Docudrama Reflection

Docudrama Reflection

        Writing a docudrama was an interesting experience. I had never written a play or made monologues and scenes so actually doing this things was a new experience for me. My group and I chose a topic that interested us, the psychology of criminals, and from there we discovered Charles Manson and decided to make him the focus of our docudrama. We made it not only make it about Manson himself but also about the people he influenced and how these people also became killers. We decided to break up the play into scenes and monologues of these people sharing their background so we can see how they eventually became murderers. We decided to organize the play into a classical structure, with an exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution.

        Including each of the people involved with Manson and their backgrounds was one of the choices I think worked for our docudrama. Without the background of these characters the audience would have been lost as to who they were or why they were there. This was evident when we did our table read in class. The class was mostly lost because we didn’t have time to introduce each character as much as we would have wanted.

        Giving the play a classical structure was another choice I think worked for our docudrama. Giving it a classical structure made the play easy to follow. We organized it in such a way that first we discussed the characters’ backgrounds. After that we started talking what led up to the murders. The third act, the climax was us discussing the actual murders. Our fourth act, the falling action, was about the consequences of the murders which included interviews of the family members of the victims. The fifth and final act, the resolution, was about where each of the characters are now and how much time they have been serving in jail. Organizing our docudrama in this way allowed us to tell a story that we might not have been able to do if we had done it another way.