Unit 6 - Performance workshop

Tuesday 10^th January

To start the lesson we began with a warmup. We stood in a circle and went round one by one and thought of a simple movement that we could describe. Once the first person had done their movement then we moved around the circle but you had to remember the movements that were previous to yours.

For the next part of the lesson our lecturer, Alys talked through with us what would be happening this term in regards to the amount of progress that we should be making. We discussed when ideas for our production should start to come together and how much time we have to start to build up ideas and think about our theatre company. We then started to think and create our own theatre company. As a group we created the company name, slogan and mission statement. The name of our theatre company is going to be ‘3P Theatre Company’ with the tagline ‘Providing passionate performance’. The mission statement that we decided on as a group was ‘To provide passionate and inclusive performance for all’.

We also talked about the material that we will be creating. We discussed the 3 D’s which stand for discard (if we do not like an idea we will get rid of it), develop (if we like an idea we will work with it) and deliver (if we think that the material is ready then we will perform this to an audience). We will take these into account when devising material for the performance. We also thought about comparing and contrasting material - looking for similarities and differences between the content that we create.

For the next part of the lesson we were looking at creating freeze-frames. This could be one technique that we use within our performance. We were asked to create 3 freeze-frames which could be used as an opening for a show. The pictures below show what we came up with as a group.

We were then asked to create 3 freeze-frames which could be used for the end of a show. The pictures below show the content what we came up with as a group.

Next we were asked to create 3 freeze-frames which could be used in the middle of a show. These freeze-frames did not have to link to each other or any of the other freeze-frames that we had already created. The pictures below show the content that we came up with.

Finally we were asked to pick our favourite beginning and end freeze-frames and say one line each. From this we were then able to create a short story and produce possible ideas. We found this quite difficult because we had to pick a beginning and end freeze-frame and had to find a short story which made them link. However, we did manage in the end.

For the last part of the lesson we were put into 2 groups and we were asked “What are your dreams?” and “What are your nightmares?”. We jotted these down on a piece of paper and shared our thoughts. Out of the list which we had created as a group, we picked one nightmare to create a short scene. For this we picked ‘family and friends forgetting about you’ and we created a scene where Danielle was trying to make conversation with everyone else but we did not know who she was.

All of the exercises that have been carried out in today’s lesson have given us some ideas as to what our final performance could contain. We collated the first pieces of information for our theatre company – the name, slogan and mission statement. Throughout the next couple of weeks we will be looking at different techniques and exercises for creating stimuli which we can then use for our performance.