The next in our series of higher education blogs by Matthew Plummer...
Drama: From the view of a first year at Liverpool college...
It isn’t easy. But, at the same time, it is not hard if it’s what you love.
I won’t go into auditions except to say: Auditions (for me) are hell until you’re there, then you lose yourself like a workshop and it’s great, you see moments of genius and people fall on their faces. I fell on my face. But I wouldn’t change it for the world, sometimes mistakes are better than conscious designs.
You’ll spend your contact hours with your tutors (12 hours for me) but you won’t want to leave the inspiring environment, surrounded by inspiring people from different backgrounds all with inspiring ideas and stories to tell.
I took a huge leap going to university, I went against my dream of being an actor leaning towards more of a creator (god complex). I moved away from home, to a strange city (Liverpool doesn’t get much stranger) and dove into every workshop with a confidence I never knew I had. This was a real culture shock, I never expected the atmosphere, everyone is so laid back about working practically, I would say we explore practitioners and ways of working but we don’t, we play. In every exercise we have so much freedom; it really is just about taking away your inhibitions and playing with movement like a child. Of course this is not going to be the same for every course, not everyone will be taught by a clown, a radical feminist and a post-modernist who advocates theatrical anarchy (ugh.).
Alongside the physical theatre we did drama facilitation, so I got to play Sarah for a few weeks, introducing people to games we all take for granted (group juggling and Ha are favourites now, thanks YTYT). And now we’ve moved onto devising, not quite like high school, we got a selection of stimuli and have just run with it. You aren’t given suggestions as much as questions that provoke you and lead you in directions you would never have thought of.
What about theory I hear you scream. There is plenty of that, half my time actually, practitioners, companies, movements of theatre, history, journal articles, seminar papers, books and specialists (trust me you don’t need to worry about them, it’s all so simple when you’re here). Yeah there have been theatre reviews, there have been essays and there are presentations and referencing (a torturous process) and there is reading. A few dozen books a term on your reading list is nothing, you read them cover to cover on your days off and while you’re in the library you see a beaten book that catches your interest and you take that out when you’ve got a day or two to chill and theatre isn’t quite the same.
University isn’t for everyone, but in one term I’ve been inspired, over worked, pushed to my absolute limit, forced to sit through performances (for want of a better word) in sold out auditoriums and works of genius in empty pub rooms, chatted with Godber and his company, slept through lectures, played more games than a week at Yew Tree, worked for 36 hours and learnt to juggle. For me its fun or I wouldn’t be here in this god-forsaken wind.
Drama: From the view of a first year at Liverpool college...
It isn’t easy. But, at the same time, it is not hard if it’s what you love.
I won’t go into auditions except to say: Auditions (for me) are hell until you’re there, then you lose yourself like a workshop and it’s great, you see moments of genius and people fall on their faces. I fell on my face. But I wouldn’t change it for the world, sometimes mistakes are better than conscious designs.
You’ll spend your contact hours with your tutors (12 hours for me) but you won’t want to leave the inspiring environment, surrounded by inspiring people from different backgrounds all with inspiring ideas and stories to tell.
I took a huge leap going to university, I went against my dream of being an actor leaning towards more of a creator (god complex). I moved away from home, to a strange city (Liverpool doesn’t get much stranger) and dove into every workshop with a confidence I never knew I had. This was a real culture shock, I never expected the atmosphere, everyone is so laid back about working practically, I would say we explore practitioners and ways of working but we don’t, we play. In every exercise we have so much freedom; it really is just about taking away your inhibitions and playing with movement like a child. Of course this is not going to be the same for every course, not everyone will be taught by a clown, a radical feminist and a post-modernist who advocates theatrical anarchy (ugh.).
Alongside the physical theatre we did drama facilitation, so I got to play Sarah for a few weeks, introducing people to games we all take for granted (group juggling and Ha are favourites now, thanks YTYT). And now we’ve moved onto devising, not quite like high school, we got a selection of stimuli and have just run with it. You aren’t given suggestions as much as questions that provoke you and lead you in directions you would never have thought of.
What about theory I hear you scream. There is plenty of that, half my time actually, practitioners, companies, movements of theatre, history, journal articles, seminar papers, books and specialists (trust me you don’t need to worry about them, it’s all so simple when you’re here). Yeah there have been theatre reviews, there have been essays and there are presentations and referencing (a torturous process) and there is reading. A few dozen books a term on your reading list is nothing, you read them cover to cover on your days off and while you’re in the library you see a beaten book that catches your interest and you take that out when you’ve got a day or two to chill and theatre isn’t quite the same.
University isn’t for everyone, but in one term I’ve been inspired, over worked, pushed to my absolute limit, forced to sit through performances (for want of a better word) in sold out auditoriums and works of genius in empty pub rooms, chatted with Godber and his company, slept through lectures, played more games than a week at Yew Tree, worked for 36 hours and learnt to juggle. For me its fun or I wouldn’t be here in this god-forsaken wind.
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