Unit 6 - Performance workshop

Tuesday 11^th October

In this lecture we were focusing on the beginnings and ends of a performance. 

Our lecturer said to us at the start of this session that from now on and for the next couple of weeks in these sessions, she will pick a person to lead a short warmup. We will be given a week to prepare for the warmup. This will give us the chance to build up our confidence, independence and communication skills. However, for this session, Alys would lead this warmup but if we had any games or activities that we wanted to share then we were able to do so.

We started the warmup by playing the game “splat, bang” which we have played in some previous performing arts sessions. For this game, one person stands in the middle and the rest of the players are stood in a circle around the person in the middle. All of the players in the game have to make a gun gesture with their hands. However, if this game was being played with younger children, then this would be a water pistol gesture. The person in the middle points their hands at one of the people in the circle. To make it clearer who the person was pointing to, the person in the middle said “splat” followed by the name of the person they were pointing to. The person that they are pointing to then ducks down and then the people that were either side of that person have to point at each other and say “bang”.

Another warmup activity which we carried out was called “zip, zap, boing” however there are a few variations to this game. For this specific version of the game, each member of the group who are stood in a circle, pass around the “zip”. As this is passed around the circle, different rules can be added to the game. For example a person could say “boing” and this would then change the direction of the “zip”. Another rule is that someone in the circle can say “zap” followed by the name of the person that they are pointing to and then this person then starts off the “zip” again in either direction around the circle. There are many different rules and variations of this game. 

After we had completed the warmup, we moved onto the main part of the session. The first activity that we were set was to create a beginning of a play. The scene couldn’t be too long but had to be long enough to give the audience some information about what was going on. Me and Angel came up with the idea of a scene with 2 characters, a mum and daughter. The daughter had just been to pick up her GCSE results and when she comes home, her mum is unhappy with the results. We performed this to the rest of the class after a short amount of time and were given feedback. The feedback which we were given was that although we acted it well, it did not seem like the beginning of a play. This is something that we will both need to improve on throughout the course. 

The next task that we were set was one that included chairs. For the first part of the task we were all sat on a chair and our lecturer, Alys called out a word and then we would have to show this emotion. However, we had to be in contact with the chair in every emotion which she called out. Some of the words that she called out where relentless, humble, tired, bored and jealous. Some of these emotions were really difficult to act out as I didn’t know what some of them meant but some of them were easier to act out. From this, we were then asked to come together as a group and create a group performance using 4 emotions and we all had to link with each other. The 4 words which we decided on as a group were friendship, relentless, lonely and depressed. To symbolise ‘friendship’ we arranged the chairs in a circle with all of us holding hands. From there we moved one by one in a canon motion moving around the circle to the next position which was ‘relentless’. For this we all decided to use our own individual ideas so I sat with my legs hanging over the arm of the chair. Then, when we thought that it was appropriate to move to the next emotion, I moved into sitting on the floor with my back against the chair to show ‘loneliness’. For the last emotion, ‘depression’ I lay on the floor with the chair over my head so I was unable to see anything. When we were first given the task, we found it quite difficult as a group to come up with something that was creative. However, after input from all members of the group we successful came up with some great ideas. I suggested that to move from the first emotion to the second, we should move in a canon like action. The feedback that our lecturer gave us at the end of the performance was that this really worked well and looked really visually effective. 

For the next part of the lesson, we looked at some pieces of music. We listened to a few different pieces of music and as we listened, we were asked to think about what the piece was about and how it made us feel. We could then go on to use these pieces within our performance towards the end of the academic year. Once we had listened to all of the pieces, as a group we decided on which piece we liked the most and then we were asked to create a scene from this. The piece that we decided to use made us feel quite emotional and upset. To convey this in a performance, we decided to act out a short scene where all of the group were saying goodbye to Danielle. Danielle was leaving the town by train and we weren’t going to see her for a long time. We chose to do this as it was easy and it did not take much planning time as we were only given a short amount of time to prepare. The feedback that we were given from our lecturer was that the scene worked very well and it was very obvious what was going on within the scene. This meant it was a good thing as the audience members do not become confused.

To finish off the lesson, Alys set us a small research task which was due for the following week’s session. The task was to research and gather some information about a theatre company. The company could be small or large, local or national. This would then help us for when we start to consider making our own theatre company for our performance.