Fugee

'Fugee'

Rehearsals and Show Prep

As a class we sat down and read through the script written by Abi Morgan. Whilst reading through it we spoke about what our thoughts were and we decided that it was very contemporary, which we thought would work well for our final piece as its a style we hadn't covered before, which is a contrast to the Chekhov and Shakespeare texts with language that is different to the time we live in now. Upon looking at the script we discovered that it is difficult to comprehend the events of the play as it rarely goes in chronological order with many flashbacks and dream sequences throughout the play, some even in the same scenes. However, after we had read through the whole play and worked as a class to verbally put it in the right order, it made it easier as a class to follow the events of the play. The play starts with Kojo, the main protagonist, a 14 year old refugee form the Ivory Coast stabbing a man on an open street. The rest of the scenes are flashbacks and other parts of his story which lead up to the end of the play, which is also the opening sequence as the start and end are both the same scene. We find out whilst following Kojo on his story that he was made a child soldier on his 11th birthday by the same people who killed the rest of his family, after this he travels to the UK on a fake visa which he flushes down the aeroplane toilet but is later age disputed by social workers saying he is 18.

The next lesson we discussed as a class what we could remember from the play since reading it the lesson before, and then had to create short improvisations based solely on what we could remember. My group and I worked on the scenes of the play, the order the scenes played out, which were the most significant and how to sum them up. We decided as a group that it would be best to do the scenes in chronological order without any flashbacks or dreams as it would be the easiest way for the class to follow what is happening. We chose the scenes that we thought were most vital to the story and the character of Kojo. Starting with the birthday in which his family was killed and he became a child soldier as this is where his character arc starts to build, him arriving at the , then at the refugee centre to show how his life has been affected from the transpired events, when he is with the other refugees in the park which shows the care and relationships they have for each other, his meeting with his counsellor in which he gets age disputed and forced to leave the refugee centre, Kojo moving to the hotel with grown up and a man who tries to get into his room at night and finally the scene in which he stabs the man as it is the pinnacle point in the play.

Now that we had a better understanding of the script having read it all through as a class, we started to think about who we wanted to play. As there were so many characters we decided to multi-role so everyone had to pick 2 characters. I chose the Passport Controller, Refugee Counsellor and was later given Market Trader. I liked these roles as they have a sense of empowerment over Kojo in the scene they are in through the play, the Refuge Counsellor mainly as he is the one deciding Kojo's fate. I also liked the idea of playing Cheung as he had a strong lead in most of the play.

We then discussed the themes of the play which were based on the events  in the play and chose these ideas:

• Rejection
• Communication
• Acceptance
• Systems
• Family
• Refugees
• Diversity
• Duties
• Desperation
• Past
• Present
• Future (and how they impact  each other)

(These are the ideas we came up with about the themes of the play)

We then decided to do some research on the themes of the play to show our understanding of the characters and the situations they face. The area of research i decided to look into was child soldiers and some of their stories.

Research

In my research I found the story of Ugandan child soldier Grace Achara on the news website Aliajezeera on the following link:

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/11/tales-uganda-female-child-soldiers-151130115418168.html

A small exert from the story:

• Grace was abducted as a child and spent more than half of her life in the Ugandan Bush with the LRA. During that time she was raped and forced to kill. But since returning home last year, the former child soldier must now battle poverty and stigmatisation.  " I was just 16 when I killed for the first time" she says.

Just this small part of her story truly shows the horrors of being a child soldier and the struggles that they must go through just to survive. 

She was saved by the KONY 2012 campaign which took her from the ranks of Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lords Army Resistance (LRA) in which he had 30,000 child soldiers fighting for him, a quarter of them girls, fighting a 2 decade long war against President Yoweri Museveni's government. After her release and she was sent back to Gulu with her children but not her husband, they were dropped off at the Gulu Support the Children Organisation. The reasons for them being there were to provide healthcare, helping to trace lost family, trauma counselling and many vocational skills training and programmes to aid their rehabilitation and help them to ease back into their societal communities. Nowadays the centre is empty and seemingly abandoned, this meant that Grace was also a victim of unfortunate timing, as there was no governmental and humanitarian funding to help her out after being chased out by Kony's LRA a few years back. All she was given was a week at the centre, a mattress, blanket and a mosquito net. Grace then had to fend for herself and her young children at a time when there was no one to turn to. She later returned to the same centre 8 years later and was assessed, the report read that she was "not very good" still having a "bush mind".

I felt like this particular piece of research would be of much use to the character of Kojo so I relayed it to the people in my class with interest to his role.

Rehearsals and Show Prep

When we finished reading through the script, as a group we then decided to start putting some of the scenes together using our ideas. We went over many scenes for various different characters including the ones which we had said we preferred and the ones that we didn't want to be as it was a large ensemble piece in which we would be playing multiple roles so there was a chance of not being who we wanted to be. This was useful as it allowed us to get a feel for all  the characters and begin to decide how we wanted to demonstrate them. 

We had auditions for the roles we wanted to be as many people wanted the same role. In my group I read the role of Cheung and we improvised a scene of me and other characters leaving the refugee centre to go out and steal something, this seems plausible as it seemed something they would do often when in a group surrounded by their friends, it also links in well with some of the themes we discussed about the play. We decided in the improvisation that we would go into a shop and steal some food and drink while another character distracted the store manager. We also decided to give more back story having the characters pick pocket various members of the public before going into the shop to buy various items with their stolen money, this helped to further give insight to what the lives of child refugee's would be like whilst demonstrating their situation of lack of opportunity and being poor. I was fortunate with the characters Passport Controller and Refugee Counsellor as no one else managed to get the role meaning I could devise their characters any way I wanted.

We then began doing even more read-through of the script and acting some of the more difficult scenes, mainly the ensemble street scene with almost every character in it. The street scene is showed 6 times throughout the course of the play so we worked very hard on making sure that we managed to make them all look the same. Rehearsals at the beginning were difficult as parts had not fully been given out some different people would play different characters one day of rehearsals only for actors to change and have different ideas the next day.

As we rehearsed we discovered the issues with transitions related to the scenes that had mini scenes in them, such as flashbacks that required a change of set or lighting, costumes on characters and quick positioning on stage. I had difficulty with this as in one scene I play the character of counsellor and the scene right after that I play the Market Trader, this was an issue even before the idea of using costumes.

Moving on we managed to finalise the casting for some of the smaller characters in the play such as mother and dying man. 

Then we started looking at costumes, sounds and props that would be used at various parts throughout the show in different groups. One group went through the script makings note of all the props we would need, another the costumes for different characters and another all the lighting and sounds used throughout the play. We wrote all of these up and put them up on the wall in our drama studio so we could see and make changes as we went along in the shows development. These are what we managed to find in the script.

(Above are the props, costume, and sound that we found throughout the script)

A member of class decided to write up a list of all the scenes on A3 paper so that we would have a reference of the scenes whilst on stag in the rehearsal space, it has the scene number, location and s small bit about what happens in each of the scenes, this was then photo copied and out up in different places including backstage for actors to look at when they weren't in the scenes. This was very useful as it was handy when backstage and when rehearsing without a script.

(One of the lists put up backstage)

We did more run through, timing theme to see how smooth each of the transitions were. In the first run through we timed, it was 1 hour and 20 minutes. We spoke as a group about staging and transitions and speed ran through the play to see how fast we could get through the play, we managed to do it again in 1 hour and 5 minutes.

We then moved into the theatre to run the play, to see if we had to adapt anything differently. We chose to put rails behind the curtains for costumes and certain props. At the back of the stage we had 5 chairs that were used for different roles throughout the play so we could easily get to them when we needed to. Then we slowly wen t through the play with the tech crew working with them to incorporate different cues for lighting, sound, and transitions. To fully make sure it was clear and concise we went through the play multiple times.

After working with the tech crew, we brought in various different costume ideas for use in rehearsals prior to the show to see what worked best with each character, we did dress rehearsals in different costumes in both the morning and afternoon for different characters in different scenes.

• For Passport Controller I wore a smart blazer, white shirt and tie in order to show off his professionalism and realism to the actual job role.
• For Refugee Counsellor I wore a shirt and colourful jumper in order to show my friendliness but also seriousness for the role.
• For market trader I wore a smart shirt in order to give off the idea that I wanted to be professional in that role but only sold various items such as drinks and fruit, ideally I wanted an apron but could not find one in time for the show when the idea came about.

In the scenes where I played different characters in the scene right after, I found that by placing my costumes on the railing as close to the opening as I could, I would save time and be able to change quicker.

Performance Evaluation

Overall the performance went very well, the afternoon show I felt was the best show we had done as we had a lot of practice before that so we had refined it and made it the best we could.

Some people forgot their lines which made other actors miss their cues while on stage, but it was smooth so people didnt reale that three were any mistakes, this was due to the improvisation work tghat we had done in class to prepare for situatuon like that.