2009 Drama Festival

There has been a change since last year's drama festival; this year, no school takes anything with them. Everyone gathers, there are a few speeches and a quick warm up. After that, everyone just goes to their assigned workshop group. With our groups, we had to have a play ready to perform by 3:00.
I was in Kimberly Tierny's group. We started with some physical and vocal exercises just to quickly warm up. Then we jumped into brainstorming about the theme "dirt." We decided to work a bit on "dirt cheap" and do some improvisation exercises. Firstly, we went around (all at the same time) talking with other people, talking about anything they were wearing. This exercise was to help us think about anything and quickly, thus creating a story or a fact.
Then, with this idea, we did another improvisation exercise, where there were two people, one the model and the other the presenter. Basically, the presenter chooses what to model and says anything that comes to mind, even if it is bizarre. The model then has to listen and react to what the presenter says. If, for example, the presenter talks about the jacket, then a more exaggerated movement, showing the jacket, should be done.

From there, we moved into a discussion on a plot line for our play. We decided to go with dirt, as in earth. We then came to create a plot where two farmers are opposing each other and fighting for the cow. One farmer is rich and the other poor.
Once we had a basic outline of the plot, we then developed other character by just jumping right into improvisation. Once we had a few minutes of improv, Kimberly stopped us and asked each one of us what character we were, what our relationship was with the other characters and what the character wanted.
Although she did not mention it, I recognised this Stanislavski method. By having us answer in first person, it helped us develop more the character and thus become the character.

We then decided to devise another piece so that we have two to choose from. We used the method that David Ball presented, "But do it backwards." We started with the theme "dirty politics" or something along those lines. Then we started with the last scene, with a murder. Then we went "back in time" and saw the upcoming of the murder.
However, we made the plot too complicated. So complicated that even we, the actors, did not really understand it. So we decided to stay with the devised piece about the farm.

After lunch, we concentrated on refining the piece. We had difficulties in putting it together because the audience was in a round (all around the actors), we had to stage our play so that it was seen by everyone, and not neglecting half of our audience.
Some techniques we used to overcome this were speaking while facing outwards as if we were facing each other, created a scene where actors face many different directions and led the audience with words. To introduce our play, we each introduced ourselves with an introduction in 3rd person. For example, instead of me saying, "I am a 10 year old child, crying her eyes out," I said "The 10 year old child was crying her eyes out." Some how it gives more of a connection between the character and actor. If I had said it in first person, it would have a slight Brechtian element to it since it has a connotation of me saying "I am playing a role of a 1o year old child."

Overall, I found that this, out of all the drama festivals I have attended (3 years), was the best workshop day I have been to. We not only learnt techniques, theories and warm-ups (though Kimberly did not state it) we also got to know the other members from our group. Last year, I did attend and my workshop leader took us through improvisations however he split us into groups and we basically did only improvisations. Kimberly had taught us how to approach a theme (to devise a piece) with different methods, and how to develop our character etc.
Even though I had already learnt the theories of Stanislavski and David Ball, it was interesting to see their theories in practice.