Given Circumstances
To sum up the course that was the focus of
the week is really difficult so I have decided to utilize one of the techniques
we explored to glean the given circumstances of the text…the key questions that
give you the reason a scene is included in a play and the key to how to
translate it into performance. So
here goes…
1.
Who was involved and what was their relationship?
The people who attended the course were
from all walks of life, with a great deal of variation in terms of their ages, their
backgrounds and their experience as performers and actors…some of them knew
others in the course – others were about to launch in to an intensive week with
a set of twenty strangers. All of them, as it turned out, had so much potential
for brilliance…
When was it set? We began on Saturday
evening and bid farewell to each other at the end of Friday…7 full on days of
full on actor training…from morning until evening we worked, workshopped and
wondered…making the most of every moment.
Why did it happen? There were a myriad of reasons why
people had decided to spend the week on the Actors Tool box course, from
wanting to be the best actor they could be to avoiding Marbella to having fun…all
of them, however, had high expectations and all of them were prepared to invest
all their efforts to meet them…
Where did it happen? Warwick University – specifically
Meeting Room 8 of Scarman – one of the buildings on campus purpose built for
conferences….an unlikely venue for a creative adventure but by the end of our
week’s journey we had transformed it into our workshop room instead of a conference
room.
What happened? We had the most intense week looking at vocal technique,
physicality, mining the text, character development…we played games…claimed
victories, struggled and solved creative puzzles…we developed monologues and duologues…we
were empathetic, sympathetic, sometimes nervous and afraid…we laughed, we
hoped, we worried, we comforted, consoled and supported but most of all we
learned a lot about ourselves, our fellow group members and the craft of being
an actor…we performed for the school, we were a company and there wasn’t
anything we weren’t capable of…it was a magical thing to be a part of…
If the week was to be a genre of film? It
would be an action film, full of twists and turns but interspersed with the
gentle depth of a beautifully written drama that exposes the core of what makes
us human….
If we were to describe the week through the
metaphor of weather? It would be a rainbow of course!
If we were to describe the week through the
metaphor of colour? It would be a vivid sky blue full of possibilities
Although teaching people on the Actors
Toolbox was the focus of my week it is important to mention the other elements
that made the week so memorably enjoyable…the known and treasured friends I get
to see there who literally are some of the best people I know, the
extraordinary tutors who are some of the most impressive people I know, the
chance to make new friends and glimpse new possibilities and the chance to be
reminded of how lucky I am to work in the field of theatre…NODA 2015 was
unforgettable – it was an honour to be part of it…
My fifth acting course at NODA Summer School since 2002 and the BEST!
ReplyDeleteWhy? Simply Sarah's totally focused 'carrot rather than stick' approach. A well prepared week - and it showed.
Thanks so much Sarah!
Paul xx