Comparing 'Under the Bridge', 'Junk' and our own Devised piece Leaving Home.

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By Rachel Armstrong   -   19/08/2003

Comparing ‘Under the Bridge’, ‘Junk’ and our own Devised piece Leaving Home

        

        My practical work in July-September 2003 was for option 1 and consisted of Devised work on the theme of Homelessness. We titled our piece ‘Leaving Home’. There were four of us in our group. Our work is based on the play ‘Under the Bridge’. We start with Scene 3 of ‘Under the Bridge’, acted straight from the script, and then we improvise the rest of the play imagining what the characters from Under the Bridge’s past and future stories were.

        ‘Under the Bridge’ is by Neil Zoladkiewicz. It is a recent play – set in a city. It tells the story of a group of homeless people. It tries to rid you of prejudices you may have towards homeless people and shows how it can happen easily to even the most respectful people. It shows how not all homeless people are thieves, drug users, prostitutes and criminals. It is a very perceptive play and shows peoples feelings and is a really good eye opener and deals with some very important issues. ‘Under the Bridge’ is aimed at all ages really, but appeals to teenagers mostly, as it deals with issues that are very real to people of our age and probably effect us more than adults.

        This play reminded me very much of a book I read recently called ‘Junk’ my Melvin Burgess an English writer. It was written in 1997 and won the Carnegie Book Award in the same year. It is also about homelessness, set in the city like ‘Under the Bridge’, but the main theme is drugs, heroin in particular. It shows how living on the streets and drugs are often connected. It highlights the dangers of becoming addicted to drugs, but its not one of those “Don’t do drugs, drugs are bad” books, it helps you to make up your mind. It is such a good book and I’d recommend it to any one. It is aimed at teenagers but as with ‘Under the Bridge’ any one can enjoy it. The characters are all of teenage age, unlike ‘Under the Bridge’ where the characters are all of varying ages.

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        In all of the plays there are more characters than we have actors, so in some places we act more than one character. This can be confusing at points, so we tried to show that we were different people by using different accents. For instance in ‘Junk’ they would have had a Northern accent as it was set in a Northern town. It is not specified where “Under the Bridge” is set.

        Our piece mixes issues from both. It has the characters from ‘Under the Bridge’ but it contains the drug issues from ‘Junk’. In our performance I am ...

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