This past week, I have been leading some creative workshops to get ideas flowing and to get the company comfortable working as an ensemble. Some of the workshops have been focused on the stories we hold as a group. As we are interested in interviewing the public and visualising personal stories, specifically related to memories and regrets, I felt that it was important for us share our own stories first. This would then make it easier to know how sensitive we need to be when dealing with external material.
One exercise I gave our actors was to write a letter they would like to send to someone but for some reason, they can’t. They then paired up and picked one of the letters at random and each pair physicalised the narrative of the letter. I asked the performers to think about the emotion behind the letter; apart from that, I had no direct instructions for them as I felt I needed to give the performers opportunities to have a creative input, ‘by setting tasks you allow your performers to offer much creative input into the devising of choreography without burdening them with the responsibility of creating the whole show.’ (Graham, 2014, p. 15) I then merged some of the sequences together and played around with music which resulted in a short physical piece which myself and Rachel, our choreographer, can carry on developing further.
(Katherine Copley, 2015)
The Frantic Assembly book of devising theatre has been a key tool which has inspired a couple of my workshops. At the beginning of their devising process, Frantic usually divert from the topic of their piece as they feel it can restrain the imaginations of the performers. This is something I wanted to implicate into some of our workshops, a good example of this is when I asked our designers to gather some props together; the performers all chose a prop at random and were asked to create a short improvised piece where they were to use these particular props but not for their original purpose. This exercise has been essential for the development of our show as I am particularly interested in using objects and props to aid us in our storytelling. Additionally, the exercise has allowed the performers to spend time being playful and expanding their imaginations which I feel is essential at the beginning of a devising process as ‘it’s when you’re most playful that you create the best work.’ (Mcdonnell, 2015)
All of the material from the workshops has been recorded on film and has begun to inspire me with more creative ideas resulting in a stronger framework. I cannot wait to see the piece develop further over the next few weeks!
Works Cited
Graham, S. and Hoggett, S. (2014) The Frantic Assembly book of devising theatre. Second edition. Oxon: Routledge.
Mcdonnell, J. (2015) Career advice from The Paper Birds Theatre Company. [interview] Interviewed by Michael Woodhall, 12 February.
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