Our stimulus for these Dramas was the play "a legal weapon" by Mark Wheeller.

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Our stimulus for these Dramas was the play “a legal weapon” by Mark Wheeller. This is about a boy called Andy who was speeding in his car and collided with a young girl, Kelly, on her moped and she died. And as a result of this Andy was sent to prison. It also includes the relationship of Jazz and Andy and how their relationship falls apart when Jazz goes to university and meets the young footballer Matt. Suspicion is raised about how close Jazz and Matt actually are.

My first thoughts about this stimulus was that it was very hard to follow as so much is going on at the same time, I found this confusing. But once we got into lesson and discussed the play in more detail it became a lot clearer to me. It also helped that we acted out a few scenes giving me a clears view of some of the characters.

This is what we decided in our class Andy was like as a character, what he thought of himself and what other people thought of him. Andy acts as though he thinks very highly of himself, but I can’t help but feel that this is all a cover up and a front as to not let people meet the real Andy. It matters a lot to Andy about what people think of him and how he comes across, he tries too hard to impress a lot of the time. The way he acts and tries to put across this front makes people see him as arrogant and self-centred. Probably not the image Andy was going for. When Andy was first introduced to the play I thought that he felt that he was the innocent one and victim in everything that happened, an attention seeker. This especially shows when Andy reacts badly to the people that caused his Grandad to have a heart attack he calls them “murderers” and he feels it is entirely their fault, this makes me a hypocrite later in play.

To bring Andy’s character to life we used voice and movement really well. Since we all decided that Andy tried to act like he was “one of the guys” and tried to act very sure of himself he should have a strong walk where he uses his body a lot to show that he was not afraid of anyone and that he was tough. This also came a cross in his voice- when he was maybe acting up to other people his voice can change to show that this isn’t the real him and that he is putting on a front. The only time really you ever get to see the true Andy is when he hears about his Grandad and when he is in prison. This is also the only time that Andy should is shown as having strong feelings and having real emotions, his whole body language and voice totally changes to something much more softer looking. Also when Andy talks a lot of hand movement isn’t needed. Men move their hands less than women anyway but also Andy never talks very passionately about anything and it is when you talk about something like that or something very meaningful to you that you use your hands a lot more. So really through out the play there are 2 different characters to show Andy one arrogant one and one shy sensitive one. And if you act these characters both to the extreme you can really emphasise the drastic change in his personality at different times.

We did a prepared improvisation about what was going on in Kelly’s head just after she had been hit by Andy’s car. I was in a group with Sarah, Nick and Rhian, we showed the happy moments in Kelly’s life, and fond memories and we linked them all to her moped. We started with a still image of Kelly’s body sprawled on the floor and people staring down at her lifeless body. We then changed to Kelly being woken up on Christmas day getting a set of keys as her present (these where for her new moped waiting out side). Then we turned it into a scene with 4 children having an argument about who will have the better life when they are older and what each will own, with Kelly announcing proudly that she would have a moped. We linked this scene with one with Kelly celebrating her birthday with some friends and being sick as a result of too much alcohol. The last scene was of Kelly getting on her moped for the first time. And then back to the very first image of people standing around her body. I think that this worked really well and he responded to the task originally and this was really successful. We made the whole thing run really smoothly and this created a dream sort of effect.

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We only hot seated 2 people through out these sessions. Andy (Stacey) and Jazz (Katie). We asked them questions to do with how they felt about each other now after all that has happened between them. In their relationship and how they are both coping with Andy now in jail. We also asked both of them how they felt about themselves and if they had any regrets and what they would change if they could. Jazz regretted staying with Andy so long and without saying this I got the impression that she felt really stupid since she ...

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