Component 1: devising

To start our course work on Devising, we proceeded by reading and analysing some texts of
‘Freedom Writes’, ‘Inspector Calls’ and ‘Martin Niemoller´.

Martin Niemoller: [poem]

When they came for the Trade Unionists,

I was not a Trade Unionist, so I did not protest.

When they came for the Socialists,

I was not a Socialist, so I did not protest.

When they came for the Jews,

I was not a Jew, so I did not protest.

When they came for me,

There was no one left to protest.

In these three texts, there are a few connections. As the text’s story goes on, the characters start to
create links between each other. The themes of the texts are also very similar, as they all link to social
class, gender, age and social responsibility.

In Martin Niemoller’s poem (above), we can appreciate that the extract is about the cowardice of
German intellectuals following the Nazis' rise to power and subsequent purging of their chosen
targets, group after group. This, links to the themes of classes and social responsibilities, such as
speaking out for your companion when this one is in need.

An Inspector Calls (Priestley):

In An Inspector Calls, Priestley explores social responsibility through the treatment of Eva Smith and
how each character does or doesn’t take responsibility for their behaviour as well as with the
Inspector's lessons. This make us go back to Martin Niemoller’s poem and the connection between
this diverse extracts as they share the same themes in their ‘story’. Social responsibility, class, gender
and age.

Age, is an important theme on ‘An Inspector Calls’, Priestley uses it to show how he believed that
there was hope in the younger generation's ability to learn and change. The older characters' opinions
and behaviours are stubbornly fixed. Mr Birling refuses to learn and Mrs Birling cannot see the
obvious about herself and her children. Eric and Sheila however are younger - they accept their
mistakes and offer the chance for a brighter future.

The play ‘An Inspector Calls’ is in real time, in other words, the story lasts exactly as long as the play
is on the stage. In a comparatively short time a dramatic contrast is created. This provokes the drama
being maintained and the audience getting involved.

Freedom Writers:

The most significant theme in The Freedom Writers Diary is tolerance and understanding. Gruwell's
students hated one another for no reason other than they thought they were supposed to because of
gang histories and stereotypes. Gruwell taught them that they actually had more in common than
they wanted to believe. Many of the students had lost a friend or loved one to senseless violence.
Many of them had been abused or molested. Many of them were victims of substance abuse. These
creates links and similarities between them.

Because the education system had deemed them at risk, Gruwell's colleagues were unwilling to
devote the time, energy, and attention to the students that would foster a positive, safe environment
for them to not only tolerate their differences but to accept and even appreciate them.

What The Freedom Writers Diary teaches readers is how empowerment can change lives. Once
Gruwell convinced her students of their self-worth, they began to see their potential.

The importance of self-worth is yet another significant theme in The Freedom Writers Diary. Because
so few of Gruwell's students had ever had someone believe in them, half of her battle was showing
the students that they were not only capable but were worthy of receiving a good education.

This make us go back again to’ Martin Niemoller’s’ poem and ‘An Inspector Calls’. The
connection between this extracts is of making new (links) with other characters. This exhibit the
themes of different social classes. Which is the most important theme of these three extracts, as
characters from completely social classes meet and create links with them. This, inspired me and my
group to think about a more dramatic environment were all the characters are strangers to the others.
From different social classes, different lifestyles, different ages, and different pasts. The idea was to
put characters belonging from different lifestyles in a specific place where they could learn about the
others problems and concerns and make new links between them. As the play would go, they would
realise they have similarities among each other even though they live completely different lives.

The idea was of placing the characters in a hospital in the same room. They were supposed to be the
(clients) and they all had different types of cancer. As the play goes along the characters were
supposed to meet one another and later on the play becoming close to one and all, one of the patients
tries to make a light of their situations by playing music.

However, this idea was discard, as we weren’t really capable of making the audience understand
some key things of the play and of getting the illness ´effect´ as the story didn’t have a strong
structure.

Afterwards, my group and I conclude that it was better to change the performance by driving it more
to a new and different aim, with different ways of making the audience feel and with diverse
purposes. Including multiple themes such as of social classes, gender and social responsibility. We
have been inspired by the three extracts above, as they all link to those themes.

At last, we established what our play would be about. It talks about the differences between poor and
rich peoples’ lifestyles. We wanted to show the audience how hard was the fact of leaving on the
streets and how it impacted on poor teenagers tempting them to steal and driving them to the thieves’
way.

By the other hand, we exposed how the other two charters playing the rich characters, were raised
with every commodity and whims making them grow as pampered and spoiled teenagers that didn’t
have any respect towards nobody, but expected to be respected by them.
These four characters would meet creating links between them just like on ´The Freedom Writers´,
´An Inspector Calls´ and ´Martin Niemoller´s poem´. The spoiled girls start to understand that there is
more world out there and learn that they don’t need to be only around the people of their social class.
They also start to understand that they must not discriminate and judge without knowing. The play
goes along and the prejudices cease. We made the decision of making the play with a dramatic
environment. The intendment my group and I had, was of making the audience understand and feel
what the characters felt, making the audience feel as if they were into the play. For that to work, we
chose specific techniques and theatrical styles like naturalism which we tried to achieved by
portraying life on stage with a close attention to the detail. We also went for a realistic atmosphere
without any supernatural effects but with realistic settings and staging.

To achieve this, we had to do a lot more of rehearsals, as we wanted to get the theatrical styles
obvious to the audience and to have an understandable structure of our plays´ story. For it, each of us
had to build our own character and we had to know our characters as we know our selves.

My character is a teenager with a very complicated lifestyle. Since she was young, she was raised in
the streets of London living in a constant environment of poverty and depression, sharing this same
lifestyle with her colleague, (which was considerate like a sister to her), just a few years older than my
character and had raised like family. My character is very impulsive, she lets herself to be carried
away by emotions and impulses without reflecting or thinking about the consequences of her actions.

I had to spend a lot of time thinking of how my character would act on certain situations. I built a
whole story of her past and present, of her reactions against emotional stages of her life... in order to
understand completely and fully how she is and how she ´functions´. This was only for myself, I
didn’t do it for it to appear on the play. Also, I had to build her physical movements… for it, I used
the six key skills: movement, gesture, posture, voice, expression and position. I also tried to make my
character´s language more as a slang language as she didn’t get the opportunity to go to school and
learn about manners and of how to speak with a proper vocabulary. This, was probably one of the
most important things on the play, as if I didn’t add the six key skills, the bad manners of my
character, and her grammatically wrong vocabulary and use of slang language, the audience
wouldn’t have got the wright idea of how she is and so the play realism wouldn’t have worked. As
well as the fact that if a girl lives and have been living in streets for her whole life wouldn’t know how
to write, how to speak properly, would be a dirty person and wouldn’t have much manners. If I don’t
include that to my character the reaction of the audience towards the play wouldn’t be the same.

Likewise, my group and I, needed to know the customs and the lighting we wanted to use for the
make the plays setting more truthful and genuine. My character was wearing dirty old and baggy
clothes and the face covered by ashes and dirt. This gave an impression of poverty and disgrace.

The lighting of the stage was composed of not very intense lights with warm colours such as dark
yellowish and brown colours. The stage was almost covered by obscurity and the only lights there
were, were very low. These created senses of a mysterious environment and more of a dramatic and
melancholic atmosphere. The lighting changes all of a sudden when the poor characters get out of the
poor alley and go to a rich area to try to gain more cash. In here the lighting gets more colourful with
vivid colours symbolising the movement and happiness of the richer streets of the city of London.
However, when the characters get out of there the lighting of the play gets back to how it was at the
beginning. Every time the scene ended the lights went off and back again.

During the performance my group and I tried to follow the techniques we had decided to use. Some
of us forgot parts of the play and lines of the script, but we got out of the rash by improvising. I think
that we did some mistakes like putting the back to the audience, but we fixed along the performance
when we realised it. I believe that our play went along pretty well and that we did our best to make it
be a great performance.