Create a piece of drama about homelessness to educate our audience

The first thing I did was research about homelessness at home. I found out from my homework: Why people become homeless, some of the reason I found out: Finding suitable housing and unemployment Relation breakdown 39% Heavy drinking 21% Losing job 18% Having no money to pay for housing 13% Around a quarter have mental health problems Around a half have drink problems. It was important to do this research because it helped give us more idea’s and know more about the issue of homelessness. This then helped us decide in our performance why we would become homeless. I found out all different reasons why people become homeless and we decided all of us would use one of those reasons. I also did a mind map in class for the possible idea’s why someone would become homeless and what we could use in our performance. Possible ideas The first thing we did was get into groups and did 3 still images based on homelessness to give us idea’s and to help us understand the types of things to include in our performance. The first still image was of 2 different women one with money and a family and another having an abusive husband. Our second was the women with the abusive husband getting beat up, which caused her to become homeless. Then the third one was the women on the street, homeless and the other women and her children seeing her helping her. In my group we discussed our ides and decided to develop them. We then used our mind map and research to help us get an idea. We all sat down and discussed our ideas. Some of our ideas were to become homeless because of domestic abuse, being evicted or being abandoned by parents. We did have some problems, we had a lot of people in our group so it was harder to work and focus. We overcome them by listening to each other. This also helped us improve our work by giving us more ideas to work with, .e.g. Dying because of being homeless, and being abused by father which we used. Also we could make our performance longer. What worked well in our performance was our still images at the start some of us have our hands over our face to show being afraid. We also used levels. Then we came out of our freeze frame and said what we were a victim of. We did this because it shows our audience that there is all kind of different reasons why people become homeless, and it’s not their fault. We also used vocal singing, Juliana and Hannah sang because of you which went well with the theme. The physical theatre we used worked well also when Sophie, Juliana and Callum repeated their movements (when the mother found out about the father abusing his daughter). It showed that the abuse is being repeated over and over again. Sophie also used mimetic gestures. Also when the father (callum) went to punch the mother (Juliana) he used slow motion which was effective because it would have caught the audience’s attention. It was good when we all repeated (after Juliana said â€Å"Don’t say a word†) â€Å"you heard her don’t say a word†. We repeated this 3 times because it was more effective than saying it once. Also I and 2 other’s in my group (Chloe and Nikky) spoke out of character to show how my character felt and it helped the audience understand the characters better about why they were homeless. We also did thought tracking. In our performance we also used a narrator this helped tell the story of what was going on. The narrator told the audience about the abuse that was happening to the child so the audience new exactly what was going on. Also our performance was non-naturalistic so it was different from everyone else’s and made it better. At the end of our performance we had statistics which really help inform the audience about homelessness. I think our performance would have been better if we added more scenes and made it longer. Also if we practiced a bit more so we don’t forget bit of our performance. We could have put a scene in to show how horrible and unpleasant it is to live on the streets. We could have added more drama skills. It would have been better if we included a video about homelessness in our performance. I think our performance did inform the audience because our performance showed that there are lots of reasons why people become homeless. It showed how you become homeless and it’s not the type of people you always think that become homeless. We also included statistics which informed the audience what type of people are homeless and what percent it is. We also informed the audience that’s its children and teenagers that can become homeless not just adults. Our target audience was 13-18 year olds, to raise awareness to children about the issue of homelessness. I think it did suit our target audience because our performance showed what types of people are homeless and why they become homeless. We also had a role-play in our performance about 3 teenagers living on the streets so it would be easier for the target audience to relate to them. Also they can understand what’s going on because there not too young. In my performance we showed them about being abused and not having anyone help you, so they understand that it’s not someone fault if they people homeless. In Abby Smith’s group I thought what work well was she used a narrator which really helped tell the story. Also what worked well was the choral speaking and slow motion they did. I think she could improve by focusing and practicing more also adding more drama skills and making her performance much longer.