Month: January 2016

Summary of article:

• Four suicide bombers kill 25 people in a village in the north of Cameroon.
• The group of suicide bombers were linked to Boko Haram.
• Other members at the same day attacked different parts of that area.
• Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria have all combined a group of soldiers to fight against Boko Haram and push their lines back.

In Drama, we have recently been learning about Brecht’s V-effect. This effect was made to distance audience away from the narrative by making scenes humorous yet thoughtful for the audience, leaving them with a message or something to think about.

For example, we created a scene where character A and character B were neighbours, but one day, B accidentally runs A’s dog over. We had to create a scene where B tells A that he just ran his dog over. However, there was a twist to this plot as we were only aloud to use the word “grapes” in our scene.

Initially, when we performed the scene it was funny, however, we then explored how it actually wasn’t as funny as it seemed, and how serious the matter would have actually been in a live situation.

Clearly Brecht’s V-effect worked as we found it amusing at first but then we thought about it deeper and the scenes atmosphere changed completely…. we were distanced away from the matter and we were left with something to think about. It seems crazy to think that someone could be serious by using only the word “grapes” but who would have thought that it could distance us so much and make us think outside the box about the actual situation and the characters feelings?

By Lis Fejzullahu.

My book is called Dark Horizons and was written by the author Dan Smith.

It is about a character called Alex who lives in Newcastle and who spent most of his adulthood looking after his sick mother. Eventually, his mother dies and Alex has lost his way in life. He then remembers some money that his mother left behind for him. He decided that he was going to use that money to fly to Indonesia in an attempt to find himself.

When Alex finally arrives in Indonesia he takes a bus to see a majestic tourist attraction called Lake Toba. As Alex is on the bus to the lake the bus crashes and he is severely injured, however, a woman by the name of Domino is at his aid helps him to hospital. Domino is a extremely confident and attractive woman and Alex is drawn to her and likes her a lot. Over time they form a bond and Domino decides to take Alex in a “journey to find himself”. Domino leads Alex into a strange community which she lives in and is familiar with. Alex feels uncomfortable but pretends to like it for Domino’s sake. The community is strange and many secrets are hidden away from him and he is made to do some peculiar things to be “accepted” into this community, made up of these  westerners. Kurt, the main leader of the community and also Domino’s brothers is seemingly fond of Alex and wants him to stay at the community but Alex finds it too isolated in this community and some weird things had been happing recently, Alex doesn’t  feel that this is the right way to find himself again. Eventually, he feels far too uncomfortable and decides to sneak away and into a small hotel which he rented. He decided that he would find himself by doing the activities that a normal tourist would do. However he receives a message from Domino to wait for her for minimum a week so that she could escape with him as well. Alex is left in a difficult position as he doesn’t trust Domino since she has kept so many secrets from her but still decides to wait for her considering he has a small space in his heart left for Domino.