Devised piece: Research

My task for research was to have a look at the dust bowl that took place back in the 30's. This may be useful as we can use this event to create backing stories as to why the gang formed, people being forced to move the affected areas, but as Wall Street was in crisis too, there were very little jobs, so people turned to gangs to survive.

The Dust Bowl of the 1930s lasted about a decade. Essentially, it was a period of extreme drought, the main source of jobs was from agriculture, and without water, the crops died and the ground dried up, turning the land into hard baked dust and sand, leaving thousands if not millions jobless and forcing them to travel over America, in search of a job. Its primary area of impact was on the southern Plains. The northern Plains were not so badly effected, but nonetheless, the drought, windblown dust and agricultural decline were no strangers to the north. In fact the agricultural devastation helped to lengthen the depression whose effects were felt worldwide. The movement of people on the Plains was also profound.

I also found an extact on a website from "The Grapes of Wrath" I think that this piece could be rather useful as we could use it to catalyse some dialogue and give us a base or idea on what to say. Especially for one of the gang members who has moved to New York from the south.

As John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land."

Poor agricultural practices and years of sustained drought caused the Dust Bowl. Plains grasslands had been deeply plowed and planted to wheat. During the years when there was adequate rainfall, the land produced bountiful crops. But as the droughts of the early 1930s deepened, the farmers kept plowing and planting and nothing would grow. The ground cover that held the soil in place was gone. The Plains winds whipped across the fields raising billowing clouds of dust to the skys. The skys could darken for days, and even the most well sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on furniture. In some places the dust would drift like snow, covering farmsteads.

 These pictures could also help act as a stimulus for any monologues we may do. They portray the desperation of the people, the horror of the post apocalyptic world the people had found themselves in.