Professional Inquiry

My placement has really started to help me with my inquiry. My inquiry is about whether drama could one day become a compulsory subject but I will be using drama classes as an example. I am looking at if drama/ drama classes can be beneficial to young people. The aim of my time at my placement is to see if I can notice any change in behaviour in the young people during the drama classes, when I say behaviour I mean their character/persona. I want to see any of the drama technique we teach they could become useful, for example how their confidence will change while acting and if it will change.

The other techniques/skills or literary techniques that I will be looking for during the classes are:

• Confidence 
•  Articulation
• imagery
  
• Being able to read  body language 
• word play
•  Posture
• Working with others 
• first person narration
• Be able to read out aloud
• Freeze Frame
• Flash-forward/Flashback

My aim is to show that drama has just as much potential of having skills that can be used in the ‘real world’.  I haven’t been able to hold as much focus group meetings as I would have liked to due to situations beyond my control, I am however having one this Thursday which I am looking forward to. Being able to try and put my theories into practice is beginning to help my inquiry fall into place.

Full House

Friday’s evenings session (20^th April) was so much more progressive than the last two, finally we had just over 30 young people turn up. This was such a big difference compared to the first session which only had a turnout of 2 young people, this was such a big shock for me since it would be my first time working with such a large amount of young people.
 
The session started at 6:30pm and as soon as the doors opened the young people came rushing in. This was the first time I had met any of them, I did not introduce myself until I was working with them in groups as I felt I had better chance of them remembering my name and having their attention.
 
For the first part of the session I sat at the table with a few of the young people while my colleges explained to other young people what the evening events would be. I was designing my flags for our jubilee celebrations, some of the young people joined me while two or three of them just joined in because there friends where doing it. Whist I was at the table I had some of the young people asking me who I was and if I was new, I introduced myself explained why I was there. I made sure that I asked them to introduce themselves to me; I then asked if they would be joining in our performance. Most of them said that they will be taking part, as they individually introduces themselves to me I then started to put a face to the names which were on our casting list from the previous session. As they introduced themselves I then began to understand why my colleague had given them certain parts, she really does have a great knowledge of the young people and their capability.

We spent 30mins on the flag making, once the 30mins where up we then split up the young people between the five members of staff. My colleague and I took the young people who were taking part in the dance piece in to the dance studio, while the others who would not be taking part went to the hall opposite to play games with one of the other workers.
once all the young people had settled down, which took at least 5-10 minutes since some of the young people who had originally said they did not want to take part where starting to change their minds.

I had to explain to the young people who now wanted to take part they had to wait till the next session, they were very understanding and then they went into the other hall. My colleague and I knew that some of the young people who didn’t not want to take part would change there minds, we decided that for the first few session we would work with those who wanted to take part. The last thing we wanted to do was to leave anybody out, so we knew that we definitely needed to add extra parts to the dance piece.

The next session will be on Friday 27^th April, im looking forward to this session. It would be interesting to see how many young people turn up and how many more want to take part.

Attendance

During last Tuesday's (11^th April) session we did not have a single young person turn up to the session. Luckily my colleague and I had anticipated this, so we already had an idea of what we would do in the mean time. We decided that it would be best if we started to create a step by step break down of the performance, we looked at what parts of the piece we could change.

As most of the performance is a dance we looked at the original footage of the piece and we then began to choreograph the dance, since we know that the young people's attendance may not be consistent throughout this process we chose to do the choreography in groups. The reason the choreography has been grouped is so that if we are missing any characters during rehearsal we could then be able to work with another group. As we watched the original footage and broke it down we started to notice that some of the dancers in the original piece had made mistakes. This led us to believe that the dance piece was meant to be a serious but fun piece at the same time.

Finding the best audition process

Yesterday I was at a youth centre in the south east of England; we were starting our preparation for a performance which the young people are going to be doing in July. The performance will be to celebrate the Queens Diamond jubilee; we have chosen to re-enact a piece from a television advertisement. 

The first part of the session was spent familiarising myself with the piece. I started to look at the dance sequence and how many characters where taking part, my colleague and I look at the children's request for parts. My colleague had a list of the young people's names from the previous session. Alongside the young people’s names the young people had written what part they wanted to play. Some of the young people had chosen the same parts; while others had put down ‘any’. After my colleague And I had broken down the dance sequence we started to compare it with the list of young people’s names.

My colleague looked at the sheet which the young people had listed the parts they wanted to play, we thought it would fair that they would all get a part in the piece. Most of them will get the parts that they have asked for.

 We made a rough list of who would play what part, as we started to do this we realised that there were more young people than parts. So we decided that we might tweak the sequence a bit just so that they all have a part regardless of how big or small it may be. As its half term we didn't get a lot of young people in, half term has affected the attendance of the young people; this has also hindered the audition process. We had to think of an alternative way of choosing the characters.

My theory on the lack of attendance is that the young people might be taking part in other activities that may only take place during half term. Some may also be away with family or may even be on holiday however if this does continue it could possibly affect our overall out come with regards to their summer performance. My colleague and I did not spend the whole session on the planning of the performance as it would not have been fair for the other young people, who are not going to be taking part. As it’s the Easter holidays we thought it would be nice to other activities such as:

·        Baking cakes

·        Making Easter Cards

·        Colouring Easter Themed pictures

Although we did not get a lot of young people in yesterday I still feel that we had a productive session, we were still able to get on with some planning. Next week is the last week of half term so hopefully after that week the young people's attendance will pick up.

 

Below is the link to the performance that the young kids will be re-enacting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kav0FEhtLug