12:00pm Tuesday 11th May 2010
SHAQUILLE Smith was just 14 when he was stabbed to death in Hackney in 2008, and while Crime of the Century is not specifically his story, it was his life and death that inspired friends and relatives involved in Chickenshed Theatre Company to create a performance that would serve simultaneously as a tribute and an exploration of how knife crime has become ‘the crime of the century’.
And it’s a short, sharp and powerful piece of theatre that gains added potency and poignancy from the knowledge that one cousin is playing the killer while another plays the victim’s broken mother.
Depicting the build up to a single fatal moment, Crime of the Century pulls no punches, as, with relentless momentum, it sets the raw physical energy of the performers against a soundtrack of voice, hip hop and dance music to create a work that is shocking, moving and illuminating.
Based on interviews with victims, perpetrators, families, police officers and ex-offenders, Crime of the Century raises issues and ask questions that make it a work that should be seen by everyone. Why, for example, asks the soundtrack, is it that pictures of neglected and abused children make us put out hands in our pockets to do anything we can, but a few short years later, we have turned our backs, demonising and shunning them. And how is it that we are raising ‘a generation of I don’t cares’, a generation for whom life is this cheap?
“Did I tell you what I want to be when I grow up ...” the victim in Crime of the Century asks, but doesn’t answer, twice, leaving an indelible sense of potential about to be cut brutally short.
Anyone who sees Crime of the Century will be left in no doubt that social engineering is at play at both ends of the spectrum - where kids are one end are encouraged, and supported, their potential spotted and nurtured, at the other, a different kind of potential leads to exclusion from all but the margins of society.
Crime of the Century is currently on tour and can be seen at The Drum in Birmingham on Thursday, June 10 at 7.30pm and on Friday, June 11 at 1pm and 7.30pm. To book, call the box office on 0121 333 2444.
© Copyright 2001-2012 Newsquest Media Group
http://www.herefordtimes.com/trade_directory/