Criteria D: 6/8
This unit in Drama we focused on Rio de Janeiro and its street life. We looked at the division and the lives of different citizens, how people from society were treated or respected upon who they were. We had chances to improve our skills to create realistic and believable characters throughout the unit. For the final piece we were divided into groups of 4, 5 or 6 and had to create a performance based on topics we studied. We could choose to do a performance that we might have already created and build upon that to improve it or make a completely new performance using what we learnt.
Our performance was a topic we went through class for 2-3 weeks. It was about a nephew of a very strict uncle that depended on the nephew for survival (money, food, water, etc) When the nephew came across an injured train surfer on his way back, he decided to help the train surfer with the last amount of money he had. Causing the nephew to arrive home late and with no money. The uncle then became very angry and had to show his temper through anticipation and build up suspense.
My group Abdul (Carlos-Nephew), Luca (Police), Sher (Uncle), Melissa (Good/Angel Conscience) and I (Bad/Devil Conscience) created our performance based on that idea. My character was Abdul's devilish conscience who always led him to be bad. Where Melissa always ended up making him do the right thing. I established my character through sounding very arrogant and acting confident. I constantly contradicted everything Melissa wanted me to say showing our differences and the contrast between our characters. In the beginning of the play it seemed like Abdul would listened to the wrong influence until the right one overpowered and everything worked out at the end. "Who cares if he's our uncle" is someone of the dialogues that were negative to show my character. This was when Sher just made up his mind to kick us out and I was angry towards him.
My group structured or performance with Abdul coming home late and his uncle Sher being very angry with him. As Abdul is talking to Sher, Luca is in another building which was cross-cutting with him doing stage business in the background to keep busy. As Sher scolds Abdul to his room seconds later Melissa realizes he needs to leave the house before 6 and Melissa and I argue about waking him up. Later on I make noise to try and wake up Sher and here we used slow-motion to show my anger towards Sher, as I dramatically tried to hit him with a block. Melissa said "Stoooooppp!" in slow-motion to also give it a realistic effect and then we were back into normal speed. I still wanted to wake Sher up so I made Abdul drop one of the block right next to Sher which woke him and the neighbours around as well (showing how close people in favelas live). Sher then wakes up and calls Luca in the police department reporting to have a "house intruder" Abdul gets scared and tries to escape as Melissa and I contradict wether he should escape or not. Then Luca comes and attempts to shoot Abdul where Sher, Abdul and Luca freeze and Melissa and I start to speak showing Abdul's conscience. Abdul then gets taken away by Luca as Sher bribes him in the middle of the stage. Abdul then blurts out the truth and Luca decides to believe him and takes away Sher instead. As they're walking down the stairs they freeze to show a freeze frame/tableau as Abdul & Melissa look proud and me looking confused (next to the stage). Luca then comes on stage to comfort Abdul and everything works out great at the end.
We used 3 significant techniques in the performance. Slow motion and 2 freeze frames. I think the one that worked successfully was the slow motion. As explained in the paragraph above. We could have improved the last freeze frame an Luca was arresting Sher because it was a very important twist to the performance.
Overall I believe we did very well but to improve I could have improved my character to make it more over the top, but the whole idea for the unit was to create believable characters which I think is why I couldn't achieve a higher grade such as 7 or 8.
