Introduction

The stimulus for our assessment evolves around refugees from all over the world. The idea of refugees is one that is close to me as both of my parents were refugees in the late 90s. This was a result of the Bosnian/Kosovan war which lasted 3 years, from 1992 to 1995. I feel like even before the stimulus was given to me, I was reasonably knowledgeable about the topic. The stimulus is suitable for the situation in today’s world with horrific refugee issues occurring in places in the middle east, such as Syria. This refugee stimulus is easy to work with in terms of characters, potential situations and conflicts. The scenarios can range from the moment you were forced to leave your house, right up to risking your life on a rubber dingy travelling thousands of miles across the ocean.

Many of the scenarios we came up with involved children, we done our best to understand how the parents and the child would feel, thinking about the situation from both perspectives. The situation of being forced to leave home is a difficult and emotional one so the main factor behind the acting, was putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. One of the first ideas that popped into my head was leaving things behind, especially from a child’s perspective and what is important to them. This led to my central question being; “When forced to leave home, what do we choose to leave behind?” I think that the reason why a child came to my mind was learning about Aylan Kurdi. This story really got to me. Such a young innocent child losing it’s life because he had to leave home. My thoughts were mainly with his father, who barely got to spend any time with his child, adding onto that, losing his wife and other children and still trying to find his way out of the terrible situation.

Our initial idea stayed the same throughout the process, it was about what to leave behind when forced to leave home. We went on to develop our ideas, and created a very meaningful piece of drama. There were a couple pros to our initial idea, one of them being that our scenario (father and son), made it easy to express certain emotions of loyalty, love etc. At first, I thought that there would be cons to having a child in the performance, such as drifting of of the central question. However, it turned out to be a huge advantage and made the audience have more empathy, because of the vulnerability of the boy.

Once we done our first rehearsal, we received feedback from our fellow classmates. Many people said that we should make the Son sound more mature and intelligent (Despite him being quite young). We realised that if we done this, it would make the point we are putting across a lot easier to understand, so we took it on board, and made the adjustment. We also incorporated a hallucination where the Son confronts his dead mother, we received a lot of positive criticism for this so we decided to keep it. Throughout this process, I realised that feedback from my peers and Teachers helped more than anything, especially because I only had one other person in my group. More brains led to more ideas which led to a better improvisation.

Item 1

Our scenario began with the son sleeping, and the father slowly circling around him. I played the father role, I decided to walk around him slowly to create suspense and to show anxious body language. I done this by holding my head in my hands whilst walking around, and constantly fiddling with my hands. We decided not to give too much detail on the two characters to show that these things are happening across the world, to millions of people, and that no one’s story is more important or significant than anyone else’s. Mr.Harris told me to perform a short narration at the beginning of the improvisation to give the audience an insight on what is going on. On the day, I started it off with; “I stood in the corridor all night that night, thinking about how I’m going to tell him the news…” This turned out to be effective because it was like a back up, just in case individuals in the audience were unsure about the situation.

After circling around him, the father sits down next to him and hesitantly attempts to wake him up. Hesitating whilst waking him up showed that my character is scared about letting his son know what is going on, and that he is unsure about how he is going to get the words out once he wakes him up. He explains to his son the situation and how they urgently need to leave, but the son is tired, and really wants to sleep.

The father then raises his voice and carefully helps his son up of the floor to show him that something serious is actually going on. I knew that I had to be extremely delicate with the son whilst improvising, as aggravating as it was that he was being un-attentive, I had to bare in mind the relationship that we have, and that the journey ahead was not going to be easy. The last thing I wanted was for him to go against me. I tried to put myself in Aylan’s father’s shoes before he lost his son, I had to clearly show the audience that I am grateful for my son being alive and that I only want the best for him.

He tells his son to pack ONE thing, then turns to the audience letting them know that; “If he takes more than one, it’s going to slow us down.” Communicating with the audience at this moment was something I was extremely unsure about at first, it seemed a bit cheesy. But then I realised that by getting the audience involved, I had a back up for the storyline, and that i’m giving reasoning for what I’m telling my son. Not many people would have jumped to the conclusion that taking more than one toy would slow us down, so clarifying the reasoning behind it to the audience stopped them from losing focus on the story.

The son, being a bit stubborn, takes three toys, slowly numbering them “1,1 and 1”. I really didn’t want to turn this into a comedy, but I wanted to show that children don’t always know the seriousness of situations, luckily we didn’t get any laughs from our audience.

Once the father steps back into the scene, he asks his son why he took more than one and tells him that this is no time for fun and games. The son realises he has done something wrong, but then goes on to explain why each object is special to him, and why he refuses to leave it behind. When he gets to his last object he explains that it’s the last thing he ever received from his mother. He then goes on to ask; “Where is mum?”. At this point there is an effective silence and the father drops to the floor and holds his head in his hands. This was definitely one of the most powerful moments of the improvisation, the silence made it extremely effective and emotional creating a strong tension.

NOTE: From the very beginning of the performance, there is slow paced sad music playing in the background.

I chose an extremely emotional track to play in the background throughout the improvisation, this made a huge effect, as it helped me to communicate my emotion to the audience. I really felt the scenario and so did my partner, it really made me feel like I’m going through exactly what the father would have been. As a matter of fact, it actually got me pretty upset (which is a good thing) and it really got me feeling grateful that I don’t have to go through what so many people across the planet are.

This is where the Hallucination comes in, the son performs a short monologue where he confronts his mum, at the moment when she gave him that very same toy. The father then catches his son hallucinating and does his best to stop him. They both fall to the ground, and the Father has a moment of clarity with his son. They are both extremely upset, and are lost for words. This is easily the biggest risk we took, but it pulled off. A hallucination was something that I didn’t even think about when I was told about the task, but I surely don’t regret including it once it came to my mind.

To finish it off, the father leads off the stage with one of his son’s toys which he picked to take for him, which leaves the son on the stage by himself. The son chooses to take all of his toys with him, and puts them in his bag. He slowly leads off the stage. (MUSIC ENDS). I decided not to do anything too extra for the end, trying not to make it look too artificial.

Improvising definitely made it a lot easier to perform an emotional piece like this, for the simple reason that when those emotions and thoughts were running through my head, I knew exactly what I wanted to say in that moment. It was much easier to stick to the central question too, as I kept track of not going off topic which I might have done if a script was written. Moving on to the central question, I think that we communicated our central question successfully and that we couldn’t have communicated it any better. We made sure that we stuck to it and that we didn’t drift off, we clearly showed that choosing what to leave behind is a very difficult experience, especially for a child.

From the beginning, there wasn’t much that we had to discard, apart from using imaginary toys which we replaced with real toys from home, just to make it more realistic.  We used a “Woody” toy,  which is western merchandise, to symbolise that some people cherish having toys that are taken for granted in the West. I didn’t feel like the audience understood this as it wasn’t mentioned in the improvisation.

Item 2

For item 2, I performed a monologue, which was a continuation of my performance in item 1.  I was carrying the role of a father (the same one from item 1), who had lost his son during his mission to run away from war. It is based a lot on guilt and irresponsibility. I gave the father a more scruffy appearance by wearing a hood over my head to show that I was tired, depressed and was struggling. I also sobbed to make the audience have sympathy for my character. My body language was constantly slouched to show weakness, and I was constantly verbally beating myself up to show that I regret what I had done.

The act begins with me sitting on a box, alone, with my hood up. This is an effective image which gives the audience a gist of the situation before the scene actually starts. I begin to sob, and talk about how I’ve lost my son, how much I miss him etc. If you have read my item 1, you will know about the “toys” scenario, a reference to this comes up in this scene.  “I should’ve just let him take the f*****g toys!”; a quote from item 2. This is a quote which symbolises regret.  Regret was an easy topic to work around as it triggers a lot of passionate emotion. I used barely any improvisation for this scene as I had several lessons to rehearse it in class. I did develop a late idea on the night just before my performance, and that was putting a message in a bottle and sending it off (The last possible attempt to find my son).

For this performance, I didn’t have a central question to work around, but the title of my scene was; “Regret”. I think that I stayed on the topic of the title and communicated it to my audience reasonably well. If I could have modified anything, I would have played voices on the speaker in the background saying things like; “Regret” “Where are you Daddy” “You left me…”etc.

Item 3

My design idea revolved around lighting. I chose lighting as it fitted in extremely well with my Item 1. It is needed to express the status’ of characters and to also make the stage look better. I designed the lighting to give the effect of loneliness at times, but at other times to create the feeling that both characters are on the same page. At one point, I was thinking about using different colours, but then I realised that it looked too cheesy for a play like ours. Our play was based on a horrific situation that people go through on a day to day basis in other parts of the world, so there was no need to incorporate hollywood lighting in a play like this.

The design idea involves the characters being in separate lights, to show that they aren’t on the same page. Then gradually as the father persuades his son to get up and start getting ready, (them getting on the same page) the spotlight gets bigger and circles around the two of them. So whenever the father and the son are on positive terms and are working together, the spotlight covers the two of them. Only fully focused members of the audience will notice the effect and realise what impact it has on the scene.

If you have watched item 1, you will have remembered the hallucination part of the scene. In this small theatre, we didn’t have a projector to use, but afterwards, I came up with an idea we could have used if we did have one available. Although this effect doesn’t involve stage lights, it still comes under the lighting category.

When the son comes into confrontation with his passed away mother, we would have projected a black and white image of her onto the back wall. The rest of the stage would be pitch black, but the light from the projector would slightly shine onto the son so that the audience can see him whilst he performs his short monologue. In this moment, it wouldn’t feel like there is only one actor on the stage, but two. The presence of the mother in this short part of the scene is almost as important as the father’s in the rest of the scene.

The symbolic quality of this design idea is that although they have lost their Wife/Mother, she is still with them, just not in human form. Many refugees have lost several family members along the way, but they are still guiding them through the difficult journey. The lost family members are in some cases the motivation to complete the journey and make it to safety.

“When forced to leave home, what do we choose to leave behind?”