An Analysis of Homelessness and Refugees

Character and Context:

Basically, 'homeless' means people who have nowhere to live, and 'refugees' means people who have been forced to leave their country, either because there is a war there or because of their political or religious beliefs.

Before we look at the reasons that make people especially teenagers homeless, let us look at what the word HOME means to the homeless:

Home is where you live, where you feel comfortable, a place to sleep in; it is where you feel safe and secure.

Home is somewhere you return to, it is happiness and its life.

Nearly 50% of the people who are homeless and live in the UK are teenagers. In addition, the reasons they became homeless are:

  • Drugs
  • Parents abusive
  • Sexual harassment
  • Parents breaking up

One character that I created was the teenager Yasmine, who became homeless because of her step- dad who treated her very badly. When she went to search for a job, she was rejected because she was under age and she did not have any qualifications for the job.

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I thought it was important to create three-dimensional characters that the audience could relate to. This was why I decided my character should be a teenager and why I chose to set my plays in recognizable British cities.

Structure and Plot:

One of the tasks that I did during this unit was the story of Adriatic. The story was about a boy who had to run away from home and leave his country because the police were after him because he was protesting about the closure of his school.

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The police arrested him and beat him. Then Adriatic had to do what the police asked him to do and he had to leave his mum.

My role in the play was Adriatic's mother and the structure that we used in the play was flashbacks and flash-forwards. I came up with the idea of using both structures. In the flashback, we showed the way that he was arrested and we used flash-forwards to show Adriatic's decision and the consequences of it.

I thought that my character was very sad and I think the way that I was speaking, my facial expressions and my voice made the audience feel sympathy for the character, so that I think that my characterization was very successful and it made the structure very effective.

Audience:

One task that I did during the unit was a monologue. I had to play either someone that was homeless or had been homeless. I chose to play a person who had been homeless. My monologue was very different from other people's monologues because mine was like telling the story of how I became homeless and that I am going to die because I am suffering from a horrible disease (HIV) because I was on drugs. My monologue was suitable for teenagers and adults. I thought it was not suitable for children because of the strong language, besides children will not understand about drugs and diseases.

Performance Space:

The task in which I focused on was a piece of drama showing the experiences of a homeless person. We used Pro-active narrator in order to change the outcome of events. I came up with the idea of performing in the street. The play was about a woman who works in a hostel who was trying to be nice to a homeless boy by helping him to find a place he can stay in. My character in the screen was a kind woman (angel) but the pro-active narrator is being evil to the homeless boy, so we froze and the pro-active narrator started speaking and took everything from the homeless boy and rewound the scene and made my character very horrible, then started to see the scene in her way. When I was rehearsing, I thought about the staging and I came up with the staging (thrust) because I thought it would suit our play because in the play we had a part where I had to walk towards the audience and speak. And because we were moving, a lot so I thought using thrust would be better than using end on.

Improvisation:

A task in which we used improvisation was, when we had to improvise how a refugee can get into the country. The play was about a girl who lived in England for a long time trying to help her friend come to England but stay as a refugee.

Before we started rehearsing, I came up with the idea of using letters. I decided to do that because I thought we could tell the audience about the two characters backgrounds and I wanted to make a change in the play as well. I thought that this process worked very well because the play was perfect and we rehearsed it very well and used the right structure and conventions.

Genre, Style & Convention:

The type of drama that we have performed most of, were documentary dramas because the unit was about Homelessness and refugees. Although often the genre was the same, the style was quite different because we used many styles during the unit like: Non- Naturalistic when we used the pro- active narrator, and masked when we did the play about the Adriatic. We used conventions a lot as well because with out conventions we could not develop or generate ideas or characters. The new convention that we studied in unit 2 was the Pro-active narrator who has the power to stop, rewind... etc. Also, the difference between the narrator and the pro-active narrator is that the pro-active narrator can control the play and make the characters do whatever he wants. Also, we used Monologues to help us develop our characters and help us understand more about the topic.

Semiotics:

Most of the characters (homelessness and refugees) in unit 2 have depth. We created depth by adding convention. Also, the music can be emotional e.g.: the documentary about the homeless children in South America. Here the tragedy music helped to show the misery of homeless children it affected the audience, made them feel sympathy for the children, and made them think about the horrible situation that is causing problems to our society.

Summative Task:

For our summative task, we had to devise a play to show the experiences of homeless people or refugees.

Characters:

Most of the characters in my play were stereotypes except the main character (Mariam) who was 3 dimensional because we showed the scenes her past life.

Structure and Plot:

The structure of our play was flash backs. The plot of the play was the story of this girl who was in court, while the judge was deciding whether she can stay in the country or if she should be deported. She thinks about what happened to her in the past, then we used a go flash back to her country (Turkey) where we show that she was in a refugees camp with her best friend. Then we showed how everything goes downhill and how her situation is getting worse, because of the bullying and the police harassment. Then she decided to escape and go and live somewhere else and when she tries to escape her friend was shot. Then we go back to the court scene and finally she is told that she will be deported.

Audience:

Our play was suitable for teenagers because it shows and educates them about the situation of the teenager character. I do not think it was suitable for children because the play had some violence in it.

Staging:

We chose End On as our staging because we did not have enough time to rehearse enough and think in detail about the staging. But if I thought more carefully, I could have used traverse as a staging because the audience could have seen a good view of the characters from both sides and see the characters' reactions more clearly.

Updated: Dec 19, 2022
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An Analysis of Homelessness and Refugees. (2022, Dec 19). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/an-analysis-of-homelessness-and-refugees-essay

An Analysis of Homelessness and Refugees essay
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