Wednesday 29 February 2012

Saturday 25th February - Of Scripts and Ideas

With a full complement of students (we now have 41 registered), WYA kicked off the new half term with a bang!

It's always an exciting time as an actor and director when you have your first reading of a new script. I always think what it would have been like for actors in Shakespeare's day. They would receive their parts written out for them, potentially having no idea of the play, the other characters or what happens in Act 2! It was exhilarating new work to be played with and discussed, fought for and digested.

And so, our young actors were presented with the 'The Legacy of Fingerless Gloves' development script. The idea is that I give an outline with bits of dialogue and stage direction and then together as a group, we devise and develop what is on the page. I then take it away with copious amounts of notes and re-write the script. It's down to the actors to stake a claim with ideas and potential characters. These are the moments where Tanushka and I will listen to the read-throughs, place new ideas into the mix and respond to spoken passion with an open mind.

Well, you might think that with a group of kids that you'd get a couple that had potential or perhaps you'd tut at a few mis-placed references to 'X Factor' or 'Doctor Who'. Not with this bunch, however. Opinions flew around the room, words tumbled into newness and characters grew from the minds of children.

The real joy is that I now have some unique and original pieces of writing from the kids themselves to incorporate into the story.

And so here I am with four pages worth of ideas and a new script to write. All I can say is be careful what you ask for!

We have three performance dates scheduled for the rest of the academic term. Dates and times will be coming soon.

Thursday 23 February 2012

February 25th - We're Back!

Dear All,

The pancakes are eaten, the tummies are laden and the Lent promises are suffering under ghastly temptations. But, never fear, Windmill Young Actors are back with a bang this coming Saturday 25th February.

Bring your rehearsal heads as we'll be heading straight into rehearsals for the end of term showcase and end of year production.

'The Legacy of Fingerless Gloves' is BACK!!

Saturday 18 February 2012

Josie Lambert - Walking Through the Smoke

Yet more amazing writing from our group. This time, it's Josie Lambert's turn to write a poem inspired by the Butoh exercise. Josie is 10!

Walking through the smoke,
Covering my eyes,
Soft ash on the floor,
A civilisation dies.

Expressionless face,
A planet on my head,
Struggling with the balance,
Slowly being lead.

The planet's weight is painful,
My screams as silent as this night,
I cannot keep moving,
Not falling is a fight.

As I lay in the darkness,
The dust of a month, year, century,
My eyes are open but I cannot see,
This world was never meant for me.

The warm duvet of dust,
I'm as peaceful as a sleeping baby,
But still so tiringly awake,
Until a strange light hits me.

That light pulls me up,
From the point it touches me,
Getting lifted to the surface,
The light was the key.

Now I'm walking through a land,
Filled with blinding lights,
Weird machines called 'cars',
And people breaking into fights.

I ask where I am,
They can't see or hear me,
My answer is blank faces,
And the knowledge I will never be free.

Saturday February 4th Of The Legacy of Fingerless Gloves and Improvisation

It was time for Butoh with the afternoon group. Overall they are slightly less experienced than the earlier group so we had decided to give them an extra week to bond before this exercise. It's fascinating to see how the new group is developing their own personality and how it differs from the morning group.

The morning group are larger, overall a lot more experienced, and it feels like you're working with friends. Some of the group have been together now for years and it makes such a difference to the feeling in the room. This sense of camaraderie was typified when our eldest student, Elliott, applauded one of the youngest and least confident members simply for getting up and having a go at performing. Elliott is a boy who has struggled at times in the group but this year has truly thrived and lead from the front. He sets a great example for the younger members and is really learning to relax in his own performance.

The afternoon group are smaller and therefore, it is somewhat easier for them to be more reflective in their work. Quite a few new students have brought more diversity and a different energy to the room. There is a sense of excitement and newness about the work we're doing. Having said this, experienced members like Anna Simmonds and Sam Salvage have grown in responsibility and supported the newbies with professionalism and character. Similarly, Ellen Boucher who wrote the poem that I published last week and sisters, Isabelle and Freya have really come out of their shell in this smaller group.

And so we look forward to the next stage of 'The Legacy of Fingerless Gloves'. Tanushka and I love to get our ideas from the work that the kids do but often when you give them a few rules within an improvisation they then go off and produce something which is rough at the edges, to say the least. It was truly groundbreaking this week as every group in the morning, without fail, produced simple, effective and dramatic scenes of which I could take numerous ideas for the writing of the next play. In my 10 years of working with kids in a drama I have literally never experienced this. Occasionally you'll get one or two nice ideas but today was astounding.

I can't wait to get back to it on February 25th!

Monday 6 February 2012

The Ash - By Ellen Boucher

Ellen, aged 9, is a member of the afternoon group of Windmill Young Actors.

THE ASH

The ash was falling, falling from nowhere. I stared into the nothingness. I didn’t want to walk but something was pulling me. Perhaps it was the restless spirits that lay under years - so many years - of ash that always fell, always would fall and always had fallen. I was carrying something, it felt important. It was on my head. I couldn’t carry it anywhere else. Something wouldn’t let me. But it was so heavy. It weighed me down. Then I was sinking. Now it wasn’t just a thing on my head, something was pulling at my legs. The spirits were luring me into the underground world, just the way my entire civilisation had been taken. Then I stumbled. I was on the ground. The spirits had taken me. I couldn’t get up. I just lay.

A light was shining on my face and my body was numb. An entire millennium under the ash and now I was free. I’d forgotten how to move. I managed to rise. I kept rising. I was in the air. But my body was as light as air. There was nothing left of me. I was a spirit like all the rest of my people. I wasn’t free. I was gone. Now I was just a spirit desperate for revenge on my evil death.

Saturday 28th January Of Butoh and Breaking Away

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butoh

It is very rare that adult performers have the focus and the discipline to undertake long Butoh exercises.It requires an aspect of performance and physical skill that most don't have. Therefore, we made it clear to the students at WYA that this was an exercise that was very advanced. We asked them to go with it as much as they could.

So, what was the exercise?

It begins with a walk - a shaking off of the fact that the space is a working dance studio. We encourage the students to begin to think about their own walk, ignore everyone else. Then, with the aid of music, we begin to create a world. A world where every sense is alive. The walk slows, feet barely moving and eyes ahead. The walk slows even further and suddenly you feel a weight on your head. You are balancing. You are striving to hold this weight but it pushes you down. Slowly. You struggle against the weight but slowly, slowly, it pushes you into the floor. You fight against it but soon, soon you are down. Your entire body stretched out. And the world you know begins to evaporate. Your body becomes covered, you lie there, in the ash of centuries, the ice of ages.

A ray of light pierces the dark and hits one part of your body. That part begins to move, to come alive, to explore the light, the new surroundings and slowly, slowly, your body learns to move again. You stand, or do you. The air is air? You move through it, peaceful, floating, how do you move? What is around you? Alive. And then, you see yourself, you see your hair, you think about your breakfast and with a large step, step back into this world and you.

The whole exercise lasts about 30 minutes.

Now, all this sounds a little out there and intense!! But actually, it's just a simple imagination exercise and allows the performer to explore aspects of their senses, to focus fully on every small movement. It focuses the mind, allowing the performance to take over all of our worries and self-awareness.

We also make the point that this is performance. This isn't you, the actor, and it's very important to shake off that performance. As actors we are presenting a truth, we aren't becoming a character that stays with us. There are countless stories of actors coming off the rails because of the intensity of their involvement with a character. We embrace the fact that in the moment of performance, the character is fully there, but when we 'step out' of character, we are us again, you and me.

For young actors, this exercise gives them a wonderful opportunity to go to extraordinary places in their imagination. It teaches them that self-awareness and lack of confidence can be overcome. It also builds ensemble - everyone involved, everyone experiencing something together.

Here are a few quotes from the young actors after the exercise.

Even though it's a cupboard, you’re not seeing a cupboard.
I couldn’t see but I could hear everything.
It felt like there was no one else in the room. You weren’t looking.
There’s an object that you see but it’s not an object.
It could be a lake, where you go down down down – it covers you.
At first you feel awkward, but then when you see others, you feel that you can drift into it.
My eyes were dropping but I felt that I could still feel the ash.
A beam of light – a miner’s or architects torch.
Ice melting.
You could taste the ash.
Kind of like, losing a sense – it became about what you felt and what you heard.
It’s good to shake it all off afterwards.


And oh yeah, remember that these kids are aged between 7 and 12. All I can say is that I was totally inspired by them this week and I am every week. I guess I should get used to expecting more and more because they are pretty special.