Presentations and Masterclasses… the end

Monday 26^th November:

Started out the week of theatre rather calmly, with an approach to Euphoric theatre. Mr Fearnehough had us sit looking away from anyone else and made us remind ourselves of a play from Taps we hadn’t analysed yet (this landed me “Damned by Despair”). He made us think of every minute detail, from the comfort of the seats to the heat in the room, everything that we associated with the play. He called these memories “scorched memories” but they really reminded me of Proust’s Madeleine. The idea that one thing can summon up the memory of an entire event. We wrote down all that we could think of on to a piece of paper. Mr Fearnehough then introduced us to the idea of acid tests, which according to Peter Brooke is an event scorched into your memory from an outline, a taste, a smell or a picture.  He asked us to do an acid test for the following Monday.

 

Wednesday 28^th November:

Abby kicked off the lesson with her TPPP. This was of special interest to me because, like Halley, she hadn’t been in my class unlike Bekki and Lydia so I had no real idea about what she had done. She mostly spoke about her activites and masterclasses, which gave us valuable insight on miming and slow-motion. This tied in well with her masterclass, which was on mime and slow-motion. She began with the “Silver thread” exercise, which consisted in the formation of pairs, where A controlled B with his/her hand. This proved a lot more difficult than expected, with some becoming slightly sadistic and making people bend and twist to follow the hand (not pointing any fingers, Mr Fearnehough, *cough cough*). Then we tried some slow-motion movement, which went well. However, all hell broke lose when we tried slow-motion fighting. Despite there being clear rules, everyone seemed intent on killing everyone else and sadly forgot some of the rules of slow-motion. But it was a very exciting and fun masterclass nonetheless!

Thursday 30^th November:

And so it arrived. The dreaded day of reckoning. It was time for me to do my masterclass.   And, after calming my nerves, I did. It was on Verbatim and Lineals. Verbatim is a form of theatre often called documentary theatre, as it often depicts serious issues that affect our day-to-day lives. It consists of interviewing random people and recreating their story to the exact word told and emotion felt by the interviewee. This need for precision is the essence of Verbatim, yet it is hard not to be tempted to change aspects to make it more entertaining. However, entertainment isn’t the point of Verbatim. The truth is. A lineal is a medium often used in Verbatim and playback theatre. It consists in showing a character and his mind as two different characters.