Drama - Response Phase to the unit on war.

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Unit 1: 3 pieces of coursework in response to improvisation exam                                       Rabab Salem

Drama Coursework

Response Phase

The first GCSE drama exam that I have partaken in, is the unit on war. It consisted of 7 1 hour lessons. We covered three wars, each war concentrating on a family and how they were affected by the wars:

  • The First World War
  • The conflict between Serbia and Bosnia
  • The Second World War (Holocaust)

We looked at a family of five, a son going off to war, a mother, a daughter, a younger son and a father.

Our first task was to create a frozen image depicting the moment when the son leaves his family to go to war. In my frozen image, the son was walking off not looking back, proud to be off to war. The mother was extremely upset, and had her head bowed as she cried, the daughter was consoling her mother. The father was standing proud saluting his son, true patriotism. And the youngest son was sitting on the floor reading one of the war posters that were around.

Suggestions for captions to go with this frozen image included:

  • ‘Proud family support son into battle.’
  • ‘Torn between country and family.’
  • ‘Best British can produce.’

I then wrote a newspaper report to accompany the frozen image, as if it were a photo in a newspaper:

‘Brave soldier Martin, marches off to war to make his family proud. As we witness mixed emotions throughout this family – we can see that this is a true patriotic family. From the father, living his dream through his son – to the younger brother, looking up to his brother, a true British family.’

One of the stimuli we were given was an actual telegram that was sent to families during WW1:

The war office

Whitehall

London

24th January 1916

Dear Sir/Madam

This  is to inform you that your son has been shot for cowardice, for deserting his post in the face of the enemy.

Yours faithfully

D. Brown

Clerk to The War Office

Fig R.1

I shared my response to this telegram with many other people in my class. It was such a harsh way to put the fact across; at first, I couldn’t believe that this was a real telegram. It was extremely blunt, cold and it got straight to the point. It said ‘Your son has been shot’ and it gave no more justification than ‘cowardice’, as if that explained everything. It was hard to comprehend that a telegram that was informing a family of a loved one’s death was only one and a half lines long. It’s straight to the point, like a bullet to the brain.

The family must have felt a range of emotions, ranging from anger to despair.

The mother must have felt very distressed, she would be outraged at her country for killing her eldest son, but she would also go through a phase of self-blame. But she would be in mourning for a very long time over the death of her son.

The brother would experience many emotions. At first, he wouldn’t understand the situation; he would ask many questions, until the fact that his brother, his role model has died, gone forever. Immediately he would feel extremely upset and then he would want to be with his brother. And because he is too young to consider the option of suicide, he would go into a deep coma, to try to reach his brother.

The father would appear to be angry and ashamed of his son, for being shot for cowardice. However, I believe that this will only be a face, a mask to cover his true feelings of despair, and loss for losing his eldest son.

The sister, even though she would be distraught, would be the only sane one left. She would try her best to keep the family together, and will not allow them to go into a deep depression. She would be the only logical one, the leader of them all, helping them through the situation. Being very selfless and putting her family before herself. To the sister this is just another test, only more personal.

We were then given the task to create a mime in four parts:

  • Fathers proudest moment
  • Mothers worst nightmare
  • Daughters previous experience of war
  • Younger sons perception of war

The father remembers his proudest moment when he was honored with a medal for bravery at a previous war. Recalling how proud he felt, and how happy he made his family. We did thought tracking for this scene, and some of the suggestions were: ‘This truly is the greatest moment of my life’ and ‘I would never be more proud to be births.’

The mother’s worst nightmare was her on the front line.  Looking at masses of dead bodies and corpses, frantically looking around for her son. Throwing all bodies to one side while she looked hysterically. Hopeful to discover that her son is not actually dead. She then sees him, and she embraces the dead body as she cries over the loss of her son. Thought tracks included: ‘No! Please God no!’ and ‘This is my fault, I shouldn’t have let him go.’

The daughter recalls one of her most distressing moments; she remembers a situation where another soldier dies on her duty. She becomes very stressed and blames herself. Thought tracks include: ‘Not another one’ and ‘This is all my fault, I didn’t pay enough attention to him.’

The younger son is playing with some of his friends, play war. They pretend to shoot each other, as they perceive war as one big game. Thought tracks include: ‘This is so fun!’ and ‘I can’t wait to do this for real!’

The family that we concentrated on when we were doing the conflict between Serbia and Bosnia, were the families of two lovers. Bosko, a Serbian boy and Admira a Bosnian girl (Muslim).

Join now!

We created a television report of their walk across no man’s land, and their assassination. We fist did a scene in which only the news reporter spoke. We then repeated the same scene, but added a soundtrack. I felt that the second scene with the soundtrack was much more effective. Because it was an un-naturalistic piece of work, we explored different drama techniques, not having to worry if they fitted in with the context, which is an advantage to doing a un-naturalistic play.

The fist play began by Bosko and Admira bidding farewell to their parents, in the improved version, ...

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