Drama Controlled Assessment

 INTRODUCTION

In drama we have been exploring the idea behind immigration. Fleeing their homes they can no longer live in because of war. We have studied a young boy named Aylan Kurdi, a syrian refugee trying to escape war who was 3 years old and found early hours of the morning, 2 september 2015, washed up on a beach near Bodrum, Turkey. His dad Abdullah Kurdi, 39 years old was on the boat when it sank. He was also with his wife Reihanna, age 35, his other son Ghalib, age 5 and 8 other refugees. The boat sank somewhere between the Turkish city Bodrum and the Greek island of Kos. They traveled on a flimsy inflatable boat which gave them little chance of surviving. His wife and youngest son drowned however him and his other 5 year old son Ghalib survived

SCENE, ITEM 1

The central question my group decided to explore was “every man for himself?” For a refugee is it strength in numbers and stick by your friends? Share everything you have with them, you aren’t alone and no one can mess around with you? Or do you go alone, look for food yourself and whatever you find is yours. No sharing with anyone however if something happens you have no friends to help you out which makes you more vulnerable. However some people stay with their friends to keep safe but when they aren’t looking instantly stab them in the back like rob them. they use their friends as protection then when the going gets tough they turn on their friends.

The situation we decided to explore in our scene was about two Turkish immigrants who are best friends. They both live in a park and are struggling to find food or a job. We made them both similar because what makes them best friends is that they have been there for each other through hard times. When sitting on the park bench ranting on about how their lives have changed for the worst they catch a young immigrant staring their way. We set the scene in a park because they have no where to go. We thought about how kids may go there to play and easily feel threatened however that’s not always the case. They ask the young immigrant over and soon discover that he is a immigrant from Syria and in the exact same position as them. However he is a Syrian so one of the Turks does not like this new guy, he shows this by refusing to shake his hand and turning his back on him and towards the audience, opening up his body language and frowning. This shows the audience he is not impressed with the new man they have just come in contact with. Both Turkish immigrant walk off and discuss what they will do about the clueless Syrian. They come to an overall decision to let him stay with them for the night as he has no where to stay. While fast asleep the Syrian wakes up and searches the two Turks. He finds a packet of crisps in one of their pockets, he finishes the crisps then sneakily plants the empty crisp packet in the other mans jacket. To show this was meant to be an act of betrayal against them he slowly sneaks around the stage, low on the ground. He wakes up the next morning and reaches into his pocket to find his crisps, however they are missing, he goes on a  rampage waking everybody around him up. The Syrian points to the other Turk revealing the empty packet of crisps, that was the last of their food.They argue for a while, getting louder and louder then it goes completely silent and the Syrian and the Turk leave the other Turk behind, alone. The packet of crisps symbolizes hope and we do not have much left, very little actually. It is literally stolen from our hands right in front of us with nothing we could do about it.

REPRESENTATION

All fast asleep Miquel wakes up, takes the little food we have left from David’s pocket(McCoys) and eats it. He leaves the empty packet in my pocket before falling back to sleep. David wakes up, wanted his crisps but erupts with anger when he can not find them which awakens me and Miquel.

With the food representing hope it has been stolen from our hands with little we could do about it. The packet of crisps was the last thing we had before setting off on this long journey. It took hours to find the crisps and minutes to be taken away from us which was what makes it so significant in our scene. Left with no food and no hope we have no chance at surviving in this cold world.

Our food represents our hope and the crumbs in the packet represents how much hope we had. We did not have a lot but that’s what had kept us going.

Prop

SCRIPT

After my scene i wrote a script, a soliloquy where after my character had been left he sat on a bench depressed and told his life story to a squirrel. He had completely lost the plot and found himself explaining his problems to an animal…

alone with no food or money, Akmed wonders what he will do next…

(A squirrel enters and sits next to Akmed)

Akmed: Now I have no one, I’m all alone. Framed by a filthy Syrian, I said I never trusted him, he should have listened. Now I’m stuck sitting here, speaking to a squirrel. Never would have thought I would have ended up like this, lost my best friend and sanity with in the space of 10 minutes. We grew up together, doing everything together, I thought we were inseparable. Obviously not. How was I wrong, I’m always wrong, I can’t seem to do anything right. I mean I’m the reason my dad left, mum never said anything but I knew, I’ve always known. It feels like last year I arrived here, its only been two months. I mean time really does drag when you have nothing. No food, no money, no shelter and no family. I remember, back in turkey. I hated it and all I wanted to do was leave. I told mum and dad but they never listened. Then when I finally settled down, started to make friends it was ripped away from me. Dad took me to England but that’s not what I wanted anymore. I didn’t want none of this.