Unit 8 - Research

Research into themes 

Rejection

This theme starts coming around at the start of the play when Kojo feels alienated from the other cast members because they won't be able to understand him. In the first scene while Kojo speaks to the audience he says 'They won't understand me, but you will'. This shows that Kojo has accepted the fact that the people in the UK won't accept him (that's another theme in the play but more on that later). Other examples of Rejection in the play are when Kojo rejected Ara's attempt to get back into his life (scene 32) and when Kojo gets age disputed and rejected a place at the refuge centre (scenes 9, 21&31). This made me ask how many Refugees the UK allows in their boarders. So i did some research into it, in mid to end of 2015 the UK only house 840 refugees. this got me asking even more questions because Lybia (which is considered as a 3rd world country) house over 5 times the amount the UK did at 4'470 refugees. research found Here

Acceptance

As I said earlier the first example of acceptance in this play is in scene 1 where Kojo accepts the fact that the English people would not accept is culture/nationality by saying 'They won't understand me, but you will'. Another place where someone accepts something is the fact that Hassan accepts the ideals of the 'X-men' which is an overly used motif in the play which got me researching the psychology of children (because the people in the refuge centre were children). I found out that children from broken homes are prey for manipulation. I got this information from an interview with a 'Road man' who uses children to do his dirty work for him. Here is the video:

In this video we hear directly from a child predator that it is easier to prey on children with broken backgrounds. This directly links to the play because we see that the characters accept a lot of things that are thrown their way without a fight, for example Kojo could have run away from the child soldiers in scenes 20 (where they recruit him) and 33 (in his dream about killing his father) and risk getting shot, in this scenario he would be able to join his family. Even though he does want the soldiers to kill him he complies (evidence in scene 20 Kojo:'Kill me. Kill me! But they won't...').

Systems

Systems is also a very predominant theme of this play because throughout this play we go through Kojo's story and all they systems he experiences: The social system (how you are seen socially  in a given society (country or group)); the justice system (he is running from this system after the stabbing); the immigration system (as he came into the country) and the asylum seeking system (which didn't go in his favour), and these four systems were not the only ones that Kojo went through they are just the main ones that affected his life while he was in the UK. The one thing that Kojo didn't take into consideration was that these systems could be corrupted so therefore he set himself up for disappointment. He had realised this and therefore cut himself off from another system. The 'system of love'. I believe that Kojo broke ties with Ara because he didn't want to set himself up for disappointment again. This made him even more agitated which brought back memories from his past which made him very irritable, we see this in scene 35 where Kojo pulls out a knife to scare away Cheung when he presses Kojo buttons by asking too many questions.

Research into Child soldiers and Refugees

As we see in the play Kojo is both a child soldier and a refugee, so I decided to delve deeper into these aspects of his life. I was guided to two different films by one of my class mates during a discussion session. The first film is called 'Beasts Of No Nation'. This film follows the story a young boy named Agu who is forced to join an army in a west African country. Just like Kojo, Agu's father has been killed and also Just like Kojo there is a scene where Agu is told to kill a man who pleads for his life. And during this scene you can see the conflict going on in his mind with his morals and his generals commands through the expression on his face (which i also tried to incorporate in the dream scene where Kojo has to kill his father. Again both Agu and Kojo comply with their Generals orders.

 

The second film is called 'The Good Lie' which is a film based on a group of Sudanese refugees who were given the chance to find asylum in America. In the film there is a scene where the character Mamere blames himself for his brother's death. He says that he joined the army to protect is family. this got me wondering if Kojo joined the army to protect his brother but even in his efforts to do so the bother is still killed (we don't actually know for sure if Kojo's brother (Tamba) is really dead because his death isn't actually shown.

Here's the scene :

 

And here's the trailer:

Cote d'ivoire (Ivory Coast)

My character Kojo is from the Ivory Coast, so i decided to do some research on the Ivory Coast to get a better understanding of my character and how they would feel in the new environment of England. So i looked for some facts on the Ivory Coast and here is what I found:

• The capital city of Ivory Coast is Yamoussoukro.
• Abidjan is currently the largest city in Ivory Coast. It used to be the country’s capital city.
• 20.2 million people live in the Ivory Coast.
• The country has 124,502 square miles of land.
• The official language of Ivory Coast is French but many of their local languages are still used like Dioula, Baoule, Dan and Anyin.
• Most people are Christian, Muslim, or follow a native religion.
• The life expectancy is 57 years
• 47% of adults can read.

Research link: http://easyscienceforkids.com/all-about-ivory-coast/

The last two facts really showed me how sad Kojo must have been at home and how much pressure would be on him not only for being a man (because mostly only men were drafted into the army) but also for being an older brother. Using this research I wanted to make my charater as realistic as possible. So i decided to think about how Kojo would feel at home and how he would feel in a new more developed country. I thought that Kojo would feel very lost by the time he had gotten to england because he has spent 11years in normal Cote d'iviore and then an additional 3 years serving with the child soldiers and now at 14 he has come to england. Not only is he in a new country but he would also have P.T.S.D (post traumatic stress disorder) from all the things he would have had to see and do during his 3 years as a child soldier. I as an actor had to show all of this in my performace. Obviously I didn't know how people with P.T.S.D really felt so I decided to research. I found a video where a sgt. describes his life with P.T.S.D he says that he 'used to be able to distinguish between home and the combat zone but now everywhere is combat zone'

Accents and clothing

During our search for costumes and props I decided that I would research Ivorians. I decided to research both their clothing and their accents (even though we had decided on not doing accents) I had found out that Ivorian accents are very similar to Nigerian accents (my heritage) so all i really had to do (if I were to use an accent for Kojo) is to put a french twist to my natural accent which is very strong and enriched with base because it comes more from the mid section of the body (the belly area). While searching for Ivorian clothing style I started to realise that the Ivorian clothing was very similar to Nigerian (or basically all African attire) attire. I wanted to add some of Kojo's culture so i use a dashiki in scene 36 where Kojo says 'I am safe, I am home', i wanted to use it to show that he is home.


Ivorian styles
dashiki