Exploration of the themes in the play Legal Weapon

Considering Andy's past. We worked in small groups to devise a short piece to reveal one of he triggers in Andy's formative years which has led to the character as we see in the play. We used similar techniques used in the play. Our instruction was to devise a short piece of drama which would explain Andy's present character. In order to achieve a successful piece of drama we needed to plan our performance carefully. We began by brainstorming and trying to accumulate ideas which we could develop or incorporate in our drama.

I eventually came up with the chosen idea. I knew that the piece had to convey an extremely influential event in Andy's history and I suggested a life changing experience in his child hood.

The idea was really simple but had a lot of hidden complications which needed to be considered. My suggestion was hat Andy as a child had been given a toy car by his grandfather who inevitably dies but as a result of Crime. My suggestion involved Andy being bullied as a child and having his toy car stolen by the bullies, as a result of the teasing he vowed never to be slow.

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The torment the bullies gave him scared him for life and the most memorable remarks for Andy were "You're too slow" or "You're not fast enough". When we finally began developing the piece it was important to emphasize these points in the drama because they explained a great deal about the whole story. We used things like repetition volume and levels to create a greater affect and to capture the audience's attention.

The diagram below shows the transformation from the bully scene to the last scene where Andy crashes into the girl on the moped. It shows clearly how we merged the bully scene with and as a child with the final scene.

We split the play into four scenes and they were as follows:

1. Andy's granddad giving him the toy car.

2. Andy going to school and being confronted by the bullies.

3. Andy in the playground being tormented and teased by the bullies whilst begging for his car back.

4. Andy shouting whilst taking position on a chair conveying the idea of a flashback.

I had the role of Andy and I think the reason for this was because it was my idea and therefore I understood the story the best. The piece came together accordingly and we accomplished the task well. Our transformation from scene 3 to 4 was a lot more successful than we expected and the audience's reaction was encouraging.

After this we then watched a short video of young people who enjoy joy-riding. We discussed what motivates people and began to observe the possible similarities with other crimes. The video we watched helped us a lot to understand the reasons which people have as there motivation to joy ride. We began discussing the affect of the community and environment and that sometimes its just because there's nothing else to do.

I never felt happy with our discussion so I decided to do some research on my own and see if I could find any relevant information which could account for joy riders.

Offender Profile: Motivation

There are many different reasons for vehicle crime. Vehicles may be stolen:

* For casual use - usually temporary for joyriding or to get from a to b

* For systematic financial gain - i.e. in an organised way for export, resale or breaking into parts.

* For insurance fraud by owners.

Studies such as that by Spencer (1992) show that:

* Fun, excitement, status/showing off and financial gain are significant motivating factors for young male car crime offenders;

* Involvement in a police chase is often seen as adding to the thrill; and

* Peer groups have a powerful influence.

Motivational factors may change as criminal careers evolve. The desire for excitement may be replaced by a financial dependence on auto crime.

The very last thing we done was hot seating. Post prison Andy sat in the hot seat and

Answered a number of quick fire questions. I was Andy for a short period of time and I think the exercise was extremely helpful because it allowed thinking on the spot and begin to sculpt a more detailed version of Andy. It was interesting being asked and asking questions because it allowed Andy to explain him self rather than us having to assume.

A few examples of the questions I was asked are as follows:

If you could change the past would u still have speeded?

Do you wish it was the man who robbed your grandfather that you killed instead of Andy?

Do you blame the bullying in your child hood as the cause for your speeding problem?

My answers to the questions differed form those of the other to Andy's and it was interesting comparing the different versions of the character Andy which we had.

Everyone took on a role a someone involved either directly or indirectly. Our relationship with Andy had to be conveyed through our posture and face expression. I was a shopkeeper who disliked Andy because he was a thief. Although my relationship with Andy was indirect this still had to be conveyed to the audience. This had to be suggested in the way I moved around the space and my reaction when I saw Andy.

We then moved into a still image reflecting the neighbourhood and wider society. We created a still image to represent out relationship with Andy in comparison to each other. The main focus of the tableaux was Andy and all of our attention had to be on him rather that the camera.

Thought tracking was used to aid the audiences understanding of our characters. This gave each of us an opportunity to express more literally our feelings towards Andy. This was then repeated the difference being Andy's recent release from prison. Also Kelly's parent were now involved. It was interesting to see how our perception of Andy was affected by his imprisonment. I think peoples actions definitely contribute to there characteristics and personalities.

We then had a discussion based on differences and grievances felt by individuals which was useful. We acknowledged the truth of how and ex convict is treated by society and decided that this was an inevitable reaction of imprisonment. We all felt that rehabilitation is not present in prison and that prison seems to have only one purpose keeping criminals away from the public. The idea of once you're a criminal you remain a criminal was mentioned several times.

In a line with Andy at one end, characters had to reveal their trust in post-prison Andy by there proximity to him.

We then improvised in pairs a discussion between Andy and hi Parole Officer. The teacher would stop and start different groups using the technique of cross cutting to highlight issues concerning the central character. The reason this exercise was good was because we were improvising. The improvisation meant tat we had to think on the spot about our arguments and comments. We got to put our entire preparation work o practise by exercising our opinions and ideas through the improvisation.

Development

Use the style and technique of Legal Weapon to devise a presentation highlighting one of the themes covered in the workshop.

After exploring Legal weapon to such a great depth we were ready to begin constructing our own presentation which some how incorporated some of the ideas present in Legal weapon.

We started to think about the different possibilities of drama which we could explore. We sat down for a good 15 minutes trying to conjure up any appropriate ideas but we were not succeeding. We knew that our drama had to have some of resemblance or relationship to legal weapon and it was this restriction or criteria which made it harder.

Eventually we came up with several ideas and this now became confusing and made it harder to make a decision about which one we would use. Then one of us suggested a really good idea of a loop in our play. This triggered all of our imaginations and we began to pour with suggestions. We finally came to an agreement about which ideas we would use.

The idea of a dream becoming reality excited all of us and we began to develop an actual plot around it. We decided the main character would have a dream about and event which would actually happen in the future, a premonition, but he wouldn't be aware of its truth until it actually started to tae place.

We knew that if it was to work it would have to be well organised and well thought through so we began breaking it apart and concentrating on smaller sections rather than the whole piece.

The piece was to start in the dream and then only show glimpses of the dream. Our intention to achieve the affect of glimpses was to use lighting and keep changing places every so often to suggest movement and differences in time movement and differences in time. The reason we wanted this affect was because we wanted to keep the audience in suspense so that when the dream actually come to life they are not aware of its reality straight away. Another reason was because usually in dreams people never actually remember the whole dream the only usually remember bit and pieces.

The idea was that Ross would have a dream about robbing entering a shop with two fiends and then sees the shop keeper with a gun pointed towards his friend. The next glimpse of the ream would be his friend dead on the floor suggesting to the audience that he was sot by the shop keeper. We never wanted to show the actual shooting happen and the reason for this is evident in the last scene.

Towards the end of the dream when Laurie (the friend who got shot) is lying on the floor with Ross on top of him shouting "wake up" we had the lights go off for the final time for the duration of the dream. However Ross still continued shouting "wake up wake up" and the shop keeper who now became Ross's father began shouting it as well.

The lights came back on and Max (Ross's dad) was on top of Ross shaking him and shouting "wake up wake up". By this point me and Laurie and moved positions and were sitting on two seats which were supposedly in one of our houses. We then began a long sequence of cross cutting between us and Ross and Max. Me and Laurie we talking about how we needed money soon and then eventually came to the conclusion we would rob this shop on Sunnydale which had no CCTV footage. Ross was asking his father (Max) for money whilst eating breakfast. Me and Laurie decided we needed one more person who needed money as much as we did and then I said "What about Ross" and as I finished saying it max said "Ross I don't have any money for u". The overlapping of Ross in the two scenes created a good affect. Ross stormed out of his house and said he going to the shop then me and Laurie left the house also going to the shop.

We met Ross in the shop and then the lights went off and we froze to suggest the idea of us explaining to him what we were intending to do. The loop now began and Ross noticed some similarities with his dream and we conveyed his awareness y a brief soliloquy where Ross said "wait a minute" and then continued. This time there were no lights going off because it wasn't a dream it was reality and but the only difference was at Ross was aware of where the shop keeper kept his gun.

This changed everything and created suspense for the audience. They were unaware of what would actually happen. Seeing as Ross knew where the gun was kept and had realised that his dream was actually happening he thought he could avoid Laurie being shot so he grabbed it and pointed it at the shop keeper. We thought that it would be too simple for Ross to ill the shop keeper so we ended the performance with a twist and had the shot keeper grab Laurie and Ross shoot Laurie. The presentation ended with Ross in despair and me shaking Laurie and shouting "wake up wake up".

Our inspiration for the loop came form the play Legal Weapon and another performance we were taken to see last year. I think we succeeded in portraying our idea accurately and I was really pleased with our final performance. However had we been given more time I think we could have made it a lot better by possibly involving more characters and using music and better lighting but it was still excellent taking into account our time limit.

Evaluation

We spent a lot of time on this section of drama and the text for Legal weapon influenced a lot of the drama that followed. We started off by exploring the text and gaining strong understanding of what exactly was happening and then began to explore it physically by actually devising a piece of drama which evolved around it.

The play legal weapon was written in a very unique way which was often confusing a times. We often could interpret the text in more than one way and this sometimes led to shirt debates about the endless possibilities of what the author actually wanted to portray.

We were given the task of creating a piece of drama which explained the reason for Andy speed and subsequently killing a girl. This task was aided with the research and preparation we had done which included a sort video on Joy riding. This gave us a lot of ideas but our chosen idea was completely different. We decided that out drama was going to show that Andy's excuse or reason for speeding was subsequently due to his child hood experiences.

Our drama showed how as a child Andy was given a toy from his granddad that died soon after. He took this car too school with him and one day he was face with a group of bullies who stole it off him and began to tease and torment him. The bullies yelled and shouted at him that he wasn't fast enough and he never would be and Andy kept shouting back saying "I am fast enough I am fast enough! This scene involved a lot of movement and eventually flowed swiftly to the last scene as I previously explained in the response with Andy pushing the accelerator in his car and still shouting I am fast enough suggesting the idea that it was all a memory.

I think that this was a very well planned response to the play and we achieved exactly what we wanted to. This however was only the penultimate stage to another performance. Our next drama was completely open to all possibilities the only criteria we were given was that it had to evolve around the theme of crime. I explained in detail in the development section what drama we done and how we responded to this task but I never explained our views and the audiences. After the performance we spoke to the audience (our fellow classmates) and discussed the good and bad elements of our performance. This was extremely helpful because it helped us understand how well we communicated our ideas.

Our drama was extremely detailed and very well organised. We often tried to consider all the minor details in order to certify a professional performance.

Little things like timing and positioning were rehearsed repeatedly until perfect. One part in particular was when I and Max had an overlap in our lines. This was intentional and it created a great effect when perfected.

I feel that in both our performances we performed strongly and equally expressed our characters appropriately. I also feel that from the audiences' response and reaction we succeeded both times in generating entertaining and interesting pieces of drama.

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