After the first two lessons it was know clear to me that the people who owned the properties in the bag we explored were in fact victims of the massacre, at the point when I found out I was shocked and I felt guilty because of the way I laugh at them as we explored there properties. In the second lessons we discussed as a whole class group the issues that may have contributed to the massacre and was mostly based around the issues of stereotypes and cliques, when discussed the way American high schools were portrayed in the U.K media and the difference in the clique system of America and U.K, it appeared that the clique system in America I more exaggerated in terms of people been place into clique groups like Greeks, cheerleaders, jocks and others because I knew very little about the clique system I listened to the teacher and other student speak and did my research and found out that the clique system had a part to play in isolating of the child because Eric and Dylan were placed in unpopular clique, they were known as weirdo’s and the got mocked by other student very often, this might have made them isolated and drove them to the point of revenge.
There were lots of other issues that were to be blames for the bad influence they enforce on the murderers as much as the clique system was to blame the media was also blamed, when we watch blowing for columbine musicians like Marilyn Manson was blamed by the media for imposing devilish music in the mind of young people, he included killing, sex and rebelliousness in his rock music and the media believe it was an influence on the murderer because they both listened to his music.
In this unit we had to work on our one, pairs, small groups and whole class group, one of my challenging tasks was when we had to perform a scene of a victim and one of their parent having a conversation during the attack but the parent don’t have a clue what was going on, I had to be a father at work while Jammi was the victim this was challenging because in my head I was emotionally broken as I thought, that this was really what had happen the only thing I thought off was ‘’ what’s wrong, what’s happened, what I can’t hear you’’ by I was able to show confusing of the character by pacing around a little, sad facial expression and aching my head to show confusion I think I did good by evoked a different emotion from what other pairs evoked, most pairs evokes more of a sympatric emotion, but I felt the whole class did well and I liked Nico’s performance because just like me he showed a confused facial expression and evoked a sympatric emotion from the audience.
In this unit we had to perform a scene of columbine where all student are in the lunch room but Ms Sullivan was going to be involved in the performance she was going to come in and raise a alarm on the murderers, this was a little unusually and it really did require our improvisation skills but because we had place our self into cliques to show status and how different clique hang out together, when miss came in for the 1st spontaneous performance all student were unsure what to do everybody started blocking the doors with chairs but this was not realistic when we evaluated it most people started it was not realistic even when we didn’t know what was going to happen then we had to perform the same piece again the 2nd spontaneous performance this time when miss came in the strong jocks started blocking the doors with chairs while the necks and geeks went hiding, I think the 2nd performance was more realistic because knew what we were meant to do so we just use our knowledge and research on the unit to improvise what would really have happened and I was about to do this well because I watched the CCTV clip of the attack on columbine student in the lunch hall.
The most ironic lesson in this unit was the lesson focused on a poem called KILLING TIME by Simon Armittage’s, he replaced the gruesome attacks and images of columbine with sweet things representing the weapons used by the murderers as flowers. We had to perform a scene of on six to eight lines on the poem, in my group everybody though the first eight lines were very ironic so we decided to base our performance on it, we did two versions on columbine the poem version and the real columbine version this was really weird because the poem version looked like the murderers were voluntarily giving the victims flowers doing them a favour, for the performance we used very effective techniques like chorus when reading each lines, facial expression for the poem version was smile and joys but for the real columbine version was sad and frown, we started with still image and everybody had a chance to read a line of the poem. During the performance we were all meant say the last words of each line together but because of short rehearsal time we were not able to clarify this but after the second line others in the group remembered and we all say the word as a chorus, this was also a bit abstract and weird and it played on my emotion as we were performing a scene of something gruesome by the side an interpretation of it in a less gruesome but mocking way. I liked Sam.p group because they interpreted the poem version in a very ironic way going around handing the student around them flower facial expression smiles, happiness. Other groups performed what had happened in the massacre the real version. I think my group did very good using effective techniques and dramatic skills but with more time to rehearse we would use lighting, when performing the real version there would be read light on stage while there would be white lights on stage when the poem version is been performed to show how sweet and voluntary the giving is to show that the boys were .
In conclusion I really enjoyed this unit because it helps me realise what people that have been place in a weirdo cliques in my school might be going through the isolation, this unit as change my attitude in the way I act towards different cliques of people in my school and I have also seen the same different in the attitudes of some other student that do drama like Patrick and Rushain and I also like the unit because it helped me realise performance skill I didn’t know I had and I was able to make the audience feel the right emotions at most times, this unit as also widen my social knowledge on American high schools and their cultures. I loved this unit and I hope the other unit is as emotional as this.
