Political Protest Evaluation

I feel our performance went well. In my performance protest we decided that something we all felt strongly about was tortures in prisons. Our justification for this is, is that we feel the inmates in these prisons are tortured so viciously that their mental state is worse from when they came in.We decided the best way to grab people's attention is to demonstrate these dangerous attacks. So we had Laura and Tian as the inmates and they wore orange jumpsuits (another way to catch viewers eyes). Jack and Harrison were the guards, they did a choreographed attack. We dunked Tian's head in water, and made Laura dance to show the humiliation some of them were put through. We ended by singing the Barney song to the inmates repeatedly, to show the mental torture involved. My role was that of narrator, telling facts and I drew and wrote words on the floor.

We decided for the location to be outside. This is where most of the students will be other than the canteen so there would be plenty of opportunity to be noticed. However we did not foresee the weather, which happened to be very very rainy. When we got outside  it was freezing, so we were very cold not to mention Tian's head being dunked resulting in his whole body being soaked and his ears popping and other sad things happening to him. This was unfortunate, and may have hurt him, however the cold did spur us on to keep working! We also decided to do it in a sheltered area which did stop us from getting wet. This was good for weather purposes but it did mean we weren't in the middle of it all, so some people missed us. The reception was good, we got a few people asking questions, and being narrator I could answer. One group even stood in the rain and watched for three whole cycles of the performance.

I think our energy levels and determination were excellent but maybe next time we could search more specific examples, and have a few more facts from my end maybe.

Lesson Four

Lesson Three

Gavin likes dresses...

This is me in my costume for the video and Gavin in one of the ones we considered if a guy played the part. My costume is a very small dress (barely a leg warmer according to Sarah!) and basically I'm just meant to look appealing (note the 'meant to') I think the red dress is comical as it would probably be seen as very inappropriate for an electoral campaign video.

Video

We made a spoof electoral ad campaign video. The idea was to make the whole video based on Blondie's looks and sexuality, rather than any of her policies. I played Blondie and was dressed in a wig and red dress, and a group wrote a speech which was full of innuendos. I will post it later. I was filmed saying the speech, but there we also filmed several close-ups of my lips, my hands and my legs. We even used a fan to have my hair blowing in the wind! The idea was to set up this idea that beauty = power and how sex can be used to manipulate people. We filmed several people saying 'I'm voting for Her.' Sarah edited it and the end product is very amusing. It will be a good start to our devised performance as the audience will find it funny, and it is a good way of introducing the play's themes. Sarah is going to make some polling cards with my face and some other faces on it for the audience to fill out based on appearance alone.

Lesson Two

Blondie

My opinion when I first read the script was confusion, because I thought it was about Syria, but 'B' is prime minister of the UK. I thought it was presented in a really odd way, the characters merely being letters from A-D. I found it compelling to read, and it was an interesting if bizarre mixture of humour in the horrific story. I find B's calmness throughout the whole, and the inappropriate sexuality throughout rather unnerving. The message that beauty = power is very powerfully used. I especially enjoy B's monologue at the end. It's difficult because you almost believe that she is justified, because the words she are saying hold a lot of truth in them. The idea of capital punishment makes it hard to place the play's setting in a particular period because she also mentions Barrack Obama. I think this makes it a political play because it's not about specific characters or times it's about the message and the dialogue and what it means. That's why the characters aren't named. I'm looking forward to working on the script and trying to convey the message. I think there are lots of ways we can expand and devise and work this, so it will be an interesting project.

Lesson One

Took ages, but finally my computer has allowed me to do this..