Short Story

Here's goes... Below you will see a working draft of the opera for Scicluna's class. It contains little to no dialogue, but should prepare us for tomorrow.

Opera – Social Justice (Scicluna)

Beginning

Come back from recess
Watches a movie about children and our social justice
As the time goes by, the children change positions showing how bored they are
We make the movie and it is shown on the projection screen, but the students are looking at their own TV
After the movies finishes, the teacher asks the class to go home and think about the movie
(Bell rings, kids are happy)

Scene II - Hockey Scene

· there are 8 kids playing hockey
· they are talking about how the movie was a waste of time and how they don’t care about the use of child soldiers
· the kid then scores a goal
· he puts his stick in the air to celebrate
· one of the kids says, “It would be cool to be a child soldier and have a gun and stuff.”
· all of a sudden the stick turns into a gun
· all the kids that were playing hockey are somewhere in Africa in the middle of a war
· They’re “boss” comes in and tells them to grab they’re guns. They are about to go fight. They are told they are going on a mission to check if there are bombs on the field. As they are going one kid says…..“This is horrible, I don’t want to die. I was wrong, it isn’t better here in Africa. These kids have it WAY worse than us. “Man I wish I was back in Canada!”

Scene III - Video game scene

Playing a video game in someone’s room. They start talking about how dumb the video was from class, and how child labour isn’t that big of an issue. They continued to complain and say, ‘It will be cool to have a job at such a young age.’ Then they are in a sweatshop in Africa. The boss starts barking orders at them, and they were dazed and didn’t know what was going on. They then kept on working, they didn’t work fast enough, which made their boss threaten to beat them. They were so scared and ‘Man I wish I could be back in Canada.”

Scene IV - Camping Scene

It all takes place at a campsite that evening. That night, the kids complain about the bugs and how cold it is all the time there. “It’s so cold here, in Africa it’s always warm. They don’t have it that bad, it would be cool to live in Africa.” The kids, as opposed to roasting marshmallows (water, food, supplies, etc.), which they had, these are all removed. They are now complaining about how hot it is, and they go for a drink and nothing is there. They ask someone walking by for water, they reply the nearest well is three miles away, but that water may be contaminated. Someone begins to feel ill, but they are no means to help, including cell phone. One student says, this really stinks, we have nothing to drink, no supplies, and someone who is really sick and there’s nothing we can do. ‘Man I wish I could be back in Canada.”

Scene V – The End

Kids come back to school from the weekend and they are talking to each in the classroom
Teacher asks them what they did over the weekend, and was their anything special they’d like to talk about.
They discuss their stories (optional), but they tell the teacher they want to make a difference, and choose to do a fundraiser to support the abolishment of child soldiers, child labour, and child labour.