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Websites used for research on Jack the Ripper idea for In-The-Round

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Websites used for research on Jack the Ripper idea for In-The-Round

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Stride
This website helped me figure details of her death and what position she was in for when we would have had a detective scene.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Ripper
This helped us to get the basic information on the Whitechapel Murderer

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‘Every poor girl wishes for more education, for the opportunity to learn and go to school; for a childhood. But many of us are not that fortunate. The day my brother was born was bittersweet; I was no longer allowed to go to school. Due to the increased household responsibilities, my father told me that I must stay home and eventually begin to work.

On the night of his birth, while my whole family was celebrating, I went to my uncle's house to get more bread. I didn't know a young man was there. In the empty home, he took advantage of me; he did things that I didn't understand; he touched my chest. Before I could realize, there was a cloth over my mouth and I was being raped. I was having trouble walking back home; I felt faint and I had a headache. This happens a lot in villages. Young girls are raped, murdered, and buried. No one is able to trace them after their disappearance. If a woman is not chaste, she is unworthy of marriage. All he did is ask for forgiveness and they let him go as it was best to avoid having others find out what had happened. He didn't receive any punishment even though he ruined me. People may have forgotten what he did, but I never forgot. Now, he is married and living his life happily. I blame my own fate; I am just unlucky that this happened to me.

When I began working, I was afraid. I guess it was natural, I was only ten. I consider myself lucky though. In the homes where I worked, I was responsible taking care of the children; getting them ready, feeding them and playing with them. I used to have so much fun. I felt like I was a child among them. I was able to relive my own childhood. Soon, I became so used to working that I began feeling safer and happier at work than in my own home and village. Our village is full of intoxication and indecent and disrespectful men; men like my own father.

At the moment, we live in Karachi in a small home with one room and the floor is broken. Whenever I would visit my parents, either I would witness abusive arguments between them or something far more disturbing. Since I was young, my father had always beaten my mother shamelessly. My entire family is aware of my father's abuse; it is no secret. My mother is very obedient; she never says no to my father. She leaves home for work at 8 am and only returns at midnight. Even if she is tired, she does everything to make him happy; she runs our home and cooks whatever he wishes. All the men in our village beat their wives, it is a norm and women continue to let it happen. Maybe it is fear, maybe it is desperation, I never quite understood.

As sad as it may sound, part of me does not fear the physical abuse anymore. I fear much bigger things. As I grew older, my father changed. He began smoking, drinking, and maybe even using drugs with my income. He began sleeping next to me. In the middle of the night, he would touch me inappropriately and remove my clothes. Because I was afraid, I would act like I was sleeping and would turn the other way. After his first time sexually abusing me, every night I slept in my home in fear. I kept dreaming that my father is raping me. I get so scared. I have heard that if you don't share your dream with someone else, then it never happens. So I never shared what happened to me.

After these incidents, the only person I could turn to was my employer. She is aware of what happens in my home and I know I can trust her. In January, I feared I may have been pregnant, and she took care of all my medical expenses without letting anyone find out. Thankfully, I was not, but she was ready to take care of me if I was. A woman's reputation is so fragile in Pakistani society. I have requested for her not to let me go for vacation time, and to keep me in her home where I feel safe. Without judging me, she accepted me, and has given me a place in her home like a daughter; a place even my own parents could not give me.’ [9]

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Our Rough script to help us outline what was going to be said and happen in our scenes.

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http://www.dennissevershouse.co.uk/

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Action And Reaction by 'Jack the Ripper' [7]

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Action And Reaction by 'Jack the Ripper' [7]

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‘Smoke a cigar, end up dead

Eat a steak, end up dead

Drink too much, end up dead

That’s the mantra of today, Made to keep humans from pay.

The facts are this, the reapers kiss

Don’t smoke cigars, end up dead

Don’t eat any steaks, end up dead

Don’t drink at all, end up dead.’

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[1]
https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=ysQaWf6JB4b38Af5w7PoAg&gws_rd=ssl#safe=strict&q=what+are+chair+duets&spf=1497350007069

[2]
https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=k-E_WZn0BoHS8Aexj43QAg&gws_rd=ssl#safe=strict&q=what+is+puppetry+in+drama&spf=1497358738988

[3]
https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=k-E_WZn0BoHS8Aexj43QAg&gws_rd=ssl#safe=strict&q=what+is+site+specific+theatre&spf=1497358738991

[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/to-be-a-woman-in-pakistan-six-stories-of-abuse-shame-and-survival/255585/

[5] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/to-be-a-woman-in-pakistan-six-stories-of-abuse-shame-and-survival/255585/

[6]
http://amberjkeyser.com/2015/11/warsan-shire/

[7]
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/action-and-reaction/

[8]
https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=DsBHWbvILbSn8wfeoY-4Cw&gws_rd=ssl#safe=strict&q=what+it+promenade+theatre&spf=1497874446699

[9]
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/to-be-a-woman-in-pakistan-six-stories-of-abuse-shame-and-survival/255585/

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Research made on conditions for women in Pakistan

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Research made on conditions for women in Pakistan

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‘According to a 2011 poll of experts by the Thomson Reuters Foundation Poll, Pakistan is the third most dangerous country for women in the world. It cited the more than 1,000 women and girls murdered in "honor killings" every year and reported that 90 percent of Pakistani women suffer from domestic violence.

Westerners usually associate the plight of Pakistani women with religious oppression, but the reality is far more complicated. A certain mentality is deeply ingrained in strictly patriarchal societies like Pakistan. Poor and uneducated women must struggle daily for basic rights, recognition, and respect. They must live in a culture that defines them by the male figures in their lives, even though these women are often the breadwinners for their families.

Quietly, slowly, in piecemeal legal reforms, female empowerment is coming in Pakistan. You meet inspiring women daily here. Sympathetic employers sometimes give protection and assistance, as do other women who've fared better. NGOs and charitable organizations try to help empower women, but not all women take advantage of these resources. They fear their husbands, attracting unwanted attention, somehow hurting the honor of their families, or, often, they simply do not know that help exists. With female literacy at 36%, many women are too uneducated to know their rights.

A difficult irony for women in Pakistan is that, should a victim speak up about physical or sexual abuse, she is seen as having lost her and her family's dignity. Many rapes go unreported as the victim fears she will become worthless in Pakistani society. Often, women will turn to their employers; families they can trust. It's a typically unnoticed form of charity but one that can be crucial to their survival.’[4]

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What They Did Yesterday poem by Warsan Shire [6]

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What They Did Yesterday poem by Warsan Shire [6]

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they set my aunts house on fire
i cried the way women on tv do
folding at the middle
like a five pound note.
i called the boy who use to love me
tried to ‘okay’ my voice
i said hello
he said warsan, what’s wrong, what’s happened?

i’ve been praying,
and these are what my prayers look like;
dear god
i come from two countries
one is thirsty
the other is on fire
both need water.

later that night

i held an atlas in my lap

ran my fingers across the whole world

and whispered

where does it hurt?

it answered

everywhere

everywhere

everywhere

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ_9Eaog2yw

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‘Chair Duets is one of Frantic Assembly's simple and accessible devising exercises used to create new material.[1]’ It consists of making a series of movements that simultaeneously flow into another and is usually played to a piece of music and is used to show a story or provide inspiration for a piece. We were asked to find a parteners and come up with our own chair duets. Me and my partener decided to go for a story of a man and a women; the man is courting the women and trying to get her to like him but she still resists. We showed this by movements like putting an arm around her only for it to then be flung off and her spin around to have her back to him. For our first lesson me and my partener looked at getting our chair duets down so that we knew what we were doing. The only challenge we came across was trying to get a flow of movements while making sure that we showed our story well.  In our next session we looked at getting our movements in time with the music and making our movements slick and to the beat. This was a postive acheivements as we managed to do this and also incorporate some levels to our movements to make it more pleasing to the eye. We also had to look at the idea of linking ours to other groups so that everyones chair duets flowed into one anothers with smooth transtions. A smooth transition is good because it means that we can go straight to the next part of the performance and it also means that the audience don’t lose interest. Making a smooth transition was probably the biggest challenge of this session. In the next session we carried on with linking our pieces together and running it through with everyone. This went pretty well as everyone had discussed transitions with those who were before and after them so that an order was placed well. The only problem really was my partener being absent which meant that our chair duet had to be cut. This meant that when it came to the final piece, our duet wasn’t shown. However, if I could of done it again I would have perhaps made more creative suggestions and would have ventured to think outside of the box instead of playing safe. I think I developed my skills well doing this because it helped me improve my communication with my partener by having to show my ideas instead of trying to describe and I believe that it helped to improve my skills of being in rhythm because I had to pay attention to the flow and beat of the music as well making sure to be aware of my movements and how they were being shown.

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‘Puppetry is a form of theatre or performance that involves the manipulation of puppets—inanimate objects, often resembling some type of human or animal figure, that are animated or manipulated by a human called a puppeteer. Such a performance is also known as a puppet play.[2]’ For our first session we made our puppets. They had a very simple strcuture, a long part indicating a back, two legs that had been bent at the knee and for the feet. Two arms bent at the elbow and for the hand and of course a head. Once we made them we practiced on their movement and making the puppet move like a real person. This was a difficult thing to do because  there were three of us bent over a small paper puppet and each one of us was trying to do something different, one on the legs, on the head and body movement and the other on the arms.  We had to try to get all of us to go in sync at the same time. Another thing that was hard was trying was just the general just of trying to get it to move like a real person. However a positive thing about our first session was that each of us in our group knew what we were better at manourvering  so each of us knew what to research and look at so we could get better at our movements. In our next session we focused again on movements and trying to do simple things like making our puppet look like its actually having a nice swim or have drink tea. In our next few sessions we developed a little scene with another group so we could have our puppets interact like theyre real people. The challenges with this was trying to find something that was simple and effective at the same time. In the end our group decided on a scene where two puppets would be on date and then the other third puppet would come along to beat the male puppet up but would end up losing. The first thing that didn’t really work was our puppet because the arm kept falling off and the legs were too thin so we had to put more effort than usual into our puppet which in turn made it more of a challenge to try to move him around effectively. Another thing that could have improved was our story because it was almost too straight forward and wasn’t naturalistc enough, it was more melodramatic. Of course there is only so much character development and story develpment that you can do with a puppet so it’s a little irrelevent but its still something we could have looked at. I believe that in doing this I developed my awareness of physicality as by taking the time to watch different people and how they move when doing simple things actually helped me take note of these things for when I have to portray a particular character.

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For this we had to take pictures around college of settings that we think that could tell a story in a single picture. This relates to Site Specific Theatre. ‘Site-specific theatre is any type of theatrical production designed to be performed at a unique, specially adapted location other than a standard theatre.[3]’ This type of theatre is easier than other types of theatre because its just a setting, a picture even. But its also in a way harder because we have to think about the layout and the placing of everthing in order to show a story. This type of theatre is different because the audience arent sitting down, they are able to move around in the scene, this type of theatre can also be called promenade theatre. Dennis severs house fits into this type of theatre as each room in the house has been set up like you have just stepped into a painting and back into the life of the people who lived there.  However at the house, you don’t only use your sense of sight but you also use your other senses like smell and hearing to piece together whats going on.

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For this project we were given a poem and had to devise a 10-15 min scene  on it. Our poem was called What They Did Yesterday.

We started by reasearching the woman who wrote the poem. It turned out that the author of it was a little of a feminist and that she came from a place called Samolia where the conditions for women werent very good. From this we had the idea of doing a piece about the conditions for women in poor countries. From that point on we decided to spend our first few hours researching women in different countries. We decided upon Pakistan, Samolia, Syria and Iraq. Each one us decided to show a different country and have another person in our group multi-role.  I was in charge of Pakistan so I endeavered to  research the conditions for woman there and discovered that the condtions there arent good.

When looking at this research we realized just how bad the conditions were and how people didn’t seem to care about the women and if they are raped.

When looking at the research we had gathered and our stories of women that have gone through rough times. In our own time we had adjusted several speeches into monlogues however we didn’t really have a monologue in the end because we didn’t want our piece to go on for too long and become predictable so in the end we decided against long speeches and instead decided to have nice quick scenes that show our point. This led us onto a story I found about a girl called Ayesha who was of similar age to us and had been abused sexually.

It was from this that we came up with a scene where my character would be going to the police to discus what has happened. This would be the part where I would gove a quick summary of the true story. To make our piece more engaging, we had Rachel be my characters mind telling her not to do it. Then at the end of the scene we had my characeter be rjected by the police because they don’t care about what happens to her.

To follow this we had various scenes where we should the sort of thing that women have to go through by using various different types of scene. So for example we had my scene  where we had the non-naturalistic element of the mind, we had a news report scene and we also had a scene that was more non-naturalistic than before as we had repeat and build of various phrases of the sort of things that people would have told all these girls in different countires about what they can and cant do.  All these scenes were made made because we wanted to show what life is like for women in other countries and to spread awareness of it, as well as develop our skills as actors by playing characters we’ve never played before.

We rejected some certain ideas such as the idea of long speeches as explained before and we also got rid of the idea of having a scene where we show someone being abused. This is because we felt that it had the potential to be triggereing for some and we decided that it didn’t give the sort of feel we wanted. However when it came to the poem we kept the idea of having all of us recite the poem in turns to show that in a way because we connected the poem by having all of us say it, it kind of showed us connected and united as one. This also helped show that we are all equal and if we stand together, we are strong. This was shwon by s all saying the poem as our characters from around the world.

Our actual performace went well, however if I could have done it again, I would have re-considered the idea of having a scene showing someone being abused because I felt that it might have had the effect of showing just how serious the situation is and how something needs to be done about it.

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Dennis Severs House is a type of promenade theatre which stems from Site Specific Theatre. ‘Promenade theatre, in which audience members generally stand and walk about rather than sit, watching the action happening among them and even following the performers around the performance space.’[8] The house is a place where you are permitted to walk around various rooms without saying a word and by using your other senses to piece together what just happened in the room. As a common quote in the house is, ’you either see it or you don’t’.

We first thought to decide what our intention and style would be so that we could come up twith an idea that not only wouold link to the house but also to our intention. However we found this hard to think of at first so our style and form came along when we changed our idea for the first time. Our intention was too create a piece of In-The–Round theatre that was entertaining and not too hard-hitting. It was from this we came up with the idea of a mock thriller sort of thing where people go missing but we make sure to have elements of humour and over exaggerated moments to make it light hearted. Our style is therefore a mix of Realism with an element of melodramatic.

When responding to our stimulus of Dennis Severs House, as a group we were confused and unsure on what to do take from the house to make a good piece of In-The-Round theatre. So we responded by doing something called an ideas cauldron where we all took it in turns to note down thoughts, feelings and ideas we have that stem from the stimulus given. Our responses included such like feeling claustraphobic, confused, ideas of status, abuse, context of the time for when the house was made. It was from this we ended up with the idea of Jack the Ripper.

Once we had our idea of Jack the Ripper of course we had to research our idea. Whilst researching our chosen topic from our stimulus we decided upon characters for each of us. The girls in our group being a chosen prostitute and the boys being wither a suspect or dectective. I chose to be the third prostitute killed. When lookking at our research, for the girl we looked at more specifically on how they died so that if we decided to had a detective scene with one of the dead bodies, we knew what had happened to them so that we could make the dectectives look like they knew what they were doing. When analysing my character, I noticed that my character was not as mutilated as the others and that the fourth prostitute killed was killed within few blocks away from my character and was brutally mutilated. We decided that this could have the potential for a scene where we hot seat ‘Jack the Ripper’  on what he has done, however we never did this because we had changed our idea to suit something that was slitghly easier to do In-The-Round.

One challenge we found when doing our In-The-Round was just the idea of how could we adapt our idea of Jack the Ripper to make it In-The-Round. We thought at first to do a scene where we recite a poem suspected to be possibly made by Jack the Ripper himself and by making sure that we had an interesting set up for our beginning. At first we had the idea of having people standing inbetween the audience members to make the audience feel involved while the rest of the group stand in the middle facing outwards. The is was ok as an idea but it was very plain and lacked an interesting start to our piece.  Our main challenges overall at the start of this unit and for our first few sessions were: procrastination of doing the work due to confusion of who to do it well and lack of ideas. We overcame our procrastiantion by frocing ourselves to push ast it and by making us do something that wouold still help us if we werent in the mood to do the practical side of it, for example making a script, discussion of scenes and how we could improve them as well our characters. We adapted our lack of ideas by changing our initial idea of Jack the Ripper and replaced it with the idea of breaking into Dennis Severs house. It seemed like a plain idea so that is where we came up with our ideal style and our intention. This gave us the opportunity to mix up how we use the space available when doing In-The-Round. From this we thought up ideas such as when we had our scene where we break into house, we were outside of the circle and free  but when we entered the circle we were in a way trapped in the house and therefore had no escape of what was going to happen. We also had idea of hiding behind the audience at certain points so this helped us expand our idea and give us the opportunity to make our piece more exciting and engaging.

We developed our ideas by making sure to always link them back to our intention of keeping it light hearted but with an element of humour so that the audience remains engaged. For example we had the idea of having people die one by one however we found that when we went to show it as a dress rehearsal, certain bits were either too serious or too cheesy. As well as this when we showed it, we found that our piece wasn’t very well structured in the way that it was almost too boring at the end and how things were too predicatable. We fixed and developed this by having our piece have a cliff hanger, making the beginning show why the characters in our piece go to the house in the first place and in the middle we had, instead of murders, we had people disappearing.

We devised our piece by making sure that our scenes linked back to our intention and what we wanted to acheive. However in the beginning we werent sure of our intention and were focused on making a piece to do with Jack the Ripper and how we could make that idea to be In-The-Round. I believe we focused on this point too much and got confused and stuck, this is wy we why we ended up devising our piece where we break into the house. We have devised this by ignoring the fact that it was In-The-Round and just went for it, making sure we tried out everyones ideas so we could make a piece of drama that had been made by everyone and not just by one leader.  We also devised our piece by making structure of scenes so that we knew what to do and what to strive for.

I’ve contributed ideas on what we can do for  certain scenes and I’ve helped others by writing the script and by looking after any paper work we have. Its important to have a script written because that way you have a structure to follow and lines you can learn so that your performance is not improvised and messy. By looking after paperwork, I’m helping my group because that way I’m showing  that I can be responsible because should our work go missing that would make our work as a group harder and put unnecessary pressure on everyone.  I’ve also contributed to our group by suggesting a way to make our piece better because when we showed our ‘break in’ piece to the class, we found it wasn’t quite structured in the way that we spoke over each other and that it didn’t show off our true potential. So I was the one contributed the idea of instead of murders we had people disappearing and we made our characters more defined and obvious in how they think as well as storyline. This was much more successful and actually ended up being more humourous than our last one which was good because this linked to our intention.

I’ve cooperated with others well as I’ve listened to their ideas and tried them out as well given suggestions on how to improve characeters as well their approaches to certain ideas. I’ve also cooperated with others by making sure that im in so we can have full group rehearsals because if people arent in then it puts all the rest of the group on a strain because it means that they cant do what they need to do.

I believe my srengths in the sessions were that I usually tried to get everyone back to work because one of the challenges we faced was trying to get everyone focused to come up with ideas or try to get everyone motivated on the work to make a scene. Another strength of mine I believe was that I was willing to do the work and therefore ended up making the script for our group to help them out. A weakness I feel was that at the beginning with our first initial idea of Jack the Ripper, I didn’t contribute much and I let others do the work which wasn’t fair on them and probably was why we lacked ideas for our topic so we ended up changing it. Another weakness I felt I had that came to light during sessions was the fact that I was not always in the right mind frame to do work and did what I had to do because I had to do it, not because I wanted to help or get a good grade. If we could go through this again, I would make sure to be more motivated and contribute ideas because I’ve learnt that for the times that I have contributed ideas, they were a success.