About the workshop which Olga and I led at the school.
My main goal was to get to know a little bit the people, who attended the workshop, and to show some ideas, some exercises to them, so they can get to know a little bit my way of thinking and working. And to awaken some searching for the reason for doing theatre today.
One of the exercises was that I asked them to create scenes, when they are suprising us. They were working in couples.
This execise can open you towards creativity. We are all waiting for a suprise, beacuse we all know that this was the exercise. What can still be suprising in this situation?
Suprise is an important tool of an actor. Breaking the expectations. When one expects something to happen, and this expectation brakes, does not come true, he can get suprised, and his attention rises.
After each exercise I encoureged the participants to give comments on each other's work.
I am asking the group to express with words what they have experienced (and not to judge if it was bad or good). I find it very useful, because on one hand the spectators have to find words for their experiences (and translating an experience into language means that you are shaping it, and it can help you to remember it later), and on the other hand it can be useful feedback for the creators - what did my spectators get out of what I have shown. Maybe they thaught about something completely different, what I wanted to show. Maybe they didn't understand, what I wanted to be understood.
In these converstations I am also just a member of the group, who gives his own comments. Sometimes of course I need to pay attention to speak at last, not to affect other's way of expressing their experiences.
An other exercise was that I asked them to make their partner do something without using language, or explaining him with pointing at things or body language. The task is that you have to create a situation on which your partner reacts naturally with doing, what you want to make him do. This act should come as a reflex on your actions.
These were the tasks:
Make me laugh.
Sing a song.
Do the opposite of what I am doing.
Take something out of the room.
Tell a story.
Suprise them.
Take another person to the other side of the room.
Close your eyes. (for a longer while, not just a wink)
Proove, that you like them.
I did with them the transformation of drawings exercise aswell, which I did with you aswell. When they have to choose one of a series of abstract drawings and transform this picture into a sequence of movments. Others have to guess afterwards, which drawing you have chosen.
I had a list of words with me aswell, which are describing different qualities of theatre, and they had to choose the 3 most important for them.
These were the words (I write in brackets, how many votes did one get): emotions (6), story (6), liveness (4), sincerity (4), attention (4), interaction (3), visuality (2), encounter (2) music (1), dance (1), sentences, suprise, imitation, contrast, newness (those, which do not have number, did not get any vote).
There were 11 people voting: 1 from New Zealand, 3 from Poland, 1 from Hungary and 6 from Danmark - 9 girls and 2 boys, mainly in their twenties, one of them was around 50.
The last one and half hour they spent with making scenes in small groups of 3 or 4. I asked them to find something which is disturbant for them in the smaller or bigger world around them, in the community of which they are a part of. A problem, which they can not solve, but which they would really like to, if they would have the power to do so. And they had to make a scene out of this problem.
At this last part there was a group, which made an amazing scene. They were working with the problem of facing with myself, finding my role, my goals, searching for the answer of the question "who am I". They disappeared, we looked after them for a long time. Time was running, we were getting close to dinertime, we wanted to show the scenes to each other. We have found them finally, they were still not ready, they were in a big discussion. I was afraid, that they haven't got further than just discussing theoretically about the problem. But they did finally a beatiuful-beatiful scene. They found 3 big (higher than a person) mirrors on wheels. They started as something very personal, very everyday like with the mirrors, like looking their bodies in them, combing their hair, etc. After a while all these movments became a dance, they started to climb on the mirrors, to push them around in the room. They attached their bodies to the mirrors, as moving them, and we could see ourselves, and other parts of the room turning around in these big glass surfaces. They took their time. The wheels were squeaking while moving in different rithms. At the end, one of them, the boy suddenly left his mirror, than the girl next to him left her own mirror, and reached the backside of his one, and the boy walked out from the room.
