Introduction

The stimulus we were given is called Project Prevention. It is a non-profit organisation which pays drug addicts money in hand to volunteer to be sterilised (Birth control). Once they have showed proof that they had been sterilised, the addict will then be granted the money.   It was founded in the USA in 1997 by Barbara Harris, a woman who had adopted four children from a drug addicted mother with each of them only separated by one year. The heart-breaking experience of helping a child through withdrawals and other health problems had a profound effect on her and when she couldn’t get a legislation passed to ensure mothers who give birth to foetuses exposed to cocaine are put under long term birth control, she embarked on this instead. In 2010 she decided expand and bring her controversial organisation into the UK which was met with stern opposition from charities such as Addaction and Drugscope who did not agree with the demonization of drug addicts from Project Prevention and did not want that trickling into greater society.
The first thing that interested me about the stimulus was how I would explore this theme. Some people really support the idea that Project Prevention stands for; stopping drug addict babies from being born into extremely unhappy lives which is why she had gained enouh support to launch a campaign to bring project prevention to London. Enough so that they’re willing to put their own hard earned money into the organisation. However an equal amount of people feel just as strongly about how wrong Project Prevention is. They feel as if Barbara is taking advantage of vulnerable people just to satisfy her own agenda and think her methods amount to nothing more than bribery. These very stark and conflicting views on the same stimulus mean there are so many different ways to approach this dramatically. Another thing that really got my blood flowing was the opportunity to explore the idea of eugenics dramatically which I’d never seen done before. Eugenics is a social philosophy a social philosophy advocating the improvement of human genetic traits through the promotion of higher reproduction of people with desired traits. The main critique towards eugenics policies is that they are vulnerable to political abuse because the criteria of selection are determined by whichever group is in power. This would give the audience a lot to think about in a very Stanislavsky way and also produce emotionally intense theatre.

Character, Context and Plot

The character i played in this production was A drug addict. My character did not have the luxuries of a name as i wanted to emphasize the fact that the general public portrays every drug addict as a low life who doesn’t deserve care and affection without knowing their background and what got them into taking drugs in the first place. He has a very reserved personality due to the effects of the drugs however at the same time he can be very bold in order to attain money for more drugs. During the performance my character performs a synchronised set of actions (