17-21 Nov

We have started construction of the trees. To make the tree's, we stuffed coiled metal with balled up paper. For the lesson, Connor, Steve and I went around the school to collect the paper we needed to stuff the tree's. When we returned with all the paper we could find, we started to stuff the tree's. At this point the class all worked together and split into two groups. One group stuffing the tree's whilst the other group made sure the paper was stuffed in securely. When we finished stuffing a tree, we had to role the metal until the tree became strong and secure. By the end of the lesson we had managed to make the basic structure of all four trees and place them into C5. I feel that this lesson was well spent. I think that the trees are one of the most important aspects of this play we need to accomplish as the sooner that we make all the trees, the sooner we can put them up permanently. When we have them all up we will be able to see the boundaries that we have when rehearsing. At the moment we use the entire room. However when we have all the trees up, we will be able to see what space we have and make improvement around this. Our next stage is to wrap the trees in mod rock and paint them to make them look authentic. On Friday we ran through all of the movement pieces that we have in the play. We started with the dream sequence we have after scene ten. In this movement sequence Oskar falls asleep and we all play Oskar's thoughts and fears. It starts with us rolling to our left then our right (symbolising the sequence of falling asleep) we then sit up to show that Oskar has woken up in his dream. We then stand up and throw Oskar up. This is meant to show that Oskar feels that the whole town is against him and want to hurt him. We then force Oskar down onto his knees and Jonny goes to break his neck. Oskar falls down and Hamburg drags Me and Jonny off. This is when Eli shows up and cheers Oskar up. However this is short lived as Hakan takes Eli away and Oskar is left alone. He is then picked up and falls back asleep. I feel that this piece of movements is one of the strongest we use in the performance. It was made in under an hour and symbolises a lot. The next sequence we done was the knife dance. Because we have rehearsed this so much it went fine. This is the same as the thought sequence where all of our characters battle their inner demons and try to come to terms with the hardships in their lives. The final movement we done was the final death scene. I feel that this scene went okay however it did not go as well as I would like it to. Because we hadn't rehearsed it in a while there were a few mistakes. We were a little out of time and a few of the movements went wrong. But this only due to us being out of practice. When we finished all the movement scenes we started to mod rock the tree's. I feel that fridays lesson went extremely well as we were able to see how well we can do all of the movement pieces. This gave the group a huge mural boost. I think that next week we should focus more on our individual characters and work in small groups to analyse our characters and how we can better ourselves as actors.

Jonny vs Micke

Jonny and Micke are the two children who bully Oskar. Jonny is shown to be the more aggressive bully however I believe that Micke is much worst. First of all Oskar never knows where he stands with Micke. One minute Micke is trying to help him and the next Micke is forcing Oskar to eat sand. At least with Jonny, Oskar knows what is going to happen. The first time we see Jonny and Micke they are hunting down Oskar (who is trapped in the locker room) in this scene we see how Micke bullies Oskar. Instead of just bursting into the room and hit Oskar. Micke uses some physiological torment by telling him ‘we know you’re in there piggy’ and ‘don’t make us hunt you’. These scare Oskar and force him to take refuge in his locker. When Micke and Jonny enter the locker room they open each locker individually. I believe that they are doing this to build suspense for Oskar. They of course know what locker he is going to be in because each locker would have a code on, so he would only be able to hide in one. The next time we see Micke he finds Oskar sitting alone in a sandpit. This is where we see Micke acting kind towards Oskar. After the events that occurred in the locker room Oskar probably wouldn’t trust Micke so when he started to be kind and try to help Oskar it would mess with his head. Then as soon as Jonny shows up Micke turns back against Oskar and again assaults him. Again in this scene we see that Jonny is the physical bully, always hitting Oskar and forcing him to humiliate and degrade himself. But Micke in this scene appears to try and help Oskar but I feel it is a bit convenient that as soon as Micke tells Oskar to leave Jonny shows up. I think that Micke and Jonny planned this to mess with Oskar’s trust and see if they can get him to trust Micke to further bully him. I feel that Micke is a lot worst that Jonny. As I’ve already said Oskar never knows where he stands with Micke. Also at the end of the play we can see why Jonny is a bully, we don’t forgive or think it is just, but we see why he does it. The only reason that Jonny bullies people is because of his background. In the final part of the play we meet Jimmy, Jonny’s older brother. Jimmy is a lot worst that Jimmy and goes a lot further than Jonny ever would, even attempting to kill Oskar by drowning him. This demonstrates to us that there is clearly something going on in Jonny and Jimmy’s home. We know that their parents are divorced and their mother has remarried so we know that they come from a broken home. However we do not get any insight on why Micke is a bully. We never even hear about his family or any relationships so we can assume because it isn’t mentioned there are no problems with his home life.

Writing in role: Micke

Oskar just doesn't help himself does he. I try to help him but no matter what I do he just acts like an twat and does something that stupid. I mean he was sitting in a sand pit. Why was he in a bloody sand pit. What did he think would happen. Little kids are supposed to be in sand pits. Not only was he sitting in the sand pit. He was throwing rocks. Doesn't he know that little kids play in there. The could cut their feet. I mean Jonny is right, the little kids could hurt themselves. It was our duty to punish Piggy. But, why do i feel so bad about it. I know I used to be friends with him but, I've out grown him. He still sits in sand pits and plays on the climbing frames. Jonny is a much better friend that Oskar ever was. I mean sure I had some good times with Oskar. Like back in camp when we hooked up that rope swing and he fell off or when we pulled that prank on Mr Avilia. Oskar felt so bad. He even turned himself in and ratted me out. Thats why I'm friends with Jonny, he will never rat me out. But, Jonnys older brother, Jimmy. I am so scared of him. The first time I met him, he called me a cunt and slapped me around the head. I didn't even say anything. I best stay on his good side. I don't know what he is capable of. Jonny told me once that Jimmy had a fight with this guy and ended up stamping on his head and putting the guy in hospital, Jonny said he only knocked into Jimmy and made him drop his fag. And now Jimmy wants me to get Oskar to go to strength training. I don't know what he is going to do. But I know that if I don't get Oskar to go he is going to do what he was going to do to Oskar but to me instead. Better him than me I guess.

2 november- 7 november

This week in Class we focused primarily on running through the play and fixing anything we thought was wrong. It took us ruffly two lessons to finish the play so the play it self should last around an hour and 40 minutes. On tuesday Miss Cordell gave us targets to work on for next week. My target was to fix my body language. So far I have researched what makes a child bully and what they think it is going to achieve as a way of seeing what a bully thinks and feels so that I can use these feelings in the performance. To do this I read an article online from 'www.bullying.co.uk' This article has given me some insight on what causes a child to bully. The pages lists the following reasons as why a child would bully. 1.feeling powerless 2.low self-esteem 3.trying to get admiration and attention from friends 4.fear of being left out if they don’t join in 5.not understanding how someone else is feeling 6.taking out their angry feelings 7.a culture of aggression and bullying 8.being bullied themselves I find numbers 3, 4 and 8 very interesting as I feel the directly relate to my character. I feel the only reasons Micke bullies is to seem big in front of Jimmy and to avoid being bullied and hit by Jimmy like Jonne is. To work on my body language I mostly rehearsed my lines in front of a mirror and I researched a lot into bullying cases and stories of child violence. I also looked at what I do when I am saying my lines. I noticed that I never really make eye contact with who I'm talking to. This is something that I have worked on again by running my lines whilst looking into a mirror. One book that really stood out to me when I researched violent acts committed by children was the book 'The lord of the flies' by William Golding. This book demonstrates what people are capable of when they are left without any laws or punishments. The book is about a group of children being evacuated during the second world war and their plane crashing onto an island. The pilot is killed and the children are left to fend for themselves. In the book the character of Roger is the most terrifying as he enjoys hurting others. He even goes so far as to kill the character Piggy by dropping a giant bolder into him from a height. I also feel that the character of Piggy is Shockingly similar to Oskar. Piggy is bullied by the group and is an outcast. The only friend Piggy has is Ralph who tells Piggy to fight back against the bullies. This is incredibly similar to Oskar and Eli, not only is Oskar called piggy by Micke and Jonny but Oskars only friend is Eli who tells him to fight back. Also Oskar is nearly killed by Jimmy who holds Oskar's head underwater. Jimmy is very similar to Roger as he enjoys hurting people and gets a power trip out of it. During fridays lesson we finished the play and we worked on all our movement pieces. I still feel that some of the pieces could be improved but most of them work fine as long as we keep rehearsing them so that we do not get out of practice.