coming to an advertiser near you. provided they don't hate it or anything

Locked In is the story of three teenagers who regularly skip school to broadcast pirate radio from a disused East London tower block. Bengali DJ Riqi, Carribbean MC Blaze and new girl Zahida all think they know what they want from life, and don't need anyone else to tell them. But after an argument one afternoon, Riqi has something of a religious awakening, and Blaze agrees to help out a local gangster. Zahida isn't afraid to let them know when they start acting out of order, but the results still threaten to tear their world apart.

Set to a hip-hop soundtrack, the play pounds along to the beat, much of the fast-paced conversation within the flow and pulse of the music that rocks the characters' worlds. The most heartfelt outbursts appear when the teenagers pick up the microphones and begin to rap to their listening public: their frustration with school, burning ambitions and religious conflicts are all explored within the rhythm and rhyme they blast out across the airwaves.

Locked In is an example of that rare, beautiful creature: a youth-marketed play that really does make a connection with its audience. The performances from all three actors are gripping and realistic, the set is well-designed, and the story rips along at a cracking pace, ensuring that even the most easily distracted will stay engaged. The dialogue is sometimes hard to follow word-by-word, and it can take a while to adjust to the slang and speed of conversation, but this does make the interaction more believable, and the gist is easy to grasp. Definitely worth it.

4/5



*



(Better than Virgins. Which is, admittedly, not saying an awful lot.)

randomness

heya guys

The opening party tingy majigy was overly jks ! we soooo have to have anova prty lyk agen ! soooon ! altho i was ill the next day and had to come home from skl which was no good :( but hey da opening twas still good :) every1s boxes tings looked bwill !

sarah wen is da opening date for brit skl?!? i can't find it ne where on da websyt ! :(

lotsa loVe
Jessie x x x :P

Ambassador Website

Hey guys

y'all kno im making an awesome website well heres the part wher you come in..

i need some stuff from you....lol....sounds scary :D.....
nah its cool just email me back your details/responces please, tis very important and vital for me passing my course

lady_tropical03@yahoo.co.uk

a) im gonna take pictures of everyone next meeting

b) can everyone send me their details of
their full name
age
school/college
hobbies
what they are most interested in e.g. things that can help the ambassadors
and when they joined the ambassador group

c) im getting some good pages together but i'd like any suggestions to what people might like to see in it.

d) and lastly...is there anything that we dont want put up? or anything that you really dont want said or anything at all. please tell me!

thanks guys u kno i love u all to pieces...sorry i got tipsy last thursday
hehe

love sarah xxxxx

rah nuff writing

OK - Bad news! To start off with....
Locked In at the Half Moon Theatre is sold out! And has been for about a month! Big apologies for not sorting out a trip sooner...it's entirely my fault, and to make up for my wrongdoing I am resigning.
(pause)
I decided not to resign in the end, but I will sacrifice 3 tickets instead. So if anyone is desperately seeking tickets to see Locked In on Thursday night at 7pm (I'm hoping 3 of you will go together - preferably 3 of you who don't know each other as well!) and can make your own way there - you can have them. Maddie, I know you were up for reviewing the show for Croydon Advertiser (who said they would print a review of it!) - are you still able to make it?

Here's the better news.....
Your Exhibition 'Croydon Now' looks terrific and last Thursday's grand opening was pretty fun, despite the fact I can't remember half of it. The work ain't over for those of you who want more! Get thinking about what/who we might programme for the tiny performance space and when - we can invite people from the film, ur mates from school/college, talented people, talentless people, comedians, singers, speakers, musicians........I'm going to get Jonathan Kennedy (you know who I mean!) to speak to you all about programming, so you can see what's involved and it will help you get started (potential Arts Award contribution too! And preparation for the Ambassador Showcase). The little performances could take place anytime, during Museum opening hours and in the Croydon Now space, within the Museum. We can then make a programme of events and give them out, mail them out, make paper airplanes from them and fly them out! The list is endless.....

Arts Award: If you're doing the Arts Award, I'll leave it up to you to get hold of me and arrange a meeting. I'll speak to you about how your involvement in the Croydon Now exhibition has meant you've already done a big part of the award already! The Showcase event as well as the Croydon Now 'mini-event programming' can also stand as a big part of the Arts Award!

Next Ambassador Meeting: will be Wednesday 11th October in workshop 2 at the usual time (Emma wants to drop by and say hello and goodbye - but not forever I hope!) and afterwards the show, Locked In at 8pm. Is anyone going this week to see We Can Be Heroes? or Throat? If so, when are you going?

Hey, way too much writing here to write anymore.....so I'm off and will blog soon....

(Not) Virgins

A boy stands half-silhouetted in front of a lighted screen, arms uplifted, shouting, screaming, to an unseen presence above him: God? The world? Or no-one in particular? "I'm tame," he spits, "I'm tame boy--everybody, please, shit on me!" The sight, it has to be said, is something to behold, and probably not something you expect to come across on a daily basis, even when dabbling in the waters of edgy arts centre plays. In a different context, with a different build-up, maybe the line could have been stunning, powerful, shocking, resonant. Unfortunately, it was just funny.

Perhaps the fundamental flaw in Virgins is the title, and everything else stems from that. A play about teenagers exploring their relatively newfound sex lives and parents struggling to keep theirs going, it is quite clearly not about virgins. Of the four characters, only the fifteen-year-old sister could indeed claim this title. It is quite possible, in fact, probable, that there is some kind of clever meaning hidden within--maybe they are virgins in the field of communication, or something of that ilk. However, Virgins seems to be aimed at teenagers who perhaps wouldn't usually go to the theatre, and who are unlikely to have any interest in picking apart layers of meaning in a play's title. "The content of this play seems to be the opposite of the title," they might think, "I am puzzled by this." Assuming they think in the style of Critical Thinking example texts, at least.

The plot, in essence, revolves around a few weeks in the lives of a four-person family, each with their own sexual difficulties. Seventeen-year-old Jack wakes up in the front garden after a party, discovers he has taken cocaine, slept with two different girls, and now has an STI. His younger sister Zoë wants her first time to be special, and is worried about her brother's attitude to the incident. Meanwhile, their overworked mother and unsatisfied father are having difficulties relighting the sparks between them. The premise looks worryingly similar to the kind of up-to-the-minute, really-communicating-with-young-people-innit-man productions that those over the age of ten are forced to endure now and again in a school hall in the name of sex education, and this is pretty much how it comes across on stage. It is, to put it bluntly, unrealistic. Many of the conversations in Virgins seem terribly unlikely to ever take place in real life, though if you know a fifteen-year-old girl who has asked her father to tell her about his first sexual experience, I stand corrected.

There are some saving graces. The acting, for the most part, is good: perhaps not blow-you-away standards, but good. The only problems are the incidences where a character suddenly shouts far too loudly without any apparent build in tension, which seem forced and unrealistic (see opening paragraph). The minimal set, with lighted screens, boxes to sit and stand on, and a small model house, is effective without being distracting.

But then there is the dancing. Dear Lord, the dancing. There is not much to be said, except possibly "what?" and "why?" and "oh God". Again, the fusion of gritty realism, or at least what is believed to be gritty realism, and expressive dance to Bach and the Arctic Monkeys is probably a very good idea in the eyes of, well, almost all the reviews of Virgins, for a start, but… it seems rather odd and pretentious. As the actors thrash about on stage, jumping around employing motifs, canon, unison, spine movement, and generally Expressing Themselves, the target audience--well, those who aren't busy being reminded of that afternoon where the family planning representative came in for an hour and extolled the virtues of the condom whilst everybody stared at the floor--begins to remember the last time they had to jump around in a similar manner in footless tights in the gym. School dance teachers across the country will enjoy Virgins, if nobody else.

So, overall? The plot is contrived--the resolution, too, is unsatisfying and largely unexplained--the scenes and dialogue often unrealistic, the whole thing reminiscent of Key Stage 3 sex education, and the dancing just bizarre. It's possibly worth it for the line "You’re King Slag, Jack," although this is debatable. The average teenager is unlikely to learn anything they haven’t already been told by a friend or read on the internet. One day the adult generation will learn that attempting to "get down with the kids", in play format as much as any other, is futile, although I fear it will not be for some time.



*



(No offence to Stefan, who was really cool, and excellent at arguing with Twixes. We still heart you.)

Your views on suburbia for NEW exhibition!

Hello

I've briefly hi-jacked George's identity to tell you about our next big Clocktower exhibition, called 'Sunshine in Suburbia'.

We're looking for your views on all things suburban, and we want to include them in the exhibition. What does suburbia mean to you? Is Croydon 'the ultimate suburbia'? Can you pigeon-hole a place like this? Or is Croydon actually something else - something much more interesting and possibly subversive...

Please let me know what you think - either via the blog, via email: mary.webb@croydon.gov.uk and if you're interested we can even arrange a short recording session so that your views can be played in the exhibition itself.

thanks

Mary
Exhibitions team

15 minutes of fame

You don't get a blog from me for weeks and then 3 come along at once...

A photographer and reporter from Croydon Advertiser will be in the gallery on Friday from 1pm 'til 2pm. They'd love to photograph and interview a few of you about the exhibition, but I know with school commitments and all that, it's not so easy.

If you can make it though and fancy shouting your success from the rooftops, let me or Olly know.

I'll stop pestering you now.

G

glamorous opening

Hello

You are all invited to the official opening of the Museum of Croydon including the star attraction - Croydon Now!

The event is on Thursday 21st September 2006, 6 pm at the Clocktower. Paper invites should arrive with you in the post. To confirm your place RSVP to museum@croydon.gov.uk or 020 8253 1022 from Monday next week.

George

Ta 'n' titles

Thanks everyone for all the effort that you've put in on your cabinets. They are looking good and we've only a few to go to complete the display.

I'm going to make labels for each case. It'll be your name (to credit you as the artist) and the titles of works (if they have them).

Let me knowwhat your fabulous creations are called!

George

Writing about YOU

OK contributors to the exhibition - I'm making a DVD Slideshow about the exhibition and you lot. Can you each gimme something to say about you or your work or anything you just wanna make common knowledge to a wider public (about you or Croydon or the exhibition or whatever). If I don't hear back from you - I may fail not to damage your reputation ;) have a nice day

lotsa love for everyone!!

heya cool ppl of croydon!

editing is tomorrow aka monday and tuesday im pretty sure oly said it was from 5pm onwards. ....might have bin 4:30 tho lol

dont worry luv...we're all confuzzled

im coming in early anyway cuz i get an early finish from the BRIT!!!!!!!!!!!!...sorry... lol

so basically if anyone is bored or wants something to do for a few hours before editing...come join me..
you migh find me singing in workshop 3...i get very into my mp3 player lol..

luv forever!!! Sarah xxx