The Box Improvisation

To understand more about what the officers and convicts (more so the convicts) went through on the boat journey to Australia, we did an improvisation. But first, I will bore you with some fun facts.
Australia had began to be used as a place of exile for convicts after the Americas didn't want anymore British convicts, they were trying to build a new nation and convicts were too troublesome. The boat journey to Australia took 8 months and convicts' conditions were extremely cramped (they were literally cages) and highly unhygienic. The men were made to stand, not up straight though because there wasn't enough headroom and the women were sat on the floor both in their own crap. Their living quarters were almost never cleaned so the build up of human waste and the amount of people in one enclosure made diseases frolic happily from one person to the next. Most diseases were spread through parasites, breathing and physical contact so illnesses were very common, the human waste would have contaminated their food too, so cholera and dysentery would have happened here and there.

For the improvisations, nine of us volunteered to be convicts on a boat on the way to Botany Bay and we all had to fit into a square outlined by tape on the floor measuring 1.5x2 metres. About four people volunteered to be officers. The parts were given to us regardless of our actual roles in the play, this was purely for the exercise. I was a convict and we all had to sit in this square.
At first, I sat in a position that was quite comfortable and occasionally shuffled a bit, but the guards told us to stop fidgeting and look down, we could tell that they were doing this because they were bored and there was nothing else they could do so we didn't take them that seriously at first. They started getting louder and talking about our mothers and throwing vulgar insults at us, they were actually starting to get scary. They were really getting into their characters, especially Tyler who would come down to your level and spit words at you like "did I just see you fidgeting?". They started taking out people who were disobedient to get flogged. Some of them went willingly whereas others made a scene about it screaming and fighting the officers and that was the one time we could look at what was happening, because we were ordered to watch.
It didn't take long before everything was against the rules and it was getting pretty intense. My bum had gone numb, my whole back was aching my arm was twitching and I had an itch on my nose but I was way too scared to move because I didn't want them to shout and flog me, I wanted to be left alone. I kept my head between my knees and closed my eyes when the officers got near me. There may have been some real convicts who would have behaved the way I did, but I don't think I would have lasted 8 months otherwise I would have exploded or gone mute.
James, who was next to me, had started to insult the officers and spat at them. I suppose because he had enough. He was taken away but he was shouting and fighting the officers as he went out, it was unsettling to say the least. Everyone in the box had formed some kind of silent bond and when one was taken away, the rest were sad but it mean more space so we weren't complaining.

The improvisation lasted about 45 minutes but it felt a lot shorter than that. I found it really helpful because I gained some understanding on what life was like on board. I know that other things would have happened too such as rape and being ill, but we couldn't explore those. I think that the results of the improvisation could be used in our final performance at the beginning when the audience come in so they gain some understanding, I think its something interesting too.