For this assignment, we were assigned into large groups and each group is assigned a certain civilisation in history as our theme. We were given the theme "British Empire" and had to prepare a live or video performance based on the theme. Our performance has to be decently historically accurate and contain certain elements of the specific civilisation, such as the culture, traditions, social strata, special events etc. 

 

At first, our group came up with the idea of telling the story of a real life slave and his involvement in the British slave trade. However, this idea was scrapped as the tutor mentioned that the story didn't focus enough on the British Empire. Instead we came up with a new idea, which is showing the British Empire, or Victorian London to be exact, through a mystery case being solved by Sherlock Holmes. We chose Sherlock Holmes because he is widely known as a British detective who lives in the time when the British Empire was blooming. 

 

The story revolves around Sherlock Holmes and his partner John Watson running around Victorian London trying to solve a number of apparent disappearances. For the performance, I had to play Sherlock's partner, John Watson. It was quite fun playing Watson as he was quite an interesting character and had a great friendship with Sherlock, which was great as I had my good friend Chong Hao Foong play Sherlock Holmes alongside me. I enjoyed watching Sherlock Holmes movies and the TV Series Sherlock, therefore there wasn't much research needed on the character John Watson. During the group meetings, I was tasked to make the props with a few others while the rest worked on the costumes, script etc. I enjoyed making the props related with that era, even though it cost me many sleepless nights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pictures showing our progress