Workshop

Aim of Task:

To learn more about the interactions that take place on a theatrical performance. To start doing activities that will help us build the characteristics of an actor.

Description of Task:

A professional director, came to the assembly hall of our school to do different activities, mostly focusing on the concept of status in a theatrical performance. Status is like the value a person holds in a group of people. This is often used in theatre because, according to the directors description, what really makes a good play is what happens between the two persons interacting on stage. Not what one person does by himself but the interaction that happens between two actors.

First, he asked all of us to group in one place and start walking around. We had to make and maintain eye contact with the other persons, as long as we could. We kept walking between each other, making eye contact for around 5 minutes. After that, he asked us to keep walking but instead of maintaining eye contact, he told us to break it as soon as we got it. We did this for around 5 minutes. He then asked us what we though about the exercise, which one of the two felt more comfortable. I was surprised to see that almost half of the group felt the first one comfortable and the rest felt the other one more comfortable. I thought the first one was definitely more comfortable and that everybody else thought the same but that was not the case. He also let us give comments about the exercises: Some people said that the first one felt more of like the countryside while the other one felt like a city.

After our comments, he asked us to do another exercise. First, we had to walk around but, whenever we made eye contact, we had to make the person feel as accepted as possible. I did that by slightly nodding and using a smile every time I had eye contact with somebody. After 5 minutes of doing this, he asked us to change the exercise and instead of maintaining eye contact and making them feel accepted, we had to break eye contact and make them feel as rejected as possible. I tried to achieve this by frowning my eyebrows when breaking eye contact.

After this activity, the whole group was divided by two. I was in the first group. He asked us to walk around and show the highest status possible. We all started walking around. Many people started pushing each other out of their way. To show a high status, I just started walking straight and looking right in front of me, without turning my head. At some point, I thought stopping would show a higher status. So I did, for about 5 seconds, but then started walking again. It was interesting how Tomi showed high status by laying on the wall. After about 5 minutes the director asked the second group to do the same thing. This group, however, had different ways of showing status. One person took the podium and laid on it. It was such a great example of high status because there was only one podium in the whole room, and she had it. After this, the director asked the second group to show the lowest status possible. Many of the started acting "like drug addicts." I thought Liat did a great job showing low status by hiding backstage though.

The next thing the director asked us to do was to pair with somebody else and practice four kinds of communicating status in a conversation:

1. Both people raise their status in the conversation.
2. One person raises his status while lowering the other person's status.
3. One person lowers his status while raising the other person's status.
4. Both people lower their status in the conversation.

The director told us that the fourth one was the most difficult to use in a conversation and keep it going. Indeed, it was. My partner was Daniel. We did the first activity very well. The other three were more difficult though because we actually had to make the other person's status lower, which was something we were not used to and it did not "feel right."

After we were done with the conversations, we did another exercise with our pairs. Daniel was partner A and I was partner B. All the A's had to walk while the B's followed them around the room. After a while of observing their style of walking, we started to imitate them. Then, the director asked A's to sit and let B's continue walking. Then, he asked us to exaggerate the the special characteristics we noticed in our partner's way of walking. It was a lot of fun to imitate Daniel, to be honest! We learned, however, that by imitating the way of walking of other people we can easily grab their personality and character. This is what is trying to be achieved in a play were a single actor plays multiple characters. It was useful to know that when we started the next exercise, which was about us interpreting three different people. Everyone practice their scenes on their own and after that, the director asked for a volunteer to go on stage. Vincent went up and told us a story about a normal day with his room mates. It was hilarious, he did very funny facial expressions and grabbed very specific characteristics from his room mates when he was imitating them. I think the story lacked some climax though, but generally it was a very good way of acting of his. After that, we discussed the exercise and had a last Questions and Answers part where we asked some in-depth theatre questions to the director. Some of my classmates asked him about going into theatre, which was interesting to know.

Reflection:

I found the concept of status amazingly interesting and useful. What I liked the most about it is that I could totally relate that to my every day social interactions. I just thought it was something that we handle in our day to day life but do not consciously think about it. I felt like the group was closer to each other after we ended the exercise. We had met a part of the other persons' personalities that we didn't know and we also met a part of ourselves that might not have noticed. Doing all this exercises helped me understand better how theatrical performances work, and also understand that our daily social interactions can be theatrical as well. We can use the theatre concepts in many aspect of our lives. I am happy to know that this course will be helpful for my personality and will hopefully let me improve, as a person.

Conclusion:

The workshop was definitely entertaining for the whole class, both first years and second years. I thought the director was a very good leader. All the class was very interested in what he said and paid attention to the instructions. I think this has a lot to do with the way he was saying things. He was not monotone at all and made jokes occasionally, which helped us keep the mood the whole workshop. I will remember this concepts when starting to do performances. I also find this will be useful for my debate Quan Cai. Showing a high status when presenting arguments will make them more convincing in front of the audience. I think this can also apply to presentations in general. I hope I can learn more of all these small theatrical techniques that help me in life.