Thursday, 6th November 2014, thoughts about text

We first received the play and straight away I liked the way that Kennedy had a poetic way of writing, that it wasn't a 'normal' play but was more of a monologue, where you can make up the other half of the conversation in the case of the prologue and epilogue. 

Kennedy touches on some rather sensitive topics such as racism, domestic violence, essentially murder, muggings, however he does not make them into some huge thing where they bring in detectives to find the murderer, nor does he blow it up and form one storyline out of one of the topics. Kennedy is making the point that these things, as horrible as they are, happen, some of them probably on a daily basis and just because they're not on the front page, it does not mean that they do not happen. These were just normal people who were put into a terrible situation. So some may say that Kennedy thinks that the East End is a horrible place, however, there are glimmers of hope, when a cabby has a baby on the way and is so happy about it he forgets he has already talked about it or a teen helps an elderly woman, just because. Or, my favourite, when "We made something happen, We made something change" for the better because just one persons melted anger or evaporated storm makes all the difference. There seem to be small pockets of good and joy in the tales, in tale 7 "Smiling at pissed bulldog man, Happy families, Hooray" after joining as a family to defeat the bad in their environment.

I can quite clearly picture the kind of person that would be talking in most of them and I really enjoy the fact that it is written the way that you would speak, as in there are some words capitalised which would be Kennedy telling us that that word needs to be emphasised. I found it interesting that the only two that had these capitalised words featured in it the most - tale 5 and tale 7 - were the two youngest characters in my mind. This may be quite accurate as in tale 5, (for the first part) as I pictured a young child telling the story and some parts of it are told as a fight scene in an action film, without quite understanding what is happening, and in tale 7 I picture a teenager who would exaggerate the word so in the sentence "I am SO not in the mood for this". Kennedy writes in the way that people would talk, and his choice to make the lines short gives the whole play this speed that would give someone the impression that Kennedy believes the East End is very fast paced, which can often miss out minor details that can make the whole story, but I think Kennedy balances the fastness and the details rather well. I enjoyed his use of colloquial language, for one because it made it easier to get into the accent, but also because even if you are simply reading it and not performing, it gives a lovely character to the somewhat disfigured speech pattern. 

My favourite tale is probably tale 8, primarily because I love the use of language Kennedy uses to describe the setting and aroma, 'And hailstones bombard the darkness'. I also have a soft spot for the word 'eerie', I am not really sure why, but when I read it, it made me excited for some reason. I also love the comparisons that Kennedy uses, 'An urban lioness at the entrance to her lair.' They make it sound so much more interesting and I feel like I can somehow feel the characters more.

I did not really know much about the east end, I have never been there and I have not heard much about it, but from the things I have heard, it does not sound to nice to me so when we were told to create a character, I instantly went towards a really catty girl with bleach blond hair and long fake nails. However according to Jake and Mateo, there are business men and women, young people loitering, younger kids playing and families. I did not really have any knowledge of it, but it just sounds like any other place in London to me, with character, but still a nice place. Despite the roaring football fans and 'fake' and 'bitchy' girls that can apparently be found there.

In the session we were given a tale in groups of three, I got tale 7. I rather enjoyed it, even though we did not have enough time to complete everything, I liked the way we had a narrator but we could have done something a bit more interesting with the movement of it to make it more interesting for the audience to watch.