Moving Forward Into Further Practice

In the second session we were introduced to a guest workshop leader, George, who is renowned for physical theatre training and performance. He introduced us to a dance sequence known as the ‘Coming of Age’ – the idea comes from evolution, and it gave us the chance to execute a synchronised story of movements with poise. This performance was much more, not held-back however maybe, composed than the previous session. Dance isn’t entirely in my favour, however the movements were simple enough for me to follow through with them – I rather enjoyed the final performance of it at the end. George was a great director in the way he joined in easily with the group to put this performance together. I’m sure we will use this dance sequence as a guideline for further devising.

The third session again similar in the way we warmed up to energise our bodies – Anna had us run around the room, and then fast sprinting on the spot, followed by stretching and vocal and breath sighs within a circle. Anna introduced us to more Greek sounds and actions, which we had to then imitate - these gave us the chance to explore different levels, whilst applying a variety of intriguing sounds to actions. After this, Anna recited some words such as castle, island, king, come, you, speak etc. Differentiating movements were again applied to such words, and we were instructed to take it in turns to lead the group within a story of such words and actions – we had to use the whole room to perform and present our ever-evolving story, and this task gave us practice to lead, as well as listen to each other; the foundations to working well as a group. We then split the class into smaller groups, and within those groups took created further individual stories, following the same previous approaches. It came about that our different stories then collaborated, and a further and more respectable piece was devised. Overall, this session again highlighted the idea that we as a group can work impressively well together – the approach to devising pieces out of simple yet effective words and sounds gave us a new, fresh and exciting look at further sessions within the module.