lead up to the chorus, we retreated to the back and when the explosive chorus starts, we turned back to the audience and morphed back into Chavs whilst gesturing to the audience. We did this to captivate the audience into our performance; this personified them as policemen and we gestured towards the audience offensively. Afterwards, we then continued to be gorillas; later we got into still images of rioters in rioting positions (e.g. Throwing molotovs, throwing chairs punching a policeman etc.) After the still image we moved back to our original starting positions to end the piece. This performance would be used to convey to the audience what the media think of working class rioters.
10/09/15
This lesson we continued to work on our London Riot unit and further looked at how the community named, Chavs, are portrayed as animals. We created a piece of physical theatre using our main stimulus music piece, "ill manors," by Plan B for background music. We started wearing hoodies, bandanas and caps to represent ourselves as, Chavs. We started off in stereotypical chav/roadman poses to signify to the audience that we were rioters. As the song entered the first verse from the beginning instrumental, we all slowly morphed into gorilla like figures and acted like gorillas. This included movements such as walking low down whilst dragging our knuckles on the floor, jumping around on the floor and throwing objects across the room. We also interacted with each other like apes too; we would occasionally confront each other and slowly rise up to show who had more dominance (pounding our chests aided us in portrayal of power) and then who ever backs down would run away while the dominant ape would bask in his glory. We did this to mock the comments of the media who portray the working class rioters as animals.
In the lead up to the chorus, we retreated to the back and when the explosive chorus starts, we turned back to the audience and morphed back into Chavs whilst gesturing to the audience. We did this to captivate the audience into our performance; this personified them as policemen and we gestured towards the audience offensively. Afterwards, we then continued to be gorillas; later we got into still images of rioters in rioting positions (e.g. Throwing molotovs, throwing chairs punching a policeman etc.) After the still image we moved back to our original starting positions to end the piece. This performance would be used to convey to the audience what the media think of working class rioters.
No comments:
Post a Comment