1. Write a response to the text.
- What did you think of it and why?
I really enjoyed reading the text as it really interesting
and it kept my attention throughout the play.
One of the reasons why I feel it kept me interested throughout
the whole play, is because it was written in a really unique style. It was
unique because it wasn’t written like a play script it was written in series
and each series was almost like a poem or short story. The series were about
one individual’s opinion of the East End or an event that they witnessed in the
East End. I also really liked it because each story was different so I never
got tired of reading it and it gave me the chance to look at things through
other people’s eyes. I found it
interesting to read as it was something different to what I am used to reading,
it made me think about the events that were going on in the series. Reading the
text made me look forward to finding out how we are going to portray each scene
as it so different to anything I’ve ever done.
- What is the play about?
East end tales was
written as part of a Half Moon Young People’s Theatre Scriptworks project for
Mulberry School for Girls in Tower Hamlets, London. The tale ideas were created
by a group of Year 10 Bengali girls over a number of weeks. The play is written in series, the play has nine
series that are written as short stories; each story is written from one
person’s point of view and are about their experience of the East End. The
series in the East End Tales involve rather hard hitting subjects such as drug
use, crime and domestic abuse.
2. What was your favourite tale? Why?
The
favourite tale in the play was ‘East End Tales 5’, this was because it made me
realise that there are people who would ignore the signs of abuse, and how the
choices you make can have a huge effect on other people. Therefore it is my
favourite as it opened my mind and had the biggest impact on me.
3. At the start of the session you were asked about what you thought of
the East End.
- What did you know at the start of the session?
At the beginning I did not know
anything about the East End, only what you see on the TV shows such as
Eastenders. So I had a very stereotypical view of how people were in the East
End, I imagined that it would be predominantly white males, and quite a poor area.
- What knowledge did you develop by the end of the session?
Throughout the lesson I gained
more knowledge about the East End, I learnt that actually there was hardly any
white people in the East End and it was a very multicultural area. I also
learnt that they are like a community area, and most people know each other.
Finally, that the football and pubs was a big deal in the East End and that it
was where most men hang out.
4.
What did your group do when you were asked to explore one of the tales?
In my group we had to do tale 3,
which is about someone describing the East End as if it was a friend. In the
beginning of the story I think the character is talking about the current East
End and saying that it’s a nice community area to live in and everyone is
always in a good mood even if it’s a bad day. Then toward the end of the story
he talks about the East End in the past and he was saying it was not a nice
area and he didn’t like talking about it.
We decided to portray this by using
our emotion and body language to show what the East End was like. For example
in the beginning of the performance we all portrayed confident characters and
used the space around us well to show we were talking about the current East
End. Then toward the end we used levels by sitting and the way we spoke to
portray the East Ends past.
5. Start a research post on your blog.
You will need to keep adding to this research over the term.
You need to research the East End.
You need to research the East End.
- Find out about the history of the East End.
In the past the East End was home
to poverty, violent crime, and dirty industry and overcrowding. The East End
always attracted trade and industry because of both The Thames and the River
Lea and nearby. In particular, ‘dirty’ industries like tanning and tallow works
clustered in the east, downwind and outside the city walls where ‘noxious’
trades were banned.
In 1827 St Kathererine Docks
opened, and with it, the need of large numbers of dock workers. As long as the
over swelling population, the area also attracted immigrants, mostly Jew and
French Huguenots in fleeing political unrest and religious persecution in the
17th century.
The Huguenot houses of
Spitalfields were divided up into tiny, insufficient dwellings, and even
newly-built housing soon became over-crowded and run down. Wages were
disgraceful, thanks to dodgy employment practices such as casual labour and
piecework. Disease was common in 1866; a cholera outbreak swept the East End,
killing 3,000 people.
Some people managed to escape the
poverty, leaving behind the London’s poorest area. In 1887 Charles Booth did a
survey of the living conditions and it was found that 13% of the East End
population was chronically poor.
That would be why crime, drunkenness and
prostitution were so high back then. Gangs, prostitutes and robbers roamed the
darken alleys so much, that in the last 19th century it was known as
‘The Abyss’. The area’s darkest moment came in the late summer and early
autumn of 1888, when Jack the Ripper carried out a series of horrific murders
on Whitechapel prostitutes.
- Research some events that have happened recently in the East End.
.Drugs worth
hundreds of pounds, cash and dangerous weapons were seized during a police raid
in an East London back alley. ( http://www.standard.co.uk/topic/EastLondon )
. A teenager believed to be 19 has
been taken to hospital with serious injuries after he was stabbed during a
fight on a bus at 1:50 broad day light in East London. (http://www.standard.co.uk/topic/EastLondon)
. An investigation is underway after thousands of dead fish were found floating in an East London park lake. (http://www.standard.co.uk/topic/EastLondon)
- Research some events from the text
The next event I researched was killing in pub fights, this would relate to the 3rd tale as it talks about someone killing a man while fighting in a pub. The story that I found was about Adam Lynn who is 25, in the article it states that Lynn killed a man in the physical fight in Deer’s leap pub. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-28333605
01.02.14
Doing
research has really helped me understand the play in more depth and my
characters. For example, it was really helpful to have people in my class from
the east end as it broadened my views on the east end. I used to have a very stereotypical
view on the east end, which was that everyone was really ‘chavvy’ and they weren’t
very multi-cultural. However, I learnt
that I was wrong and that in the east end they were a community and they were
in fact a very multi-cultural area. They helped me develop my characters as I
felt I was being more realistic when
playing my characters as I was basing them off of facts about the east end not
just my opinion from what I learnt from the east end television programme.
Doing research
about events that have happened in the east ends has really helped me
understand my character. This is because, even though I already knew that all
the tales were based on true stories, doing research about other events in the
east end made me connect and understand my character more. I think that doing research
made me realise the people in the tales were real people, therefore I worked
harder on making my character truthful, as I was portraying a real person.
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