In our war play we tell the story of how two families go to war over something small that soon becomes something big. In our play we had two families and the war began over one family owing another family money. We devised a play that showed in war there are no winners only losers. In our play we had two families one called the Capone family and one called the Makevele family. The Capone family owed the Makevele family a lot of money and they were both rich families but the Capone family refused to pay the money.
The father of the Capone’s called ‘ papa’ refused to pay the money he owed Mr Makevele, he owed Mr Makevele an amount of 1 million dollars and he owed him this money for over 30 years. He owed him the money because Mr Makevele had given him this money to start his business and when his business took off he became greedy and decided not to pay his dept. This sparked off a war between the two men and soon they had families and their sons became involved in the war as well. In the end both families ended up dead and the moral of the story was in war people have to die and there are no winners. Others groups had a similar devised drama to us, their plays were all about war, and another group also did families at war. There performance was different because they did a Romeo and Juliet type of story where a boy loved a girl form another family problem was there families hated each other.
Like our play there’s ended in death, the children who loved each other ended up dead. The other group used skills such as still image, slow motion, mime and many other skills. For example they used a skill such as still image when Romeo died and the family found out, everyone froze suddenly and began moving again when the mother was crying. The first scene was of the two fathers meeting in secret and Mr Makevele giving Papa the money. In this scene we used this dramatic technique called ‘ still image’. This is where the whole scene freezes and no one moves.
The scene had a still image as the money changed hands. This was used because it was effective and would show the audience that this money transaction was important. The second scene is where we see meet both the families in a narration. A narration is where a person comes out of character to talk to the audience and give information.
So we used a narration because we needed a way to introduce the family. We introduced each family member one by one and they did a little action and went back to their still image. We used the narration with the still image so the audience would not be distracted and they could concentrate on the play. The third scene was where we had moved the 30 years on and now both of the men had two male children. The war had carried on with the sons and the older sons hated each other. The younger sons however were friends and they didn’t like the war but they couldn’t persuade their families.
We used a slow motion in this scene. Slow motion is when the scene slows down to show how dramatic the scene was. The scene slowed down when the fathers saw each other from across the road. This was to show the tension that was between the two characters.
The fourth scene was the confrontation between the two elder sons. Obviously this scene wasn’t a happy scene and there was a big argument in the scene. There was a thought aloud given by both brothers. The thoughts aloud were very brief. They basically both stated there hate for one another and their desire to kill each other. A thought aloud is when a character comes out of the scene to talk to the audience about how they feel.
We used this skill because we thought this would give the audience an insight on how the characters where feeling without telling the others characters. The fifth scene was about the brothers reporting the confrontation to their fathers and it included both families preparing for a battle. We used a skill called ‘ split screen’, which is when two scenes go on at once. We used this skill because we thought it would be effective in portraying the similarities in the families.
We had both families preparing for the battle at the same time. In the final scene we had both families going to have a ‘ shoot out’ because of the anger and tension between them. We used slow motion which is when the scene slows down but still carries on. We had a slow motion when both fathers shot each other and die.
We also had another slow motion when both older brothers shot each other and died. We used slow motion because this was an effective skill that would show the audience how important these seconds were. The two younger brothers survived and did a dual loge together. A dual loge is when two characters speak to the audience. They spoke to the audience and basically stated that death is not the answer. We used a dual loge because this was an effective skill and it would tell the audience what they felt about what had happened.
We learned that war is not the answer and people often die because of war. In war there are no winners and someone always dies. I also learned that war doesn’t just affect the person involved it can also affect friends or family if they choose to get involved.
