There are many scenes in which George is physically abusing his family, most often in front of other members of the family and I believe this is one of the hardest hitting aspect of all the views expressed.
It made me understand the terror found by the relatives of the ‘monsters’ who choose to use their fists in a gust of rage instead of discussing their problems, it makes me angry that cowards have to punch their wives instead of talking to them.
I believe, out of all the different factors in life, domestic violence is the most important to the playwright; I think she may have experienced it from an early age.
Racism is also a point that is ever present in everyday life and it is one that the playwright tries to raise awareness on, I know for certain that she will have experienced it in her life and I think the nightclub scene, in which only English people are allowed in to, personifies racism extremely well.
It is racial discrimination like this that is put across very well in the play and made everyone aware of such occurrences at that time.
Although it is not direct racism, there are very many instances in which racism is the main theme.
For example, Tariq and his white friends are walking behind his father, George, and they are all making fun of him.
Maneer, Tariq’s brother, explains to Tariq that they are not laughing at George but actually at Tariq, calling him a ‘stupid paki’ for making fun of his own family.
There are many other aspects of racism in the play and these are magnified in the film with the character across the road screaming racist comments at every chance he can.
I think racism is a very common problem in everyday Muslim life and the playwright has expressed her thoughts in a way that will not cause any commotion with critics and pundits around the country.
The racial prejudice shown in many of the scenes is an exaggeration of that which happens to most Muslims in the English Community at the present time. But in the 1970’s this did occur, people were so racist they didn’t let anyone who wasn’t English into the clubs across the country.
The strategies of Marking the Moment, Still Image and Thought Tracking helped us understand racism more clearly for many reasons.
The Thought Tracking helped me understand racism more because it gave me all the views on racism of all the other pupils in the workshop and helped me finally make up my mind on the entire play and all my thoughts on racism were grouped together and I finally understood what Muslims go through when they are exposed to racism from all their fellow neighbours and other people.
- The scene showing how George was treated upon his arrival in Britain helped me understand how he developed into the George we see in the play because you can see how he was racially discriminated and how he took this abuse and channelled it into his own hate for racists.
You can tell he has no time for people like these and he uses his own son as a way to relieve himself of his innermost anger, as a ‘punchbag’ perhaps and finds domestic violence an easy way out of his depressing thoughts.
Forum theatre was a great way to explore the scenes because it allowed everyone to express their views on a specific scene. This scene involved the birth of George and Ella’s first child Nazir.
In our forum theatre, Alex Shaw volunteered to be George whilst Rebecca Hamilton volunteered to be Ella. Usually in form theatre the audience has a choice to change each character to which they want but the group decided that the pairing worked so well together and showed very good emotions, very similar to the emotion that parents would feel when they had their first child.
This forum theatre helped us all fell what we believe George and Ella felt with their firstborn son and after seeing the techniques used by Alex and Rebecca we developed them into our own versions of the scene.
I believe that if it weren’t for the forum theatre, our versions of the play would not have been of as a good quality as they were.
Evaluation
On the whole, I think the whole class performed to an excellent standard and each individual used their talents to put across their thoughts on the serious matters that the play explores in a very sensible and serious way.
The workshop was a fun but serious way to investigate the everyday life that a muslim man or woman has to endure when faced with arranged marriage. It also was a good way to experience domestic violence. We were all treat like adults and I thought that this brought out new characters in every one of us. Here are my depictions on how every group and individual performed on the day.
Group 1- this consisted of Emma, Tamzin, Sarah, Jessica, Chantara, Tracy and Robert.
Emma- I thought emma played her character very well
