Term 3 unit 8 FUGEE

Knowing the play

We did a full read through after getting the play FUGEE by Abi Morgan. I first thought it was very confusing because of all that flashing back, and I think the play can be shorter by reducing the times of flashing back. But in my other thought, I'm excited to know how this play will be performed to the audience because unlike any other plays I've known, this play begins with its ending scene.

At the beginning of the play, Kojo stabbed a random man on the street. Then, the story started to flash back a little showing what happened before that lead to this ending. Kojo is a fourteen-year-old boy who his family members were killed by children soldiers during his eleventh birthday. In order to save himself, Kojo's uncle made him a fake visa to travel to the UK. He was brought to a refuge where he met his new friends from different places.

The style of the play is pretty refreshing different from regularly plays they often start with telling everything step by step and end with its climax. Abi Morgan begins the play with a big scene that includes death, he then slowly reveal little bits of information in order to show the connection between the first scene and other scenes.

After reading through the whole play we had our own discussion in class, I think the play is interesting that it doesn't tell the normal story first, and let the audience to guess what happened before this and that. This can prevent the audience from getting bored or guessing out what's going to happen next as for FUGEE audience need to pay more attention to the story in order to know what happened before the man from the first scene was killed.

The second week after we got our script, everyone needs to think of a character they want to play for, but we got fewer casts, so some of us will need to be in multi-rolling.

The first character came to my mind was the woman with a buggy. I chose her because I'm interested in her exaggerated reactions throughout the beginning, and I really love playing this kind of character, I think it's because being crazy is easier than being normal actually, because deep in me, I'm quite a crazy person, so with this character I do not need to put in much effort as I can really play it naturally. I told one of my tutors, Sharon about this, she gave me an advice which because I've played a character like this before when I was in high school, why not try a different character to give myself a challenge and a chance to upgrade my acting.

I thought about it for awhile and came up with another choice, which was the refuge manager. I also took some time to re-read the scenes which when the manager was in. The reason why I ended up choosing this role it's because I have not tried any character like this before, in my experience, I've only tried roles that doesn't mean much to other characters in those plays. But for refuge manager, I felt like a big boss with people that need to listen to me. I can feel the importance of me after choosing it. I'm looking forward to act as a "team leader" for my first time.

Improvising the important scenes from the play

We were divided into two groups and each will need to improvise and perform with the important scenes we remember after reading the whole play. Abdul, Jeremy, Gabriel, Jaychelle, Ilonka and I came out with some scenes that we remember.

• a random man was stabbed by Kojo
• in the airport when Kojo does not have his passport 
• Kojo's uncle gave Kojo a fake visa and ask him to leave
• Kojo playing basketball with new people in the refuge
• Counselor asking Kojo questions about himself
• Ara teaching Kojo English
• Kojo was told to leave the refuge cuz he's above 18 which is not true, he's only 14
• Children soldiers killing Kojo's parents and his brother 

Rehearsing the play

We have gotten our roles and acted out the play from the beginning. We focused on one thing first which was our blocking rather than focusing on our energy and tension in the play. I think working on our blocking first will make the whole progress easier after as we now know the cues for speaking our lines. We were able to know how we want our character to say that certain line in a certain position and how we want our character to be on the scene. We can avoid blocking other characters while saying our lines, also, other characters will know their best way to be on the stage in order to be seen by every single audience.

What did we achieve?...
We were able to pick up our cues and be in the position as smoothly as we can. We get to work on our transitions as well, also our entrances and exits as we need to be straight into the next scene to prevent the audience from waiting too long. 

We then worked on the scenes where most casts were in it, that was on the urban street where the man was stabbed by Kojo. There are casts like the market trader, young girls, cleaner and woman with buggy. Also, In scene 20 when Kojo describes the situation he first joins the children soldier. At the end of scene 20, it was a truck scene where everyone needs to be in, and scene 21 will be the scene where Kojo needs to leave. It's a bit rush for me to go into that scene as I need to exit with everyone else and come straight in again. For a better result, Rob asked me to stay at the end of scene 20 instead. In the truck scene, I'm one of the soldiers, so while the scene ends everyone will still need to exit with their facial expression on, but for me, there's gonna be a huge difference on my emotion. During the end of it, I will turn my body and walk neutral until I reach my position for the next scene which is walking towards Kojo from behind with his luggage.

Here's the video of scene 20 when Kojo is saying his monologue. Click to watch!!

After everyone is familiar with their cues in those big scenes, we started to do rehearsals according to the order of the scenes, I think this saves a lot of time as we do not need to worry more about people's absence as much as we all know what to do in the scene and people could just stand in to read the lines for people who are absent. During the other smaller scenes, while some of the people are doing their rehearsals, people that are not in the scene could continue with learning their lines.

What I think about our rehearsals?...
My movements and actions get more and more natural as I've been doing it many times, Rob and Sharon would stop us when they think we can add or change the style of acting a little, both of them are very responsible, as sometimes correcting a single scene might take up to half an hour. I like their spirit of how they wanted us to look nice and clean. I never complained about the tiredness during rehearsals to be honest, we actually just do what our tutors advice us to do. So during each rehearsal, I would put in my best concentration in order to get my acting as perfect as I can. I am aware of all reactions I made while other speaks, I will always make sure that I'm not just standing on a spot waiting to say my lines. 

What is the 4th Wall?...

The Forth Wall is a theatrical term for the imaginary "wall" that exists between actors on stage and the audience. The actors pretend that they cannot hear or see the audience and the audience gets to enjoy the wonderful sensation of being a fly on the wall. The same effect often occurs in movies, only the fourth wall in that instance is a camera lens.

In the play Fugee, we broke the 4th wall most of the time especially Kojo, he often talks to the audience by telling his feeling in that moment or some additional plot from the story. As the refuge manager, I broke the 4th wall in scene 9, when the social worker is interviewing Kojo to know about his background. I tell the audience what I think about the social worker and also what do the social worker usually do.

more information about 4th wall can be found here.

Themes

Friendship - The very first friendship appears was when Ara and Kojo first meet, Kojo did not join others during movie night, he went upstairs himself and Ara follows his back to check if he's okay. Kojo was looking at his family photo, he must be missing them so much at that moment and Ara appears, Kojo must feel warm in his heart even though they don't understand what each other was saying. Ara is a very cheerful girl, she took the initiative to approach Kojo to let him get used to being in the refuge. Then, Chueng, He and Kojo sleep on a bunk bed where Cheung sleeps on top and Kojo sleeps underneath. In the first night, they chatted for a little about how they end up here in the refuge, Cheung knows that Kojo will be meeting with the social worker the next day, he reminds him to shave if not the social worker will think he's over-age. In scene 22, Kojo was on the train leaving to the hotel, the other kids (Ara, Roza, Cheung, Hassan) follow because they didn't want Kojo to leave alone, but got kicked out by the ticket collector just after the next stop as they got not enough money to buy a ticket.

Diversity - Represents the kids, They're all from different places around the world, they speak the different language have a different culture. I think it's some kind of fate that they could gather up and form a friendship bond.

Rejection - Rejections are what made the play happen. Kojo got age-disputed by the social worker after the next day of his arrival at the refugee camp, when he thinks he could finally be safe at that place but got rejected because of the hair on his face. Also around the end of the play, when Ara visits Kojo, they both know they like each other but when Ara asks him to "say it!" , the three words, Kojo replied something else instead. It's a rejection for Ara as Kojo doesn't want their relationship to go beyond friendship. Maybe Kojo is not ready yet, or maybe he doesn't want to impede Ara's bright future for staying in the same place as him and live the rest of their life underneath everyone's footstep.



My Character (on my point of view)

Refuge Manager - Throughout the play, there's nowhere showing her name, her age or anything about her. All we can see was she is the owner of the children refuge. It is a difficult task that I can't get any information online while I was trying to do some research about the manager. At last, I've decided to learn about her by reading the script again. Her caring personality was shown a lot in the play for example In scene 5 she's patiently telling all the directions and everything that Kojo needs to know when he arrives in the children refuge. She's protective, in order to let Kojo stay, in the scene when Kojo being age-disputed, she defends Kojo by trying to let the social worker believe that he's only 14. She's not very powerful, in her words and how she apologizes to Kojo when she's forced to let him leave, I think she actually blames herself for not having the right to let the kid stay. 

In scene 21, which I can see the most of her, she was carrying many emotions with her in that scene. The sadness of letting Kojo leave, she must be unwilling to do that but she's only a refuge manager, she did her best to keep Kojo. When the other kids were listening to their conversations in the corridor and were all very upset after knowing Kojo needs to leave, she doesn't want the atmosphere in the room to be more down so she asked the kids to go down, but Hassan (one of the kids) shouted back saying "stupid pissing system", he must be feeling really unfair for Kojo and saying that on purpose to see if the manager could get him back. But yet the manager took away his chance for playing ping pong that day, behind it I think it's because the manager doesn't the kids to feel unfair, she wants them to learn about the cruelty of this society. 

To show the contrast of an elder and the kids, the manager needs to act really mature, the only way to calm the kids down, she needs to be more calm and steady and can't show much of her emotions. When Ara (another girl that is close to Kojo) asked what will happen to Kojo after this, the manager told her and the others that he will be processed and a decision will be made, they could get a visit in the hotel where Kojo is going to stay when he leaves the refuge. She told them like it's nothing to her, like she actually accepts the truth that Kojo needs to leave. 

Costumes 

For my character as the manager, I wore a plain white smart shirt with black trousers to show the professionalism in me. I also tie my hair up neatly, this is to show that my self-cultivation is high enough to be a good influencer for the kids.

For another character of girl two, I wore a plain black t-shirt as my top and others will be the same as when I'm the manager. Wearing black so that I do not catch the audience most attention from Kojo, Kojo's costumes throughout the play are all duller colour, if I wear a colourful costume as the girl, Audience will be really hard to stay focus on Kojo.

Sound & Lighting 

• We got the sound of a plane departing before the airport scene where Kojo did not have his passport.
• The announcement voice during the tube scene when everyone's on the tube while the man speaks.
• In the scene when Ara brings Kojo to the park to see trees, we got sounds of birds chirping and sound of the tree's branches hitting each other when the wind blows. 
• We got the sound of gunshots when Kojo's family were being shot by the children refuge.
• There're some scenes when the man in the hotel was banging on the door, Abdul did the sound by hitting the floor hard.
• At the end of the play, while some of the characters were saying their facts, the spotlight hit on them one by one according to the order they speak, to highlight them out as other characters will be on stage too.