Contact improviastion

Today we chose a second topic from our brainstorm of ideas from "Humanity in crisis" to be performed in the style of contact improvisation. Before we went off into our groups we split into pairs to perform a piece of contact improviastion. I was paried with Kyle to create a quick piece made of 8 movments, me and Kyle decided we would do our piece on a car crash, we started with me on the ground dead and played the event in reverse. After we created our 8 movements we then were asked to add a lift into our piece to end the contact improviastion. We then went off into our devised groups to create our next piece, as a group we decided to base it around slavary with me, Carl, Meg and Dan M as the slaves as well as Toby and Kyle as the guards. We start with the slaves laying down as the guards enter and pull us up from the ground, all the slaves are holdind each other rists to show that they are chained to each other. We then each have our own interaction with the guard, Dan M goes first as he is attacked by Kyle who throws him across the stage. Me and Toby then choragphraghed a fight, in which Toby proceeds to beat me down to the ground. Kyle and Meg then do a lift to the ground that makes it look like Kyle is choking Meg by Kyle placing his hand just below her neck and Meg holding over the hand to make appear as if he is strangling her. Toby and Kyle then kick Carl to his knees and drag him forward, as the slaves we then run up and drag him back then split off into groups of 2 and start our contact improvisation in our pairs. The pairs where me and Carl, Dan M and Meg, Toby and Carl. after our contact improvisation, the slaves are then laid back down on the ground to end the piece.

Hillsborough disater (Research)

As is common at domestic matches in England, opposing supporters were segregated. Nottingham Forest supporters were allocated the South and East ends with a combined capacity of 29,800. Liverpool supporters were allocated the North and West ends, holding 24,256 fans.

When the gates were opened, thousands of fans entered a narrow tunnel leading to the rear of the terrace into two overcrowded central pens, creating pressure at the front. Hundreds of people were pressed against one another and the fencing by the weight of the crowd behind them. People entering were unaware of the problems at the fence; police or stewards usually stood at the entrance to the tunnel and, when the central pens reached capacity, directed fans to the side pens, but on this occasion, for reasons not fully explained, did not.

For some time, problems at the front of the pen went unnoticed, except by those affected, as attention was absorbed by the match. At 3:06 pm the referee, Ray Lewis, on the advice of the police, stopped the match after fans climbed the fence in an effort to escape the crush and went onto the track. By this time, a small gate in the fence had been forced open and some fans escaped via this route, as others continued to climb over the fencing. The police attempted to stop fans from spilling onto the pitch. Other fans were pulled to safety by fans in the West Stand above the Leppings Lane terrace. The intensity of the crush broke the crush barriers on the terraces. Holes in the perimeter fencing were made by fans desperately attempting to rescue others.

Those trapped were packed so tightly in the pens that many victims died of compressive asphyxia while standing. The crowd in the Leppings Lane Stand overspilled onto the pitch, where many injured and traumatised fans congregated who had climbed to safety. Police, stewards and members of the St John Ambulance service were overwhelmed. Many uninjured fans assisted the injured; several attempted CPR and others tore down advertising hoardings to use as stretchers. Chief Superintendent John Nesbit of South Yorkshire Police later briefed Michael Shersby MP that leaving the rescue to the fans was a deliberate strategy, and is quoted as saying "We let the fans help so that they would not take out their frustration on the police" at a Police Federation conference.

Liverpool fans desperately try to climb the fence onto the safety of the pitch while being stopped by the police.As events unfolded, some police officers were still deployed making a cordon three-quarters of the way down the pitch to prevent Liverpool supporters reaching the opposing supporters. Some fans tried to break through the cordon to ferry injured fans to waiting ambulances but were forcibly turned back. 44 ambulances arrived, but police prevented all but one from entering the stadium.

Only 14 of the 96 fatally injured people arrived at hospital.

9/11 (Reasearch)

IT was a beautiful September morning. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky as the usual throng of office workers poured onto the subways and streets of Manhattan for the start of another busy working day.

This particular morning Ian Robb was running late. He had been out the night before with a couple of work colleagues and slept through his alarm. “I’d got a taxi back home to New Jersey where I lived but the driver missed the exit so it was gone 1.30am before I got home.”

Normally he was up at six and would be sitting in his office on the 99th floor of the World Trade Center, where he worked as head of professional development for the international financial services firm Marsh and McLennan, by 7.30am. “I ran to the station but I’d missed my usual train and the next one,” he says.

But even though he was an hour late he still had time to admire the view as he took the short ferry ride across the River Hudson. “I vividly remember the sky was crystal blue, it certainly wasn’t a bad start to the day.”

He reached the vast concourse of the World Trade Center at about 8.40am. He just missed one lift by a split second. “Some people in the lift waved at me and I waved back,” he says.

He and six others got into another one but as the doors closed nothing could have prepared him for what happened next. “There was this tremendous noise, the whole lift started shaking and there was this awful whistling noise of air rushing down the sides.” They tried pressing the alarm bells but nothing happened. By this time the lift was full of smoke and dust and there was a growing sense of dread. They were trapped inside for more than hour before they were finally able to prise open the doors. “We had no idea what was going on, we didn’t know whether we’d gone up or down,” says Ian, a former Leeds Grammar School pupil.

As it turned out they’d barely moved an inch. They scrambled out to discover they were still on the ground floor. Firefighters told them a plane had slammed into the tower.

“The lobby of the World Trade Center was massive, it was about four stories high and as we ran up to the plaza level we noticed the windows were red with blood, although we didn’t realise what it was at the time.

“Outside it was like a battlefield, there were bits of bodies lying around, it was horrific. I heard this huge roar and when I looked up I could see an inferno at the top of the building where my offices had been.”

As Ian joined the terrified crowds running for the ferry the south tower collapsed. He tried calling his daughter, Alexis, who was living with him, but the mobile phone networks were dowm.

Once across the river he was among the thousands who crammed onto trains, desperate to get home. “We were all standing cheek by jowl and everyone was exchanging stories. Most people had seen the planes hit the towers and people jumping out of the burning buildings, whereas I’d been stuck in a lift so I was lucky in a way because I didn’t see all that.”

The Kindertransport (Reasearch)

The Kindertransport program was an organised rescue effort that took place during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. Kindertransport in German translates to children’s transport. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust.

World Jewish Relief (then called The Central British Fund for German Jewry) was established in 1933 to support in whatever way possible the needs of Jews both in Germany and Austria. Records for many of the children who arrived in the UK through the Kindertransports are maintained by World Jewish Relief.

Stories

·         Herbert Kay (Koniec) left Czechoslovakia on a Kindertransport in June 1939. He brought these boots with detachable ice skates with him but had outgrown them by the time winter came. Herbert’s parents were killed in 1942 and he had no other relatives in Czechoslovakia after the war.  Herbert’s foster family offered him a home in Scotland when it became clear that he could not return to Czechoslovakia. He became a British citizen in 1947.

·         Celia Horwitz (later Lee) left Hamburg, Germany, on a Kindertransport in December 1938. Once in the UK, Celia settled in East London. On 1 September 1939, her entire school was evacuated to Cockley Cley, a small village in Norfolk. This is a school exercise book she used during her time as an evacuee. Celia’s father died in 1941, but she was reunited with her mother in 1949.

·         Stephie Carola Leyser (later Stephanie Kester) volunteered for the Kindertransport and left Germany for Britain in February 1939. This Siamese cat puppet was given to Stephie by her favourite uncle and accompanied her on her journey. It was one of the few items that she was allowed to select and pack for herself before leaving Chemnitz. Stephanie’s parents eventually immigrated to the UK, where her father was detained as a foreign national and sent to a civilian internment camp on the Isle of Man. He was released and reunited with his wife and daughter but died shortly after. Her mother lived until 1993.

Devised plan (Humanity in Crisis)

Today in lesson we started too talked about our next unit in drama which is going to be our second devised piece but this devised piece is going to be created through workshopping ideas. We were given the title of our piece which is going to be “Humanity in crisis”. We then split ourselves into 2 groups, my group members are me, Dan M, Meg, Toby, Carl and Kyle. We were also given a couple of pictures of refugees, Serbia in ruins, id of kinder transport and foreigners being denied access to safe areas. With all of our stimuli in mind we proceeded to create a spider diagram on all the thoughts we had to do with our theme.

My initial ideas and thoughts of humanity in crisis is nonbias events that caused suffering like Earthquakes, Tusnamis, my thought was natural disaters as these are event that we have no control over that causes crisies all over the world. I didn't think of events like Consentration Camps, 9 11 or hillsbourgh as these events have bias issues only effecting select groups and were control by another individual or group. To me Humanity in crisis would be an event that effected everyone no matter their race, age, gender or the fact if their good or bad because to me humaintiy is all of us a collective being effected and if were in crisis it would be a event that effected all of us not just a group of us or was caused by us.

“Humanity in Crisis”

·         War

·         Mental health

·         Baptist church

·         extremists

·         Poverty

·         Hillsborough

·         National disasters

·         Government

·         Politics

·         Refugees

·         Conspiracy

·         Slavery

·         Conflict

·         Terrorism

·         Cold war

·         Religion division

·         IRA

·         Nazi’s

·         Homophobia

·         Xenophobia

·         Prejudice

·         Dictatorship

·         Prison

·         Militia

·         Anarchists

·         Hierarchy

·         Royalty

·         Technology

·         Margret thatcher

·         KKK

·         Nuclear weapons

·         Fall out

·         Civil war

·         Financial

·         Overpopulation

·         9/11

·         Torture

We then went off and created a piece of drama using one of the words from our diagram in 20 minutes. We talked about it and chose “refugees” and created a piece inspired by this. We decided that we wanted to do a physical theatre piece around our chosen theme. Our piece started with Kyle and Toby walking on and meeting in the centre; after they meet they fall to the ground, Dan M and Meg then enter and do the same followed by me and Carl. We all then rise and stand in a line to be shot before we fall dead. We then clump together around me rocking side to side to symbolise that we are on a refugee boat, each person slowly peel away from me from and spread around the room. I then run to one of then who covers their eyes and turn around, I repeat this with 3 other people which is to symbolise how other countries turn their backs on people when they need help. The fifth person hugs me to show that he is the kind country who is looking out for others. We performed our piece to the son “I can feel a hot one” by Manchester orchestra.


This is a picture of refugees traveling to a new home. this is ispirational as it was one of our groups first thoughts when we were told about 'humainty in crisis' as well as what we have based our first piece around. the physical theatre piece we created was a nice start to what could potentaily could be our devised pieceon seperate stories of refugees after escapig their country and what happens to them.


This is another idea i had with our topic of humanity in crisis invovling tragic stories based around the natural disaters we have no control over. We could choose any natural disater and created a series of stories around the survivers, what happens to them after the event, them searching for somewhere safe, who they have lost and so on...


This photo helpped me think about political scandels and how as a group we natural try to benefit ourseleves at the cost of others happyness. This idea has alot of potentail for naturalism scene but not as much for the physical theatre side but i still believe this would be a good idea.