Noughts & Crosses - 04/09/14

At the beginning of today's lesson, both year 10 theatre classes joined together to complete some activities and games to help develop our acting skills. To gain trust with fellow students we did a very fun exercise. The teacher numbered all of the the students from 1 to 5. When your number got called out, you had to pretend to faint and the other people had to catch you. This also helped to fasten our reaction time. It is important as sometimes you have to react to things in many different scenarios when performing.
After this, we played a game where two people joined together to make a 'door' and another person had to walk through the doors with their eyes shut. The people who were the 'doors' had to make many different noises; one was to attract the person, another was a warning sound and the last one was to let the person know that they had successfully made it through the door. This game taught us about having spatial awareness. It also helped us to learn how to relate noises to different messages (for example, a beeping alarm sound for the warning sign). I found this game difficult as it was hard to imagine where you were in the room with your eyes shut.
When we completed our activities, the theatre classes separated into two rooms. In room 411 with Ms Lee, we finished reading the script of the play 'Noughts & Crosses" by Malorie Blackman. All of us got to read for different characters in the play. There were so many big plot twists! I really enjoyed reading this play as it puts everything into perspective because it turns racism in our society around. The story is about black people (crosses) being superior and white people (noughts) being looked down on. It follows two young people (Callum and Sephy) who fall in love but are torn apart because they are not racially equal. "Noughts and Crosses" is strongly based upon William Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet". As the story progresses, Callum decides to join the Liberation Militia, a nought terrorist group. Everything turns from bad to worse at this point of the story. Many characters change throughout the course of the story. At the beginning of the book, Callum seems like a harmless, caring young boy, but towards the end you get to see an incredibly dark side to him. Noughts and Crosses was a very interesting book to read. I recommend reading this play as it keeps you wanting to know more - but be warned, you won't want to put this book down. I am very excited to begin performing scenes from this play in class.