First Lesson

Today marked our first day of working on experimental theatre. We briefly talked as a group about what we would work on . We are looking at England and within in that the writings of C.S lewis in Narnia and Tolkien's Lord of the rings. Both of these books use England as a base for creating amazing imaginative worlds. Imagination is hugely important for creating experimental theatre as to make work exciting we must be bold and step out of our comfort zones creating worlds using broad imagination.

When we started practically working we first started to make a sound scape. This first sound scape was based on our own idea of 'shire' from Lord of the rings. The first sounds heard worked well together and created a sweet atmosphere. However as more sounds began to layer I feel the scape became less successful. There were hints of comedy and the focus was not 100% , this made it sound messy and chaotic almost opposite to shire. The sounds were not working with each other like cogs in a machine but instead it was like they were fighting each other. After we realised this scape was not the most successful we were told to keep our focus up and think about our sounds working to make one sound. We then created a dark erie scape. This was a lot more successful. Not only were the comedic sounds removed but also I feel every body had better sounds as it was probably easier to imagine and create more sinister sounds than happy and sweet. Also the sound sussed worked much better together , by increasing focus our ears for each others sound were more aware thus making our sounds work better together.

Then we moved on to the alphabet box exercise. This consisted of us first drawing a bows with our right arm around us , there were different levels to the box and on each level letters of the alphabet. After we had marked out our box we had to learn to spell our name using our right arm to point to the letters. When we were familiar with the combination we began to put different body parts to each direction , using Laban techniques. This was first challenging as it was very abstract and different from anything I had done before. However once I had familiarised myself with the task I found it exciting and interesting. It was nice to see what  could do with my body and expression just from creating essentially my name. My favourite part of the exercise was when I watched half of the class do there small pieces to some music. I found myself beginning to tell stories from there movements. There was no remelence to them spelling out a name and instead I saw mothers protecting their children and the next Dr Who villain. I also found it interesting how I was drawn in to certain people more than others. When I watched the pieces for the second time I looked at everyone as one body of movement , rather than focusing on particular people. This was very enchanting as everybody's movement began to sinc and tell stories together.

I really enjoyed the lesson. It really opened me up to experimental theatre and made me feel like I was going back to the core of acting. Instead of focusing on tiny technicalities I was being creative and opening up my imagination , getting back to epic story telling. It felt like I was becoming big and bold with my choices and also just having a lot of fun. It will be interesting to see where this exciting creating can lead in the up coming weeks.