Name… (Performer)
Candidate number:
One of our most influential scenes was ‘The news reporter scene’. We developed this scene
as a way of addressing structural racism in the media. This scene stemmed from the
research we had done on how knife crimes victims’ ethnicity (especially black people)
affected how likely they were to make national press. A study published on the new
Ethnicity Facts and Figures website and Home Office, concluded that:
One in 5 black people were more likely to fall victim to knife crime in comparison
to 15% of white people.
We also used our initial research in which we found that people that aren’t white don’t
make front pages, despite the fact they make up a large majority of knife crime victims. We
developed a scene around the idea that black people are painted as the face of knife crimes.
We started off with the idea of researching the dates of recent stabbings of black people
and seeing whether they made headlines and comparing it to the days when white people
had been stabbed. We would stand in a line holding the newspapers and each person would
say the person/people that died on that day whilst revealing the headline. Although it did
portray structural racism, it wasn’t engaging enough to connect with the audience. After
coming to this conclusion, we decided we needed to show not tell, and allow the audience
to infer the meaning. We continued to build on this idea of structural racism, this time
instead of using newspapers, we used people in our group who played the roles of news
reporters as they could use their tone and facial expressions to help us to convey our aim
unlike inanimate objects. The news reporters were reporting the name of black victims
whilst Dara and I lay USC on the floor, side by side wearing black tops to represent the black
victims. The news reporters began detailing black victims but quickly diverted to topics such
as Brexit and celebrities, whilst Dara and I gradually made our way up, and walked upstage
left and upstage right where we stood miming being stabbed. We did this to show that
matters which were irrelevant were taking precedence over black people losing their lives.
Then, one of the news reporters who wasn’t originally on-stage walks on and says, ‘breaking
news young white female found dead’. The news reporters pause for a split second before
catching on to the storyline and making it their headline. The news reporters slowly engulf
Dara who has now taken off her black shirt and is wearing a white one underneath, whilst I
remain upstage bleeding out receiving no attention. Whilst engulfing Dara the news
reporters say ‘she had no prior gang links. This was done to show that as soon as there is a
white victim of knife crime the media begin to care, and automatically link black people and
knife crime to gang warfare, which although not always the case, is portrayed as such in the
media. So, by making it clear she had no gang involvement, it then becomes a miscarriage of
justice, and important that the life of someone so young was lost, otherwise it’s the victim’s
own fault. Therefore, achieving our aim of portraying structural racism.
Another scene we refined in rehearsals was the end scene in which we were no longer
our characters and spoke directly to the audience. We scripted this part and spoke to the
audience about the knock-on effect of knife crime. We were uncertain on whether this
scene contributed to the performance, so we performed it to our peers, who said that it
lacked passion and wasn’t engaging to them as an audience member. We responded to this
feedback by not scripting this scene and instead talking to the audience to try and get
through to them. We used improvisation to find the basis of what we wanted to say. We
Candidate number:
One of our most influential scenes was ‘The news reporter scene’. We developed this scene
as a way of addressing structural racism in the media. This scene stemmed from the
research we had done on how knife crimes victims’ ethnicity (especially black people)
affected how likely they were to make national press. A study published on the new
Ethnicity Facts and Figures website and Home Office, concluded that:
One in 5 black people were more likely to fall victim to knife crime in comparison
to 15% of white people.
We also used our initial research in which we found that people that aren’t white don’t
make front pages, despite the fact they make up a large majority of knife crime victims. We
developed a scene around the idea that black people are painted as the face of knife crimes.
We started off with the idea of researching the dates of recent stabbings of black people
and seeing whether they made headlines and comparing it to the days when white people
had been stabbed. We would stand in a line holding the newspapers and each person would
say the person/people that died on that day whilst revealing the headline. Although it did
portray structural racism, it wasn’t engaging enough to connect with the audience. After
coming to this conclusion, we decided we needed to show not tell, and allow the audience
to infer the meaning. We continued to build on this idea of structural racism, this time
instead of using newspapers, we used people in our group who played the roles of news
reporters as they could use their tone and facial expressions to help us to convey our aim
unlike inanimate objects. The news reporters were reporting the name of black victims
whilst Dara and I lay USC on the floor, side by side wearing black tops to represent the black
victims. The news reporters began detailing black victims but quickly diverted to topics such
as Brexit and celebrities, whilst Dara and I gradually made our way up, and walked upstage
left and upstage right where we stood miming being stabbed. We did this to show that
matters which were irrelevant were taking precedence over black people losing their lives.
Then, one of the news reporters who wasn’t originally on-stage walks on and says, ‘breaking
news young white female found dead’. The news reporters pause for a split second before
catching on to the storyline and making it their headline. The news reporters slowly engulf
Dara who has now taken off her black shirt and is wearing a white one underneath, whilst I
remain upstage bleeding out receiving no attention. Whilst engulfing Dara the news
reporters say ‘she had no prior gang links. This was done to show that as soon as there is a
white victim of knife crime the media begin to care, and automatically link black people and
knife crime to gang warfare, which although not always the case, is portrayed as such in the
media. So, by making it clear she had no gang involvement, it then becomes a miscarriage of
justice, and important that the life of someone so young was lost, otherwise it’s the victim’s
own fault. Therefore, achieving our aim of portraying structural racism.
Another scene we refined in rehearsals was the end scene in which we were no longer
our characters and spoke directly to the audience. We scripted this part and spoke to the
audience about the knock-on effect of knife crime. We were uncertain on whether this
scene contributed to the performance, so we performed it to our peers, who said that it
lacked passion and wasn’t engaging to them as an audience member. We responded to this
feedback by not scripting this scene and instead talking to the audience to try and get
through to them. We used improvisation to find the basis of what we wanted to say. We
