Concrete Experience
For this autumn term I have join a team of six in the weekly production of tales from the shed becoming a primary education assistant, rehearsing and performing four shows at the chicken shed theatre company and at a school in Enfield. Each week we improvise acting pieces using physical theatre and create movement to songs based on the weeks themes. We explore the weekly themes through puppets, songs, tales real life characters, like ERM Emergency repair man, and the primary education team members. Within Tales improvisation is a key tool we used to not only convey a message but also to communicate with the audience. The main key tool we use is influenced from Augusto Boal, with his practice of Forum theatre, were there is no divide of audience and stage. The audience are on the stage, the stage is amongst the audience. This makes each show completely different even though it has the same running order, as anything is possible. This week’s themes were Time and Travel so myself and Stephanie directed a scripted section called ‘Tales Time’ where we created two new characters to add to the tales friends using puppets which looked the same but one was small and one was big, we named these characters Tick and Tock the ‘tales time keepers’.
Reflective Observation
When we performed ‘tales time’ it was received well by the audience but we found a few things that needed to be developed, visually we needed to be more physical when creating an interesting picture for the audience and also our character voices. We found the voices we had devised for Tick and Tock were not complementing the size of their bodies for example Tock was small and had a very low, slow voice and Tick was big but had a very high, squeaky voice. Visually this did not look right as our puppeteer skills were not up to scratch, we needed to bring the characters more alive the key to this was to keep them moving and animated when speaking. We decided as a team to swap Tick and Tock voice’s around which suited the body shape and improved each character. I found at this stage ‘Tales Time’ was not at the right level for performing as not everyone knew their lines; this affects the delivery of the piece and makes the connection between character’s lines a little hesitant which can illustrate a unprofessional show at times. But luckily enough with Tales from the Shed we perform the same show four times which allows us to improve and become more confident with the material we are displaying.
Abstract Conceptualisation
From this weeks experience of performing in Tales, directing ‘Tales Time’ and the rehearsal process of this week I found that the last two shows the whole team knew what they were doing with confidence. I feel the process of getting to that stage was a bit to relaxed for example line learning. I feel I have a lazy attitude towards learn lining, as I find it hard to learn lines and to come of the sheet. In the future I am going to make sure I keep myself to a strict schedule to learn them as I do not want to feel the horrible pressure of not knowing what I am doing. What I would like to achieve is the confidence of knowing what I am doing before the first show so all I need to worry about is developing myself as a performer. I feel as a team we are very strong and creative when we get down to work, we are also quite good at feeding back to each other when things worked or did not work. We tend to always make the show work by all pulling out the stocks and giving it 110% when performing. I feel in the future as a team we should used our workshop and rehearsal time more efficiently to get the most out of it, so we all are confident with the sections and the running order.
Active Experimentation/Observation
For the following week I have asked for a structured running order on paper, to allow myself to connect to each section. I have also decided to question things to allow myself to fully understand the show. I also decided to watch the other tales team perform to develop my insight within tales. This allowed me to pick up pointers and report these back to the team I am in to positively develop the show. Within the next week’s rehearsal/ workshop I found myself applying last weeks worries and concerns to new work but then realised what I needed to do to over come these. I worked extra hard on keeping a focused energy by focusing the team when we started to go of track. I also started to question movement for a positive change. I found that this helped my confidence develop and I also found a new trust which I think I needed to have with all my team members from the beginning.
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