Monday 23 April 2012

Saturday 21st April Of Games and Starts

Just a quick note to all of you lovely readers who follow the blog but don't know or go to Windmill Young Actors - I will be posting a few more generic articles this term about working with young actors so please do keep coming back. Thanks again.

But what a joy it was to be back! It was a bit of a shock to the system though and all of those Easter eggs have definitely had an effect on my stamina! Luckily, I spent this morning running and collapsing on Hove lawns with a bit of bootcamp so I should be back up to fitness again in no time!

With almost a full compliment and some new members, Windmill Young Actors kicked off with a bang! As always with first sessions back, it's a little disjointed. We want to make sure that new members feel welcome and that old members have a lot of fun. Remember that all of last term was pretty punishing with full time rehearsals and our most advanced and ambitious project to date so easing back into things is usually a good idea!

Therefore, improvisation was the name of the game. I don't know if any of you ever watched, 'Whose Line is it Anyway?', but it was by far one of my most favourite TV programs when I was growing up. The likes of Greg Proops and Ryan Stiles rolled out some of the best comic improvisation that you'll ever see and it launched a whole catalogue of spin offs, including being the inspiration for things like 'Mock the Week'. The key to improvisation games is to have strict rules. As with most things in life, if we know where the boundaries are then that frees us up to explore everything within them with vigour and courage.

We began with 'Party Quirks'. This is where one person hosts a party. As each guest arrives it is obvious that they have a specific 'quirk'. These are planned beforehand by the group and can range from crazy things like, 'You are obsessed with the floor' to 'you want to murder the host but keep failing miserably'. The idea is that the host has to react and improvise truthfully around what the guests bring into the room and then guess what their quirk is. Hilarity tends to ensue!

Secondly, we played a game called, 'Whose Line'. This is where we start the scene in a very normal scenario - something very real like 'three people on a bench.' They will improvise something quite simple but in their pockets will be prepared lines of dialogue written by other members of the group. They then need to take the line out and incorporate it into the scene naturally and with truth. It's quite a hard game and often results in multiple 'corpsing' on stage.

Away from improvisation games, we played some of our favourite energetic games around use of space and then, exhausted, collapsed into conversations about this term and what's lined up.

We're still waiting to hear confirmation from the school about using the theatre for our showcase - I am pushing on this and hopefully we'll have an answer this week. Sorry for the delay! And we're also beginning to get ideas together for the performance at The Brighton Dome.

I am hoping that all members of the club will have more opportunities to explore specific text based scenes, monologues and duologues so there's lots to do!

Friday 20 April 2012

See you Tomorrow for the beginning of THE SUMMER TERM!!

Things happening this term:-

* The Family Festival at The Dome

* Windmill Young Actors showcase in The Windmill Theatre

* New classes, new scripts, new skills, great fun...

Friday 13 April 2012

We're back on Saturday April 21st

Hi All,

I hope that you've had a lovely Easter break.

We're back with Windmill Young Actors from 09.45 next Saturday - Saturday 21st.

I look forward to seeing you then.

Ben

Saturday 7 April 2012

The Brighton Passion Easter Sunday 2pm

Dear All,

You may be interested in coming and seeing The Brighton Passion tomorrow at 2pm.

This 'ere director is back on the boards where I've been understudying the role of Jesus. It doesn't look like I'll be playing the role tomorrow but I'll be doing a bit of narration stuff and playing a pretty nasty member of the crowd. It'll be a chance to see members of Brighton community acting out this amazing story and potentially seeing me practice a bit of what I preach!

Brighton Passion

See you there!

Wednesday 4 April 2012

Saturday 24th March Of Practice and Performance

So this was the day of our end of term performance.

It's always good to distance yourself from a performance before going back and analysing it too closely. There is an emotional attachment immediately afterwards that, speaking from a creative's point of view, is extremely fragile. In my opinion, actors should never be given notes immediately after a performance. Similarly, if you're ever giving feedback on a performance then wait a bit if it's critical. Otherwise, the danger is that the performer/director is still too close to the performance to look at it objectively and might feel slightly put out or upset.

The four hours in the morning were a real joy and fulfilled a bit of a personal dream. I have always wanted to be working with a large group of young actors in a theatre putting on a decent length performance. From the get-go the focus was fantastic. Here was a company of actors, some who had never met before, working closely together and concentrating hard on creating our story. This enabled us to do some great work and get the performance ready for the evening.

Generally, technical rehearsals are long and tiring. They involve a lot of repetition. The lights need to be programmed in and focused and then refocused and then reprogrammed and then the operator needs to run the scenes a few times to get used to timings. This usually results in the actors repeating the same actions over and over again. But, as I said in a previous post, it is much more fun if you embrace that repetition as a chance to hone your character and the blocking. These days are always a real teller for which actors have a good sense of humour. My advice is to embrace the excitement of being in a theatre and have as much fun as possible whilst listening to what the technical team need!

And so to the performance and the story.

I am very aware that the story needs a bit of work. I will constantly be developing the script and looking to make things clearer story-wise. Having said that there is something wonderful about keeping things obscure. We're found that the majority of the joy with this story has been the discussions that we've had in rehearsals about the subject matter and the characters. We've asked the Windmill Young Actors to explore some pretty complex subjects and have found not only wonderfully imaginative and open intelligent minds, but also togetherness. This was and is their story. They have invested in it, written it and devised it together. It is their work. Together with Tanushka, we have simply tried to empower that story, give it some shape and create our performance.

The show itself was extraordinary. If you look at the facts, here are 35 young actors, a lot of whom had never performed in front of people before. Some of whom hadn't even had the confidence to put their hand up in class and had struggled with confidence. Yet here they were playing lead roles in front of hundreds of people. Amazing!

I am immensely proud of the piece of work and of all those who performed and helped develop the piece in rehearsals. Every term brings new inspiration and more delight and I can't wait until we get back on April 21st to continue to develop both the stories and ourselves as people and artists.