For my Unit 1 Drama Exploration module, I focused on the topic of gang culture as well as the issues, stereotypes and various perspectives or attitudes relating to gang culture.
The first stimulus I was given was a collection of images of stereotypical gang members and scenarios relating to gang culture. At the start of the first session, I worked with Rhiannon to create a model of a stereotypical gang member as a reaction to the stimulus. Rhiannon acted as the ‘sculptor’ and I as the ‘dummy’ in order to create a visual emulation of an archetypal gang member. We decided to show a hand miming a held gun in order to present our audience with a commonly recognisable symbol of gang culture …show more content…
To these we added newspaper headlines that could possibly be linked to the scenarios depicted, such as ‘Rioters Turn Against Each Other’ and ‘Civilians Targeted In Rioters’ New Low’. We wanted gang and riot culture to be a prominent theme as well as the concepts of social injustice as a motive and the lack of motive. The freeze frames showed rioters fighting amongst themselves and looting a store. We added thought tracking (an explorative strategy) to make the concepts explored within the still images clearer to the audience as well as to detail perspectives of the event that may otherwise not have been shown, such as ‘it’s time to show the government what we can do’, and ‘no one can control me: these riots finally make me feel …show more content…
Perry in groups, discussing the poem’s stance on gang culture and the perspective of the poem’s narration. We also discussed ideas of what we thought were the events leading up to the narrative of the poem, then created a short performance based around the first verse, only using the lyrics of the poem as speech. This allowed us to explore how to accurately convey our perception of the poem to an uninformed audience with various limitations.
Over the final two sessions we explored Gang Culture through the stimulus of an extract taken from the film West Side Story. We watched the opening sequence, and discussed how choreography conveyed the concepts and effects of gang violence and culture without displaying violence or behaviour that would make it unsuitable for a younger audience, thus making it more accessible. We created a mime and movement sequence in groups showing two gangs at war in which we used rhythmic stomping, clapping and clicking to signify different gangs to the audience, using positioning and movement to show the conflict between