Wednesday 9th January

Today we did a speed run of the whole play which is picking out the most important and key parts of the story and making them into a short performance f the whole story. It is important to speed run as you have to scan read the play and pick out the things you think are most important in the play and do it as detailed as possible using less information. My group used about five sentences in total and acted it out as well, it was interesting to see all the groups when the performed and what parts of the play were most important to them

After doing this Rachel asked some questions about our characters and we had to look at our scripts to find out the answers.

What does your character say about other characters?
My character is quite negative and throws little comments and opinions to everyone, for example
"thats shit"
"pappy wear a nappy"
"awkward .. he's weird"
"pikey"

What our characters say about themselves?
"we hang in the street and they make us go home"
"the right to be bored"

What other people say about you?
"the gang wants to help"
"they can clean out the toilets"
who's they?"

What the stage directions say?
"a gang of local kids appear around the side of the big top"

Finally to really get into characterisation we were told to walk around the room and then Rachel would shout out something to do with character and we had to arrange ourselves into groups of people that thought the same as us and which suited our character.

Good relationship with parents?

In the middle relationship with parents?

Bad relationship with parents?

I choose in the middle relationship with parents because for my character i decided that my dad was in prison and I didn't know him, but i live and have a good relationship with my mum.

Do you have any relations with anyone in the group?

Lauren and I decided that we were cousins on our mums side because we were in a lot of the same groups together when Rachel shouted them out, both our characters don't know our dads, we're roughly the same age so we look out for each other and are together most of the time.

Leader?

Negotiator?

Follower?

I chose negotiator because i felt like I wasn't a main part of the gang, but I wasn't a follower, my character just wants an easy life, quite chilled, but would stick up for themselves and make decisions when its convenient to them.  

One sibling?

Two siblings?

Three siblings?

More than three siblings?

I chose to not have any siblings with the back story of 'My mums got me we don't need anyone else' and just stuck to that as to why i don't have any siblings.

We did all these questions to really get to grips with what our character is like, who they are, what they like etc and by the end of all the questions i have built up my character to be:

14 years old that lives in a council estate with my mum, I live in the same estate as my cousin (Lauren's character/gang member 3) and midge and LuLu so we are all really good friends. I'm an easy person and will most of the time go with the flow but if theres something I disagree on then i'll make my point and I love RnB music, skrillex,eminem, flux pavilion etc.

GANG

We also were put into groups and were told to think of a time when we felt as if we were in a gang or were part of a gang, or been look upon as a gang, including just being in a large group of friends. We did this to think about what we were doing when we were in that gang moment as it would help us in the play because there are alot of us in the gang and we are always together. Each person in the group went round and told us their story of their gang moment, then after we picked one and had to act it out to the rest of the class.

We picked Dylan's story when he and his friend got on a bus and just being typical boys talking and messing around being loud and an old lady shouted at them telling them to be more respectful towards people on the bus, telling them off for not doing anything and another lad on the other side of the bus stuck up for the two boys and told the old lady they had done nothing wrong!