With a European flavour Yasmin is our first guest blogger...
So last Saturday I went to the local theatre here in Ourense
(Galicia) to see a play called Jamming.
My host family told me that the play was touring from Madrid and that it
had had a very good response so far.
Jamming is completely improvised using suggestions from the audience
which means that every show is different.
When I arrived at the theatre I was given a card and told to
write a Spanish phrase on it and to take it into the auditorium with me. My Spanish isn’t great and I spent a while
umming and arring about what to write.
Eventually I put ‘Soy de Inglaterra y no entiendo mucho espanol’ (I’m
from England and I don’t understand much Spanish). I then made friends with the man next to me
and asked him to check my card for any mistakes as I didn’t want to embarrass
myself.
The performance started with one of the three actors coming
on stage, introducing herself and explaining that there would be a lot of
audience participation and our suggestions alone would make the
performance. She then asked us all to
stand up, jump around and scream and shout (the Spaniards went wild and I stood
there awkwardly). The actors then came
out to the audience, introduced themselves to people and shook their hands.
The actors then asked for three volunteers to read their
cards out and each actor took one on and did a few minutes of solo
improvisation around it. This is where I
found things a bit tricky because the actors were talking soooo fast so I
didn’t understand everything. From the
parts that I did understand and from watching the expressions and physicality
of the actors, I was really impressed.
The performance continued with varying ways of using the
audience’s cards. Some improvisations
were solo, some with two of the actors and some with all three. Sometimes they asked for volunteers and
sometimes they took cards from random audience member. They also had a pile of ‘theme’ cards which
audience members picked out at random for them.
Examples of these were ‘Shakespearing’ and ‘Westerning’ and so they
would act out the phrase on an audience member’s card in the style of one of
these themes. One that they did was ‘Old
people are just teenagers at heart’ in the theme of a soap opera. They also put it out to the audience and
asked us to shout out random themes when asked so there was Disney, musicals
and all sorts of other things thrown into the mix.
As a whole I really enjoyed the show. It was like a live, Spanish version of ‘Whose
Line Is It Anyway?’. The actors were
friendly, likeable and extremely talented.
Because of the audience interaction, there was a really relaxed
atmosphere and if something went wrong on stage or something ridiculous
happened, the actors didn’t feel as if they needed to continue.
Granted, I haven’t seen in theatre done in this style in
England, but I couldn’t help feeling that English theatre can be so strict and
uptight. You hardly ever witness or hear
of standing ovations (there were two at this performance) or even much cheering
at the end of a show. I would be really
interested to see something done of this style in England and see how the
audience accept it and also how the actors approach the audience... because I
think the attitude of the actors was what made the show so enjoyable for me. They all came out to the foyer at the end of
the show and chatted to audience members as they were leaving (something else
I’ve never seen happen in English theatre).
My only problem was the language barrier, if this had been
in English or I had been fluent in Spanish I would have been able to relax and
laugh as much as the Spanish people around me.
I’m looking forward to seeing some more theatre here in
different styles and observing how it varies but the main thing I took away
from this show is that maybe we all need to be a bit freer. Maybe sometimes as actors we all just need to
stand up, stamp our feet and scream and shout.
Whether that’s in rehearsal, before a performance, during a performance
or just when we’re feeling a bit restricted.
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