18|9|13 - Open The Door - Speeches

We decided that the next scene the performance would be to have the Journalist read a speech that would switch the atmosphere to a more serious tone and explain most of the war situation. Mr Chipp gave us the first part of the speech, and then told us he wanted us to continue the report in the same style with a story in which we researched. The start of the speech was this:Since checks file July 2010 the regime has systematically and brutally repressed, silenced any and all opposition. The rebel…corrects self… Anti-government forces have used this brutality as a justification for their own ferocity and despite the furrowing of international brows the UN seems to be implicitly in agreement by the inaction's and silence: the ends justify the means.

We spent a while looking at the stories on the War Child page as we all agreed that the stories that would get the attention of the audience were about children younger than themselves. There were a variety of horrific events that were chosen. Some included rape, a father carrying their dead child, post traumatic stress humiliation. 

We all performed these speeches with a reporter tone, I held a pen in my hand and throughout my speech made corrections as if I were proof reading. We also had to show more emotion as the story got to us near to the end of the speech. 

Once everyone had performed there speeches, we tried to settle on a story that we all felt connected with us the most by being so emotionally scaring. These were the stories of rape and the father carrying the dead child. We had a debate about which the journalist would choose to write about and came to the decision that although the rape story is still horrific, the father and child story had a strong imagery that the Journalist would then be able to describe in more detail in her article.

After doing this, we all wrote a monologue of the same story and were able to workshop these with the other cast members. As the Journalist character is moved emotionally by the story we were able to add this into account when thinking of their characteristics. We liked the reformulation of the speeches, it gave a real sense of a reporter style that made the character seem like she was very used to depicting these stories to a dictaphone and we were able to put in subtle hints about what is politically correct to say.