UN Children's Rights

In class we presented the 45 childrens rights made by the UN in an extremely interesting way. It ws fun hearing all the other people presenting methods of their rights. We did rap and blues to present our rights and it turned out to be very funny and thrilling to make.

soundscapes

THE SOUND SCAPES THAT WE DID WERE INTERESTNG AND DIFFRENT ACTING STYLE THAT YOU WOULD DO FROM NORMAL AND IT WE ALL SEMMED TO BE ABLE TO DO THIS EASILY BUT THERE WERE A COUPLE OF LAUGHS THAT I COULD NOT CONTROL AND OTHERS.even though there was no sound it was very visual it was kind of lke miming in a strange way but with out the serious enthusiasm but i kind of enjoyed it. but wat i mostly like was that last lesson with our child abuse story were we acted out.

Street Children

Street Children World Statistics:

53,000 Children are subjected to homicide every year (Murdered)

Up to 80% of children suffer physical abuse in their home. This seems like rather a lot but I suppose in some parts of America and other developed countries children are stilll abused. I think that child abuse in developing countries is not uncommon, perhaps because there government has not proposed lows or enforces them.

120,000,000 million girls are subjected to rape or other sexual crimes.

In 2004, 218,000,000 children were subjected to child labour. I dont think that chiild labour is common in developed countries but common in 3rd world countries creating products for richer countries

My Coment

In the last class that we had we used a technique called soudscaping. It is when you and/or a group of people each have a different sound that you can just repeat over and over again when you are told to. We soudscaped the Wild West. I made the sound of a horse running.
Yes, i think it is possible to make a skit and play without extreme movement and words. I think there would still need to be a bit of movement. I dont think a lot of people would choose to go and watch a soundscape rather than a play. But i think you could still create an image through sound. The noises that are being used to create a soudscape would have to be very clear so that it is easier for the viwer(s) to imagine what is happening in the story that is trying to be told. I enjoyed doing this exerise because you can create your own image of what is going on through the sounds that you can hear.

<>

Our task was to imagine the many different sounds that could be heard in a Wild West setting. Then everyone had to create their own sound. The class came up with some creative sounds of explosions, gun shots, horses galloping and so on.
These sounds helped to create effective drama, as it gave us a good understanding of the setting and Wild West theme. I also found it easy to use the sounds and picture in my head what was going on at the time. For example, I could imagine how horses would gallop while the people were shooting in the air using their guns as different sounds were made.
However, to use only sounds to create drama would be extremely hard because you have to be able to create the sounds so that the audience will be able to understand what is going on in a performance. Also unless you make the sounds interesting, the drama won’t be interesting. With dialogue, it is a lot easier to perform while keeping the audience entertained.

My Reflection of the Soundscapes

i thought that creating soundscapes in drama was a unique and interesting way to create an atmosphere. At first it was sort of hard to create a succesful soundscape because everyone got confused and forgot their sounds, or they didn't know what the different signals that ms. tickle gave us, but after the first couple of tries it generally got better. i think that, although a soundscape is a unique, and sometimes useful way to introdue a piece of drama, or a play, etc. i don't think that it can replace drama as an art yet. this is mainly because it would be very hard and, potentially useless, to create a peformance that totally consisted of gunshots, and cowboys yelling random things at the audiance. It would only further confuse the audiance in general. Although soundscapes might be a good warm-up practice, etc. it should not be used in the actual performance!!!!!

Sounds

During class we did an exercise which was based on making a setting seem more interesting. To participate in this exercise every member of the class had to choose a sound they would have to choose a sound which suits the setting they are in. Our first setting chosen was the Wild West and the sounds made the setting seem cheesy but really well organized. I personally think that if this exercise is improvised it sounds better than when it is actually practiced.

Our second goal was to create a town full of noise. We had to choose 2 noises. One made by our monologue character and one made by the setting in this case the town and it people. This exercise worked well and it really made our little town seem like a big city.

-Yusif

Sound Scaping

I thought that the sound scaping was not very effective because when you had people saying things like YeeHa and just repeating it over and over it sounded both fake and dumb. Also I personally don't believe that there was that many gunshots in the wild west. It did create effective drama because some sounds such as the wind blowing gave it a real feel of the desert and a not busy town but that errie kind of nice effect was ruined when someone yelled something or shot a gun. I dont believe it will be easy to make a drama performance that keeps the audience captivated without a story or some sort of dialogue that isnt YeeHa or Howdy Y'all.

Soundscapes

I believe that soundscapes are a form of drama. In my opinion, soundscapes are a lot of different sounds that are combined in different orders to create a story. In class, we were split into two groups and had to make different sounds in a logical order to make a story. I think the main idea of a soundscape is to create a story, using sound, that an audience can see with their eyes closed. If the soundscape is realistic and is in an order that makes sense, then the audience can picture what is going on around them. It is kind of like a movie in which you have to use your imagination.

ways to create drama

• for me Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in perfomance. In the last lesson we learn that the drama can be often conbined with sounds that we made and also with imagination. we craete effective drama when we imaginated that we were cowboys or cowgirls and we did some sounds relatives at these characters. We can have Drama without dialogue because we can do some others signs and use the imagination or other ways to communicate with the other people and also the drama can be without story becuase we can use the imgination and do a history without think before to do it we can do drama on the rigth moment just with imagination .

Soundscapes

Comment on our use of soundscapes last lesson. In what ways did they create effective drama? Is it possible to have drama without a 'story' and without dialogue?

UNICEF photo essay

I think that UNICEF decided to do an essay in this way because it is more realistic. You actually see what the life of these children is. You can feel their pain, their happiness. When you read an essay you usually get bored. Sure, you can imagine everything. Video essays have bigger effect on people. They make you think about these children.
I think UNICEF wanted to show that not everywhere rights of children are respected. UNICEF shiows the situations that lots od children are in now. UNICEF wanted us to know that every child has many rights, even if he is poor country, even if he is not like others. UNICEF wanted us to know that all children are equal. UNICEF shows the situations that children are in now.
I think that our play can also have somtehing like that. We can show a lot of different childen in it. A lot of children that don't know their rights.

UNICEF Photo essay

I feel they chose to show it this way because it helps the viewer to understand the meaning more. it also makes the presentation more interesting to look at, and therefore learn about. By seeing pictures it backs up the point that they make in their writing, and then makes us feel stronger towards the children. For me this is a lot more effective then a word essay, because words a just words, but pictures show that the problem is actually there.
UNICEF is trying to show us that there a rules, and laws for the way children should b treated, but these rules and laws are not always followed. that they are followed less then more, sometimes broken not by choice, or on purpose.
Maybe when we do our presentation we could somehow include pictures, to show that what we are saying is actually true. most people know it is true, but also pictures will get to them quicker then words.

UNICEF Photo Essay

The photo essay that UNICEF produced was, in my opinion, more powerful than a word essay. When reading an article about child rights or child abuse, some people think “well, they’re just like the other hundreds of thousands of children who are suffering everywhere in the world”. But when you see the pictures of the children and how and where they are living, you realize that they aren’t just like “the other hundreds of thousands of children”. The people in the pictures are living like that all the time. They aren’t acting or exaggerating because there’s a photographer in front of them. The children in the photo essay are very realistic and they UNICEF workers are showing the conditions and situations that the children are in right now. They want the people of the world to know that by helping suffering children, they can feel good about themselves, because they are making a needed difference. In our drama work, if we know our characters’ lives really well, then we will be a lot better at acting as that character.

UNICEF Answers to photos

I think UNICEF chose to show the rights in this way because when you see it you feel very bad for the children and thier life and lack of a family. Also it is not boring because you can see thier pain and how they feel and everything. I think it is much more effective than a word essay because you can see that they are real and with a word essay you can imagin them and how they feel but it is so much different to actually see them. UNICEF is trying to say that many people need to take a more active role in the help of street children and that they are suffering all over the world and thier life is very hard. I think that the best thing to do is be visual so that the audience can see the street childrens pain and how they suffer. Also I think it was good that they had lots of different examples that they used and we should do that to.

try to live as the child in the streets

Today we were in the acting class that for me is very interesting because i can learn more and perfume my monologue. For me was a little bit difficult to be all the time in my character and don't laugh of the others but is very interesting to try this.
i didn't do it like my monologue because i change my character activities because in the monologue i get bottles and i did some autistics things ...But i didn't do it in class because we don't had bottles and the time was very quickly for me ..But this classes of exercises help me to try to improvise and improve myself.

Street child role play

It was kind of hard to stay in role sometimes. For example when me and Kenan started fighting over a box and a stolen coat first i stabbed Kenan but later when he beat me up and took the stuff I started laughing.

The way I avoided laughing was by leaving the are, controlling my breathing, and stopping making eye contact with the person who made me smile. This worked very well and stopped me from messing up. Staying in role otherwise was very easy. But I discovered something else about my character. For example in role play he was stealing and robbing when in my monologue he only sells drus and has a calm relation whith his boss who he pays 93% of his earnings for a night. He is a wild character and is not the hiding type. I made my character more hardcore in the role play.

Street child play

I really liked this activity. There were some moments when I felt as I am a street child for real. I had a task of this day. My day's mission as a street child was to build a bed for my self. I was stealing boxes from others. I was protecting "my home" from others. When I asked for money too. I was singing strange song. When I was singing this song for others "street children" they usually went laughing. It was a little bit distresstful for me. A the end of the day I was happy that I completed my mission. When I was acting a street child I understood that life of street child is really hard. Child have to protect his home, find some food, get some money. My character was a bit different from others. I wasn't involved in any serious relationships with other street children. I was all by my self. There were only me and my street. The monologue that we did before helped me a lot to stay in my role. I think that after this activity I know my character much better.

Answers to UNICEF Essay Questions

i think that UNICEF chose to show child rights in this way, because a photo essay is a much better way to communicate thing than a written essay, at least in my opinion. I think this because a photo essay lets you see the real conditions that the children are living in, and lets you see the children that they are talking about, which makes you feel alot more sympathy for them, because you can actually see their faces, instead of just reading their names, which makes them seem much more realistic to me.
i think that what UNICEF is trying to communicate to us through this photo essay, is that these children and their circumstances are very real, and should not be something that we read about in a newspaper or a magazine, say how sad it is, and then forget all about them. they want them to stay in our minds, so that we can think of ways to help them and make their lives better.
i think that we could apply this tequniche to our drama role play of street children by trying to place our characters in more realistic, and real-life circumsatnces, so that both the actor and the audiance can more easily see what these kids really live like.

Comment on the UNICEF article/video

I thought that the UNICEF video/article was really good. It stated the rights of children around the world. The statement that i agreed with most is the one that said every child should be born and straight away be given the right to a nationalty a name and to preserve his or her identity. This is common sense on what should happen when a child is born. I think it would be very wrong if this did not happen because its not fair on the child then or when he/she is older. And when they are that young they cant do anything about it, so it has to be a law that this right will be given to every child when they are born.

Acting as a Street Child...

At first when we started building our houses, I started laughing because it actually looked funny for us, but it is not for the street children who are starving every day and can't find a place to stay, and live in... After we woke up, it was hard for me to act, while Ms. Tickle was counting, I was planning what to do, so, at the beginning all of my actions were planned. Later, because of not having enough time to actually think about my actions, i started improvising. In a moment I realized that it was easier for me to improvise + because of me knowing so much about street children, i did know what my next logical step is going to be... I think that I did well, and I’d like to act as a street child again to gain more experience...

Role Play

Today's exercise was to actually, perform as the street child character you chose. The task was to keep in role, throughout the different times of your characters day, in the morning, afternoon, evening and at night. This exercise for me was fun and educational because as I was staying in my character, I found that while I was interacting with the other people and characters, it was hard to keep in focus and to improvise so that I would be doing something. I kept trying to think of how my character would react to different situations, if he would be an aggressive person or a kind and sharing person. It was also interesting to see what the other characters were like and how they reacted to different situations. Some characters were thieves, others were beggars and some sold drugs to get money. I think that this exercise helped everyone develop their characters a lot more.

Trust Exercise

Since i couldnt figure out how to post things I will post mine now. The trust exercises were hard. The first one where you had to rely completely on your partner because your eyes are close and they are directing you was much more difficult for me. My partner did well and I didnt run into anything which made me more confident on the second exercise where we had to fall at random times so our partners could catch us. Jackie and Riyad did well and alway caught me but occationally I decide to inform them about when I was going to fall so that they had a little bit of warning.

Steet child role play

Playing the role of a street child was actually quite interesting. Some points of the piece it felt like i was learning more about the life of the child i was playing. the child that i was playing was more of a wimp then the rest of the street children, by not attacking the other people as much, unless it was a means to survive. it was good because the interactions between the street children also helped me to add on to the personality of my character. at the end of the day i ended up worse then i had begun, and when we were looking back it was interesting to see what had happened. most of the events were realistic, apart from the part where i had to murder someone for 10 dollars :).. This probably wouldn't really happen, unless matters were very drastic. At the end i felt like i knew quite a bit about my character. The character that i made was different to the character in my monologue.

My Reaction to the UNICEF Photo Essays

these unicef photo essays really made me think about how privlilged i am to have a house, food, and and a good education. it could have just as easily been me that was born to a poverty stricken family in the middle of the Sudan, in the Drafur genocide, but it wasn't. any of these abused and deprived children could have just as easliy been born in my place, and they could have probably made good use of their position. it really does make me sad to think about how we worry about how people will percieve us, our how good a grade we are going to get on our next math investigation, when kids, even in this country are instead worrying about how they will get food, our if certain members of their families will survive if they don't get proper medical teatment. These are things that most of us never eevn give a single thought to.

Street Child In Role Activity

i thought that the exercise that we did today in class, was very useful in helping me to develope my character. Part of this is because you were able to sort of, in a way, experiance what a day in the life of an average street child would be, and you did not have to rely on research and statistics and such to help you understand your cahracter.

street child experience

in the other class on tuesday we presented our monolougue on street children. now today we did an exerscie on street children and our character on how you would live in the streets. it was because all the girls in this exercie were helping others and establishing relationships and giving there stuff away. while all the boys were nicking stuff and posestions and have fights they also drug runs and pickpocketing incidents. when we played this game it seemed very realstic and it put you in there shoes and you feel as if it is real and once it gets queiter you realize how lucky you are that you arent in that position and that wat would happen if you were. it feels really fun to prentend to do this and that it is a really good exersice to do and it make you look in the future.

Street child role play

The exercise was difficult for me. One of the reasons it was difficult was because it was occationally hard to stay in character because I would be talking to someone and the conversations would start and one of us would laugh and then it was really hard to stay in character. Also it helped doing the monologue right before hand because my character was still in my mind but i realized that my monologue character was slightly unrealistic because she was so happy and so optomistic and that the other people took advantage of the because I was stolen from twice. Once when I was awake and once when i was sleeping. Also I had to be tougher and because I acted young alot of people tried to take care of me like Shelby and Margalit which was interesting.

Trust Exercise

In case I didn't write a blog about the trust exercise before, I am writing about it now. The trust exercise was actually not that worrying because I trusted the people I was working with and the trust activities were not dangerous. For the first trust exercise, we led people around the room using signals. The person you were guiding was not allowed to open their eyes and they relied on their partner to not let them run into anything. The second activity was more difficult. We worked in groups of three. The three people in a group made a row and walked around the room together in that order. The person standing in between the two other people would just fall at any point and their partners were responsible for catching them before they hit the ground. Overall, no one got injured although a couple of people were dropped by their partners.

In Role

Today we did an exercise where we all had to play the role of our person that we talked about in our monologue. Everyone seemed to be really pro-active where as my character was quieter. I really enjoyed doing this exercise because i felt like i knew a lot about my character and i played my character the way i presented her in my monologue. Some people came up with a completelynew character and played the role of someone that we never heard about in the monologue. I was surprise that everyone stayed in their role. I thought everyone would be laughing and just being themselves instead of playing the character that they were meant to. I enjoyed doing this exercise and i would do it again. I also think it helped that we did the monologue before having to play our character while interacting with other people.

Why do street children get involved in drug trafficking drugs, prostitution or rape?

Of course people can find many different ways to definate why children get involved in drugs and/or prostitution. But my thought of why children get involved with drugs and/or prostitution or rape is because they might not have a wll paying source of money wich is the main reason of involvement. Children usually deal lower class drugs and answer to adult of the community who can even be workind for the government (ex. police officers). Usually these things are not done by children on their own because normally nobody would sell great amounts of drugs to children. And no street child would have the amount of money to actually get a decent amount of drugs. The adults do the purchasing stage and leave it up to the teenagers to sell the drugs and earn the money for them. The teenagers and children obviously do not get payed much (ex. the probaly get 5-10% of what they earn). Selling drugs on the street can cause close friendships and create small gangs which later enlarge to become drug kingpins. This can cause violence, murder arrest and many other things.

Another illegal activity street children get involved in is prostitution. Prostitution also is a like a food chain. There are people who all the prostitues come and answer to who probably give a cut to their leaders. Prostitutes earn more money then drug dealing chlidren. But during this job many diseases can be spread because of unsafe sex. Also sometimes prostitutes are ripped off by people and they can een get killed because of resisting to leave the client without pay. I think prostitution pays more than drug dealing but it is a more dangerous job.

By Yusif

UN Rights of the Child

© UNICEF/ HQ05-1244/LeMoyne

Folow the links to see two very moving sequences which highlight the need for child rights around the world.

The Rights of the Child 1

The Rights of the Child 2

Why do you think UNICEF chose to show the Rights in this way? How does it make you feel when you watch the photo-essay? Is it more effective than a word essay? Why?

What are UNICEF trying to communicate to us through this form?

How might we adapt this way of showing to our drama work?

On delivering a monologue....

How i felt during the monologe performance....when i was doing it i didnt feel that bad, but right before i started i was extremely nervous. once it was over with i was really happy but it wasnt as bad as i thought it would be, but still if i had the choice i would not have done it. I dont think i did that bad apart from one bit where i forgot what i was going to say...but overall it wasnt as bad as i thought it was going to be.
by Jenna

In the title of my blog, 'if' is supposed to be 'of'. Sorry.

What are the effects if drugs?

There are many different drugs and effects that they can have on you. Injected drugs are directly linked skin infections and skin diseases. Drugs, such as ecstasy pills or smoked drugs (marijuana, cocaine and pot, for example) can directly damage your internal organs, whereas snorting cocaine or other drugs can collapse your nasal passages. Indirect effects can also include personality changes, bankruptcy and losing jobs and friends. So why do people take drugs? For experiment, for medication needs, to feel good or to temporarily escape from reality. Honestly, it does not pay to abuse drugs, because in the end you could be in desperation for food and shelter, needing money to pay for basic needs or even fighting for your life. Annually, hundreds of thousands of people die because of drug overdoses, drug-related diseases and infections and drug-related suicides. In my opinion, drugs are like and invitation to long-term struggles and evitable problems. Don’t accept the invitation…

Monologue task

photo taken from http://www.armsoflove.org/

A monologue is a dramatic performance with one actor. A monologue usually allows the audience to see inside the mind and feelings of a character rather than being driven by action. Your task is to create a monologue performance as a street child. Use your monologue to give us a taste of what your life is like on the streets. It's up to you how much or how little information you give us about your past, about why you are on the streets. Your monologue must, however, show evidence that you have undertaken research into the lives of street children, so that although it is obviously a creative work of the imagination, it is grounded in fact. Use the assessment rubric to help you structure your monologue. There are plenty of resources in the drama room, plus many websites with information. You will perform your monologues on Thursday January 17th. Dont forget that if you want to perform in your first language you must provide an English translation to Ms T before you perform.

http://www.pangaea.org/street_children/latin/latin.htm

Why Street Children Take Drugs...

I did some research on the internet about how different types of drugs can affect people and I found that the reason why many street children would take drugs is because they like how it affects their brain and how it changes the way they feel.
According to the sites I read, many drugs, from heroin and ecstasy, produce temporary changes in the brain that cause people to feel and act different. Some drugs can give people the feeling of pleasure while other types can give people a rush of adrenaline.
Street Children are young and can be easily influenced by others. They can be easily brainwashed into taking drugs. Once they take drugs they become addicted and continue to take them. Another reason could be because they are extremely depressed or traumatized and they resort to drugs to try and make them feel better.
These are the websites i looked at :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_trafficking
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/closetohome/science/html/whydrugs.html