Womans Aid

My group (Kat, Bex and myself) have been a little slapdash recently, with so much work we had all put other things before this project thinking we had plenty of time on our hands, it was only this week that really any of us realised that i was Christmas.
As we had this Thursday off we deiced to meet early and get everything sorted, we knew we wanted to work with Woman's Aid but we had several questions to ask ourselves

• Why do we want to work with them
• What are we wanting to say
• Who do we want to say it to
• What is our venue
• Where abouts is our venue
• When are we putting this on
• What type of theatre will work best

After looking at all the questions, we looked back at Cardboard Citizens, we all felt that in someways we would be preaching to the converted if we were to try and travel round different refuges and also we were not sure about the issues that would come into that, there was a lot of research needed.

We all really like verbatim theatre and all agreed that this is the best way of telling a story that is so personal, and if we wanted to hit home to our audience, we needed really people, real stories and real words!

This is what we have come up with as a starting idea, that personally i think is quite solid, but please feed back on ideas or questions as its very easy to over look things with your personal work.

We are getting in touch with refuges and seeing if there are 3 woman who would be willing to anonymously tell us there stories, and make that a piece of verbatim theatre, then tour with it to different areas. We want to go to places like local WI'S (woman's institutes) in these areas and do a work shop, using forum theatre to see what there solutions are. One thing we did defiantly agree from cardboard citz, you think think there are easier ways out than there actually are. Allot of people say, 'I'd just leave him if he hit me!' That's fine for them to say, but whats about the years of manipulation and don't forget she wouldn't be with him if she didn't love him!

Once we have done this workshop we then invite them to a venue near by, ask them to invite family and friends to listen to the real life story and help support Woman's Aid, charge a small donation and put on a half hour verbatim piece the next night.

We also would like to take it to a male audience, see what there thoughts were. We talked about possibly taking it to a working men's club, however i raised the thought about it not being a controlled environment, what do you think? Instead I'm arranging us to take the workshop to (fingers crossed) The Leicester Tigers Rugby team.

We also said that if this was a company we would also in the future think about bringing in another team that looked at abusive woman, for the men's aid. But for now as we are 3 woman we just wanted 3 woman's stories.

I also have information on statistics, sometimes that can be as shocking to people, even more shocking than the stories themselves, its the knowledge that you don't have, like with how much a hostel costs!

I rang Woman's Aid and they were very nice and seemed very interested in our project. I am now in contact with two people at Head office who are doing allot of ground work for us. We have no split for Xmas and are looking into venues and dates to meet with people, Hoping that we should start touring after half term and finish end of March.

Very excited and feel like i have the buzz back of doing a project.

Personal

I'm going to talk to you now about someone very very close to me that i lost when i was 11. He was the person i shared everything with, and he took himself away, by accident.
When i was 14 i went off the rails, completely. I'm not proud of the things i did, but i did them...it was my way of coping, i don't talk about his person now...not because i don't want to, but because it hurts.

When i was 14 i faced my first time at starting a new school by myself, i had my friends but he wasn't there. I had lost my community!

Nearly 9 years on I've only just found out who i am, through friends, travel and family i have finally found me!

I want to help people who have suffered like me, i didn't have any help at the time and i think that charities that help people who have lost loved ones especially children are fantastic.

I started getting involved with my dads charity CVOC about 2 years ago now and i get so much out of it and i think by helping them, they have helped me. Through working with these children i have realised how small others problems are and just how well children deal with death, some of there stories i couldn't even begin to tell you, they are true hero's to be able to deal with so much at such a young age. The parents stories are just as powerful as the children's and heart breaking...if you want real raw stories they are best told through that persons words and actions...this is why i love Verbatim theatre.

This is also what inspired me to travel as well as my parents love for it, i wanted to help more children around the world, so i taught i Brazil, Cambodia and India as well as having fun and seeing the sights, the greatest thing i learnt was, i can do this by myself and alone...i am still strong.

I am who i am and that's all that i can be

Utopia

What is Utopia???

Utopia is your idea of perfect!

Each person has there own idea of the perfect world as because we are all different so are our opinion's on what is perfect, in some respects this is why the world works and at the same time it is the reason for many wars and fights.

Hitlers idea of Utopia very nearly happened, who are we to say that he was wrong and we were right, i agree undoubtedly that we were as the pain and suffering that he caused was catastrophic but how do we learn right from wrong and if we do learn the same as everyone else what is it that affects or changes that behaviour and creates 'bad' people like Hitler??

Questions that are asked my society create conflict but without conflict would there be a society?

*What is the right way to bring up children?
*What should the drinking age be?
*When are you ready to have sex?
Questions that are very much part of everyday life...should we not decide when we are ready to do these things...does the fact there are laws mean we see them as rules to abide by or be broken and who is it that actually decides?

On my 16th birthday for example one of my mates brought me a packet of fags and packet of condoms and a lottery ticket?!? What message does this send!

This week the question was posed 'what is your idea of utopia for the drama department in this college?'

Everyone else was talking about having something like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, all i wish for is that we had more rooms and more resources a room where you had all the lighting and sound for atmosphere and a room just for costume and an comfy sofa chill out room to sit and talk through ideas and research, also somewhere that could pick your thoughts out of your head and put them into words as this is general an area i struggle with (you may have noticed)...nothing too exciting just more practical, boring me!

I just think that there are a lot of all doing different things all needing different spaces and sometimes you'll go to a rehearsal and actually all you really need is to mess around with costume or lighting and sound, but you can't cause you need someone else to help you with that!!!

I don't think people realise how looked after we are at uni!

PS I would like a dungeon to put anyone who says drama is a doss subject or asks if i can me a good tree!!!!!!!!!!

Insight to the past!

Fiona and Mary came a couple of weeks ago and i thought it was fantastic , we learnt so much about there past and for me there were some real key moment whilst they were talking that really caught my attention, for different reasons.

I loved it when we talked to them about their first love, to me it was a real insight to just how fantastic times were and they've developed over time. Such as Mary meeting her 1st partner playing tennis and then playing doubles,etc. Seems to be like something i thought they made up for TV and Fiona's husband driving her home drunk and not knowing the way...how crazy is that. I also think that the fact that fashion has changed so dramatically over the years, i feel like were and era that doesn't fit in as our dress code seems so normal for the flower power and the colourfulness of the 60's and 80's, maybe catch up with me in 40 years time, when people are age are looking at our clothes thinking how cool...i just don't see it happening...nothing is as outrageous as it used to be, is what i think I'm getting at. I agree with equal rights 100% but the fight that people like Emily Pankhurst went through seems so brushed aside to me, i know allot of my friends didn't even turn up to vote and how sad is that, woman fought to give us that right and now we can't be bothered to even respect them by turning up. Another thing is woman keeping a career and being sorting out the house...were not wonder woman, Woman used to stay at home and look after children and the house now they try to to do all of that and hold down a full time job...who says they had it hard back then, I'm joking of course...but only to a certain extent!

I'm going to sound like a complete looser when i say this but i was completely envious of them, this maybe strange but doesn't anyone wish that they would have been round for one of the world wars??? I do, i know it was such a devastating time in history and not one that some people like to talk about but i just think personally that we take so much for granted these days. Mary talked about at night when everything would be pitch black and you'd hear the sirens and have to hide and as you looked into the night sky and the lights were beaming into the sky looking for Nazis planes there would all of a sudden see the silhouette of a small plane streaking across the sky, and how scary it was to see this and hear this and just how terrifying that must have been to live through it, but also how amazing it would have been to look back at these memories and share them. I only hope that when I'm Mary's age people will be as interested in my travelling stories, as they don't seem to be these days...why is that??? I find that a lot of my parents friends are unbelievably interested the countries I've been to and things I've done. People my own age however, seem to be less caring.

Maybe it's just me!!!

Homesick

Right, firstly i apologise to my blog once again for the neglect...'I'm sorry Blog but i hate you!'

Homesick is a word that i have never associated with myself, I have lived away from home for nearly 4 years now and last week i had the first signs of homesick, OK so it's not a decease, I'm not at risk but i am upset and feeling odd! (odder than usual)
How is it you can be away from home for a year and only see your parents once for one week and then time when you are living only two and a half hours away I'm homesick!

For the first time in my life in London i can the North/South divide...for the record i am from the midlands! Everything is different down here and i had never even noticed it before maybe because i have been here for so long I'm now looking for things that are different, and that made me miss being at home, there things that would seem so trivial to you but to me, at this moment in time, there huge. I want to go for a walk...where can i go? In Leicester about 10 mins away from my house is a park, it is massive and has old ruins and there was Lady Jane Grey who lived in this house...its beautiful, there are deer and a river running though and it's so peaceful, i go there for picnics with my friends in the summer, my Nana and grandpa used to take me there when i was little, I'd go horse riding there and i used to take my dog there. You can see it from my house and my mum and dads house...Maybe its familiarity that I'm searching for...i wonder how many of us have places like this...even the same place that we share but for different reasons...this just got me thinking about people's communities that are together but separate. In the work we did with Molly on Ritualistic theatre we talked about the uni and different people memories of certain buildings or rooms...i hadn't actually linked any of this until i just sat down and started to type funny how things come to us when we think in detail...everything fits into everything eventually!