This was our first lesson of Triple Performing Arts. We were told that our first unit was going to be a devised unit based on the 2011 London Riots. We spent our lesson in a computer room researching the riots, as to get a sound knowledge of what happened during them, and to get a brief understanding of scale. The London Riots took place between the 6th and 11th of August in 2011. They spread across several boroughs of London, and also spread to Birmingham, Medway and other areas too. On the first night of the riots, emergency calls to the police increased by 400%. Emergency calls to the London Fire Brigade also increased to 2'169 calls, fifteen times the normal amount. Moreover, we found some terrible stories of family businesses that had taken 150 or so years to build up being destroyed in minutes. We saved some shocking images from the riots, which we printed for use in our later lessons.
10/09/15
In this lesson we began devising our piece. We discussed all the ideas we had since the previous lesson and decided on roughly what we wanted to do with the piece. An outline of what we our piece looks like so far is as follows:
- Start in a freeze frame as hooded youths
- Walk round the stage space in these characters
- Group physical theatre sections, still as "chavs" (Lewis, Toby & Rhiannon) (Dan, Ash & I)
- Go back to beginning freeze frame
- Move round the stage space as gorillas
- Individual freeze frames form in cannon, of throwing petrol bombs or smashing windows as "chavs"
- Move as gorillas to back of the stage space forming a line and stand up as "chavs"
- Walk forward in our line
The reason we moved round the space as gorillas, later in the piece, is because the rioters were described as animals - we are mocking the media's portrayal of the rioters. To show we were gorillas, we moved around the floor, crouched over, dragging our fists along the ground. When we came close to another gorilla, we would rise up and challenge them, beating our chests with our fists, until one of the pair backed down and retreated. This was to show the competition between the rioters in stealing the most and being the more dominant. At one moment, Rhiannon and I went over to each other and mimed gorillas grooming each other. We did this to represent support and unity between most rioters and how they worked together.
