We also did an exercise in class where all the blue eyed people were superior and got to have complete power over the majority that weren’t blue eyed. I think that this was using one of Hitler’s beliefs that he wanted to create a superior race of blonde blue eyed people. Some of our blue eyed group had friends in the other group and wanted their friends to join them. Some of the Germans may have been in a similar situation but were forced to kill Jews because they were so afraid of Hitler and their superiors in the army.
In class we read through two very different speeches one spoken by Shylock in Shakespeare’s ‘Merchant Of Venice’ from the 1600s, one which was written by Brecht in ‘Fear And Misery In The 3rd Reich’ in the 1930s. Both of them were about Jews being ridiculed showing that racism like that never goes away it’s still in our society today. In Ghetto the Shylock speech was used to show how similar the situations were in both time periods.
We read the play Ghetto so we could see how badly the Jews were treated in the ghettos. We got to see how Jewish people were forced to boss around other Jews and how ordering thousands of their own kind to be killed destroyed their own lives.
We also did an exercise in class where we had to show bullying in the workplace. I played a character who was sacked because the other works didn’t like him but I didn’t accepts that I didn’t work there anymore. We did this to show that bullying occurs everywhere and people don’t always have a good reason to do it.
Another exercise was we had to decide in groups who out of a number of people should have a kidney transplant. We were only told one detail about the person and we had to make a choice on that information. After we made our choice we were given more details and were able to change our mind which most of us did. We did this because a similar thing happens in Ghetto where there’s a limited supply of insulin to give the diabetics and they have to choose which ones they’re going to sacrifice to save the others. This put us in a very difficult situation because we had the power to choose who would live and who would die. In our group we discussed who we thought was the most valuable person to the society which was the doctor because he could save other people. We also recognised that a mother was very important and she was our second choice.
Word count 954
The Development Phase
We began this task of developing a given character by being given a scene from Ghetto and a group task to perform that scene. The scene my group was given was Scene Twenty. In this scene Hayyah and Kruk are trying to raise spirits in the Ghetto during a rehearsal of the play. The scene ends with Hayyah asking Srulik to escape with her from the Ghetto but he doesn’t want to go and uses the dummy to talk to her. My group used the first lesson to just read through the scene and then hot seated people playing characters such as Gens and The Dummy. We chose to do this with these two characters because there’s such a contrast between the two, Gens being the really serious one who nearly has a breakdown by the end of the play and The Dummy being the object Srulik uses to speak his true feelings. We also chose the dummy because he’s the only comical element in the play with the rest of it being quite depressing, so he lightens the scene. Hot seating also makes you think about your character and helps you to develop your understanding of the character. We eventually hot seated all of our group because I was forced to think about him and give a quick answer which was given on instinct and this helped me to get a better understanding of my character. I think my character is thirty something and is a librarian, he’s well educated and is used as the narrator in Ghetto as well. They do this by having him write a diary of everything that happens in the ghetto and then he says out loud what he is writing to the audience at various points in the play. I think because of his job he is probably normally a quiet person who likes to be in the background not at centre stage. He’s confident about his job and has lots of knowledge about books. He has been forced in the play to act on his very strong beliefs, when he normally would have kept quiet. I think this is why he’s a very strong character in the play. My character is very proud of his country and when the time is right he’s ready to stand up for his country. When Gens over reacts about the song he doesn’t say much but what he does say tells us a lot about him he sums up Gens’ long speech in three words, ‘Nationalism breeds Nationalism.’ My group decided to have Kruk at the front saying his little speech to show that he has reasonably high status in the scene until Gens appears.
In another drama lesson we had to put our given scene of Ghetto into modern terms. Even though the surroundings would be totally different our group tried to keep the main feelings of our characters the same. I think this exercise was to help evolve our character more and to see whether we knew our characters well enough to put them in a different environment. I found this exercise useful because I had to think even more about my character.
Although my character has a minor part in the given scene he is one of the main characters in the actual play. Within the group he is one of the strongest characters who is in touch with reality. He is a member of the underground in the Ghetto waiting for the Russians to come and free them. I developed my character’s voice and movements based on what I had learnt about him from earlier scenes. In his speech about May Day I tried to show his excitement and joy that they were going to be saved. I tried to smile and look into the distance to show the crowd where the Russians would be coming from to save them from the Ghetto. My voice was full of happiness and my speech was faster than his normal speech. My movements became much more energetic especially my hands and arms which I used in different ways. I clenched my fists when I came to ‘when we too stand up…’ and raised my arms for ‘We’ll resist…’ I wanted to make sure that I made my character look and sound like he really believed in everything he said. I made him much more alive and tried to show his certainty that they would survive and preserver their Jewish culture which is what his whole Jewish life is built on.
Word count 755
The Evaluation Phase
We finished this block of work by finally performing our given scene from Ghetto. My group’s performance wasn’t very successful but more successful than I thought it would be. When we were given scene twenty my first thoughts were there wasn’t much that happened and that it was very short. The speech I do at the start sounds as if it’s going to have a lot of importance in the scene until Gens comes in and steals my character’s high status. From that point on my character has to stand back and let Gens take the focus. I knew that the only chance I had of my character making an impact was with this one speech because after that I only had a few words to say, and my character exited about half way through the scene a long with Gens.
When it came to the performance I didn’t feel confident enough to put the strong feelings into that speech. I tried to use body language,(moving my arms), to create a sense of pride but I don’t think it was very successful. Kruk was trying to motivate the group in this speech but I don’t think I would have inspired them. I did seem to catch the audience’s attention so I must have been partly successful.
When Gens came in, he acted and sounded very panicky which was quite good because it changed the mood after my speech. This may have been because Tom was in fact nervous and panicky himself. He carried on that way during his two longer speeches and was probably speaking too fast but it did kind of work for his character.
James who played Dummy used a comical voice and humorous body language to add some comic relief to the scene. Dummy provides the only humour in the play and we all knew James would be this character because when we first read through the play he used a really good comical voice which he ended up using in the performance, His character really changed the mood of the scene as soon as he spoke.
Nick who played Srulik put his arm on James’ back so that it looked as if he was a real dummy. This worked really well especially when James moved his arms up and down when Dummy spoke. They decided to change the ending of the scene by having Dummy thrown off the stage when Hayyah leaves so Srulik and Ooma are left together. This showed a real feeling of anger in Srulik because Hayyah had left and was a successful effect to finish off the scene. When we had performed our performance I was very disappointed due to looking at the other group’s pieces but after evaluating all the factors of my groups successes I have decided that it was more successful than I originally thought.
If I was given the scene again I would make a few changes which would improve the performance. Firstly I would use lighting effects such as spotlights in order to alert the audience to which character was the focus at a certain time. For instance when my character is making his May Day speech you could have the spotlight on him and when he’s just about to finish his only speech we could have the spotlight move to where Gens is running on and follow him across the stage this would have made his entrance dramatic. I would also try and use a Jewish or Yiddish sounding accent to bring more realism to my character and also more variation between mine and Gens’ accents. Finally I would find some clothes that were more fitting towards my character in that situation for instance a red blazer, a smart shirt and trousers because it was supposed to be May Day, when people celebrate May Day they wear red and carry the red Communist flag. I would wear glasses because my character was a librarian and an educated man and I think that the glasses would have made me feel and look more the part of an intelligent man. I found it difficult to get into character in the performance and I think that wearing some kind of costume could have helped me do that.
Word count 761