Premeet, July 16 2008

Valerie, Bobby, Michael, FA

The purpose of the meeting, in my garden was to prepare for the 1 day workshop at my place Sunday 20th. It will be our first meeting with the kids. I wanted to review where we had come from, and look forward.

I printed out the notes from the March workshop and we went through them.

I also outined the plot structure so far, the characters, and matched characters to people.

I had photos of the young people and showed them to the group, to remind of who they were.

We talked about a structure for the day - meditation, listening pairs, a listening circle, and some games, were posible openers.

I want to use the day mainly for introduction and getting to know each other and the lay of the land.

Areas I want to cover include: going to a deep place as an actor, revealing personal experiences, holding to honest emotion.

Looking at Class , race and immigration, and how these intersect to define one's ability to lead fulfilled lives.

This is important since the impression is that most of the kids are "middle class" and we chose them because of their talent not because they have necessarily lived experiences of working class school situations.

However the setting of the school (the context for our story) is obviously working class. We are talking about an inner city school, where conditions prevail that lead to a time bomb type situation - it's a matter of time before it explodes. In the film it does.

There was the question of when to introduce the story and assign characters. We want the kids to feel free to create in the first instance, so maybe not immediately. But there is also safety and freedom in having a context and structure to work in.

So maybe I should write the story and give it to them, and then introduce their characters later.

I am not 100% well (still recovering from surgery) and so would like to structure ways to rely on the other (team leaders) to support me.

Some suggestions:

1) Bobby can help by leading some group games
2) Val can help with the small groups particularly "going deep"
3) Michael is a good resource about the school context as his high school experience was similar to that we are trying to recreate.