WORKSHOPS

Workshops

At the beginning of the term we took part in three different workshops that introduced what we were to expect from the rest of the term ad to also introduce us to the practitioners that we would be working with. 

The first workshop that i took part in was where we studied a practitioner called peter Brooke. He was famous for conveying powerful emotions and feelings with very little movement and sound in his performances. We did a series of exercises to help us understand his way of thinking and working. One of the exercises we did is when we would have 4 to 5 people on stage and the rest of the audience would be watching them, the actors on stage had to then pick one emotion and portray it through one subtle audience making sure that there eyes were facing the audience because emotion is conveyed very well in the eyes as said by Brooke.

I think that this was very effective because it shows how effective subtle movement can be. Instead of using really big grand gestures to represent a feeling we can use thing that are a lot more subtle to show what we want the audience to see. I found this incredibly useful because as and actor i would have thought that i am not doing enough for the audience to understand what i am feeling, however watching other actors take part in the exercise i was able to see for myself that it is equally or if not more effective. Less is more in this instance.

The second workshop that i took part in was where we studied the practitioner Jersey Grotowski. Through this workshop there was not a lot of talking as before the workshop started we were told that we were to tidy up the room, take off our shoes and keep quiet. We were then told to run for around 30-40 minutes straight without stopping.As previously mention when we began doing this i was quite confused and didn't quite understand why we forced to do this - it all seemed rather pointless to me, however when we sat down to offer our feedback we found out that Grotowski though that his actors worked better when they were tired as they would have no walls kept up as they would be physically exhausted.

Even though this workshop was extremely demanding and i struggled to keep running continuously for this long as i am quite unfit i also found it effective and quite enjoyed it in the end. After we finished i found that i was surrounded by a calmness and ease i had not felt before i had started running. 

Finally the last workshop that i had the please in taking part in was where we studies the practitioner Artaud. We had several  exercise to take part in in this workshop. The first one being where the entire class stood in a circle and we all went around portraying the same emotion however the catch was you had to portray your emotion more intense and at a higher level than the person before them. The first emotion was happiness which everyone found quite easy because everyone went around portraying a higher lever of happiness everyone eventually became more excited and happy and it became natural to us. We then had to convey sadness which myself and the rest of my peers found a lot more difficult. This is because it did not come as natural to us and at time seemed forced and very unrealistic.

This workshop was very interesting and useful as when comparing the two emotions on a higher level both arouse creaming, shouting or loud sounds this can make the audience members shocked and maybe a little uncomfortable and this was what Artaud was going for as he believed that the audience should see a realistic story on stage and have them become completely immersed in that world. One thing that i found when doing this exercise is to not shout for the sake if, when we trying to increase the level at which we were working we all automatically became louder and started moving more which responded i us looking unrealistic and a little deranged. Overall i found this workshop very helpful.