I was playing a convict and I found that after a while I
really got into the character and the situation and I felt the pain, fear and
frustration that so many convicts must have suffered on a much larger scale.
The exercise lasted for around 30 mins and I found that after 5 my neck began
to ache from having to look downwards and all I wanted to do was move; however
when I did the guards immediately told me to stop moving. After experiencing
the discomfort for just a short while I began to sympathise with the convicts
because they would have been in the same position for 8 months without the
ability to move and I thought about the constrain pain that you would be in and
how this could mentally affect you and your stability and how you may lash out
as I got so frustrated by not being allowed to move and so they must have had
to much built up anger and frustration and it made me think about if they had
any outlet. This links with how bored I got from not being able to talk or move
and consequently I started to take my anger and frustration out on the guards by
moving slightly and looking at them trying to provoke a reaction to make
something happen. Equally when people got taken out the room and they put up a
fight and there was screaming all around I had really mixed emotions as I was
scared because of the pain being inflicted but also excited as something was
happening. This made me think about how convicts might have tried to push or
test the guards when they had nothing to do and how this effected the
relationships between the guards and the convicts and the convicts themselves.
Interestingly I wasn’t overly scared of the guards and their
threats because I felt that they were just having to say that and really being
put in pain was unwanted but had become a norm on the boat that a mental
resistance was being put up against it. I thought that this showed a lot about
the convict’s psychological state and how they developed a mental strength and
consequently became harder, scarier, more ruthless characters. However the
moments that I was really scared when one of the guards ran their finger down
my neck or touched my hand and when I had two of them whispering in my ear. I
think that this had more of an impact on me as the tenderness in the touch has
a much sinister edge and for once I was unsure what they wanted from me or what
they were going to do. It also made me think of rape and how some of the women
would be taken for sex and although this could have given me a better life on
the boat it scared me more than physical pain as I felt that the intimacy was hurting
my psychologically and emotional state rather than just physical. However a lot
of women could have used this as a good opportunity to gain a better life but
for young girls I think this could have been a really frightful prospect.
One thing that we picked up on with the guards is how the
power went to their heads and how a lot of them really enjoyed being able to
control us and make us do what the want. I think that this is something that we
can explore with the guards further because no doubt there would have been men
that would take it too far and humiliated the convicts in a horrific way as a
form of entertainment as they were also bored. I think that it would be really
interesting to look into their mentality and how the religious men justify this
to them selves.
One of the main things that really opened me to the exercise
was that once I got into it I really began to believe in the environment that I
was in and the smell and heat and taste of it and how that effected me as a
convict. One of the prominent smells was of piss and shit being covered and
suffocating us as it was such a small space so the smell just compressed into
us and had no way to get out, however because of the length of time the smell
had almost become part of me and I couldn’t separate what was me and the waste
smelling. This was repulsive but at the same time I had become so used to it
that part of me didn’t even care anymore what I smelt like and that their was
bigger issues for me to deal with, like being flogged. However when a dead body
was brought in and the smell of blood and gas and decaying was added to the mix
this really heightened the disgusting smell and almost pushed me over the edge
as I began to gag and could feel my stomach churning up because of the smell,
yet there was nothing to throw up because I was so hungry that there was no
food in my body just acid so I was just retching. As a result of my hunger it
felt as if my stomach was folding in on itself and trying to eat my body’s fat
or anything to get some food. Along side the hunger was an immense thirst from
the lack of water and my mouth became like sandpaper and my throat began to
hurt and their was no spit or anything to wet my pallet so not only was I in
pain on the outside but my insides were aching and churning as well. On top of
the pain the amount of people in such a small place created a huge amount of
uncomfortable heat and touching people was horrible because of the stickiness
but it was necessary to all fit and moving to take off layers was not allowed.
So we were all just dripping and without water people would have got dehydrated
and could have gone insane.
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