Saturday 24th September Of Ships and Status

With Tanushka away on holiday, Ben's wife, Jane Lesley came in to cover. It was Jane's first time with these kids and she had a great time, commenting that they were a fantastically professional group. Jane also works with Ben in their husband and wife business, 'Home Acting Tuition'.

21 students attended this week - that's over 90 percent of the 'trialers' from the previous week, signing up for the full term. We also had three more 'trialists' during this session and they threw themselves into it with great endeavour.

With so many new faces we felt it was time to start to get to know each other a bit more so we began with some name games. Although these are usually difficult and sometimes embarrassing if we forget names, it is vital to keep a good sense of ensemble. It's also interesting and extremely encouraging to see the more experienced acting club members making the newbies feel so welcome. That's true professional ensemble.

We then introduced a possible theme for this year's performance work. More on this to follow but suffice to say that we've begun looking at the theme of the sea and...ghost ships!

We talked about what characters you might find on a ship, from The Captain, to the crew, rich guests, poor guests and even slaves. We then gave each character a level of 'status' from 1-10. If your character had a status of 10 then they were the most important person on the ship. If the status was 1 then the character was insignificant and poor. Rather black and white but useful for an introduction into characters.

The whole group showed a fantastic level of focus throughout and we were particularly inspired by some work they did as 'ghosts' (who had a status of 8!).

After the break the real work began and in smaller groups the students began to create stories using the characters that we'd established through the status work. We began by creating three tableaux - a beginning, middle and end - that set up the story. That gave them a good structure to work a fully devised improvisation around their characters. From murderous ghosts to petrified stowaways, there was some fantastic moments.

All of this has inspired some brilliant ideas to move towards performance. Watch this space.