Drama- 17 January 2013

Hey everyone! Been forever since my last blog haha :)
Well today we started a new topic which is about a court case in the 1950's. This is based on a true story and it involves two boys, one of which was named Derek Bentley who was 19 years old and another boy called Chris Craig, who was 16.
In the beginning of the lesson, we were given 5 different pieces of information relevant to the court case and after each piece of information we had to write how long they should be charged for in jail.
After this, we found out what really happened to them and what happened was that Bentley was hung and Craig was sent to a life-long time in prison. We also found out that unfortunately, even though Bentley was the oldest, he had the mental age of a 10 year old child, was alliterate and had epilepsy. Chris had no disabilities and had no problems. We had a class discussion about is and we all agreed that Chris had probably taken advantage of Derek by persuading him to do harmful and illegal things such as smoking and stealing.

We were given a small, scripted scene where Derek and Chris get caught in the warehouse after trying to steal some of the things. We were each assigned a part (one being the director) and we had to set up different objects that we could use on stage. We went though the lines to make sure that we had learnt them and after they were solid, we started acting it out with actions and movements. This was the first time ever that we started disagreeing on what we should do and it was the first time we got into an argument!! So because of this, it did take quite a long time to get this piece up to standard. At the end if the lesson, it was still not perfect but at least we had tomorrow to practice more and get it sorted.

Overall, this was a great lesson (as always) but it did have a few bumps along the way with the bickering and disagreeing! Oh well!!!! :O hope we will work better tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!

24th drama lesson

Today was a really fun lesson! We started with a warm up game where we had to toss 4 Small balls in the same pattern and see how long we could keep it going. Our record was about 11 seconds!
After, we made a brainstorm of one of the two characters we were looking at yesterday, Derek Bentley. We divided the page up into three columns and in the first one we wrote 5 years old, the second column we wrote 10 years old and in the third column we wrote 15 years old.
We wrote two different subtitles underneath each column which were School and Home.

When we were writing in the 5 years old column and about school we wrote that he was a well liked child who the teachers adored. He was also very good at maths and always had a positive attitude toward everything. At home, we said his parents treated him with kindness and were very supportive. His sister, Iris, is also very helpful and always does her best to make sure that he is doing well and is working hard.

When we wrote in the 10 year column and about school, things were very different with
Derek. His teachers start to get frustrated with him and his two friends start to bully him and don't want to be near him. At home, things are still quite the same seeing as he is still mentally quite young. He still has his favourite meals and has trouble with saying different things. Bt his family still treat him the same way, by being sweet and helpful.

However writing about him as 15 and in school, we wrote that he was not smart at all and had many, many troubles with maths. The two bullies are horrible towards him and his teacher treats him unbelievably awful!

After we finish this, we started acting it out and we did this by having a split scene. One of the scenes was of the school and the other was at home.

We decided to do it so that it would start at home where he was five, then he would go to school still being five but the when he comes home he would be ten years old. After a couple of rehearsals we finally figured out what to say and how to position ourselves.
It was a lot of fun! And also hilarious at certain parts of our scene!! :)