Saturday, July 17

Where Have You Traveled?

For the closing activities, Dr. Taylor led the group in a series of reflective exercises under a title he nicked from Dorothy Heathcote, "Where have you traveled?"

1. The students were asked to recreate moments from the name game that I led them in on the first day. They had to remember where they stood in the circle and recreate their movements. Dr. Taylor worked with just a few students at a time. After they presented their initial word and movement combination, he asked them to think of a new word to describe how they feel at the close of the program and add a new movement to accompany it.

2. With the last group of students, Dr. Taylor asked them to create an essence machine of words and movements that evoked how they felt at the end of the program. This image was their work:

2. Dr. Taylor broke the group into three and have them about thirty minutes in which to create a short performance piece that summed up their experiences during the study abroad program. The pieces were to

3. The final request from Dr. Taylor involved suggestions for the future. Among them were:

- modeling process drama for the upper grades/secondary school

- as the work with Judith involved intense community building, perhaps one day could come earlier in the program

- as the school groups are isolated from one another, some organized time should be dedicated to sharing experiences with the whole group

- a suggestion was made that students formally write up some of their experiences and present them as a submission to RiDE

Thursday, July 15

A Final Visit to Regents College

Departing King's Cross

Aquassage

I missed the meat of Judith's work with the students as I was busy assessing their written work. From what I can best surmise, the activities that led up to the performances posted below included:

1. Judith broke the students up into three groups. Each was given the first page of text from Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. The students were to to read the text and choose one sentence that they wanted to dramatize. The could use any methods they wanted so long as everyone was involved. A strong emphasis was placed on physical theatre (illuminating individual words, instead of specific characters) and I'm not sure if this was the result of their instructions or just emerged organically from the group. A water image emerged from this activity which directly powered the creation of the final performance piece (here labelled as "The Deep End of the Ocean").

2. Judith asked the students to create a piece using the title, "Once Upon a Time." As above, physical theatre was prized over clear characterization. My impression was that sound and movements were to unearth something unexpected for the audience. This focus on sound and movement were also heavily influential in the creation of the final performance piece.

3. In preparation of the performances, Judith led the students in a transformative re-focusing activity, where the students stood in a circle, essentially playing follow the leader. The leader would move his or her body in any variety of ways and the other members of the circle were to duplicate the movements as seamlessly as possible. The leader was changed whenever someone new decided to become the leader, but they did so imperceptibly so that the whole group appeared to continuously be moving together.

Performances

The Deep End of the Ocean:

Great Expectations #1:

Great Expectations #2:

Great Expectations #3

Once Upon a Time #1 (I didn't record 2 and 3 - sorry guys!)

A Secret Garden

Following the performances, we were to have a garden party for Gavin Bolton in Regent College's secret garden. Due to heavy winds, we were forced to hold the party inside, but we took the opportunity to enjoy the garden while the space was set up for the party.

At the party, Gavin was introduced by David Davis, who is currently editing a volume of Gavin's essential writings to be published in the fall. Gavin then spoke about a book he is currently editing wherein current drama practitioners were asked to comment on their work. Gavin indicated that though his work was influential, it was no longer current and he was fascinated by all the innovated areas in which drama was being practiced.

In the second image from the bottom, Gavin appears having a conversation with Latisha Jones.

Sucker Punch

Sucker Punch

By far, the best play we've seen on the trip was Sucker Punch by Roy Williams. The play was set in 1980's England, dealing with racism and bigotry against Afro-Caribbeans, which was (according to the play) deeply felt by all, even those Caucasians who lived by and worked with them on a day-to-day basis.

As you will see in the videos below, the play was set in a boxing ring as the main characters are boxers-in-training, spanning their career from the moment they first stepped into the ring until they reach the heights of professional fame. The most affecting moment for me was the father of the protagonist telling his son that the only reason he is famous is because a white audience likes nothing better than to watch two black men beating the life out of each other.

I sat ring-side and was at first aghast at the rampant use of epithets (racial and homophobic) and felt entirely turned off by the subject matter. But, as the play progressed, I found myself wrapped up in my own experiences as a biracial male, a glimpse into what the courting experience must have been like for my parents (a black man and white woman in 1971/2--in the US, but not much different--particularly in the way the father speaks to his daughter about her choosing to date a black man and her refusal to speak to him for a time after), and considered the implications for today--in a world that still struggles with these same issues. This has particular relevance to the lives of public school teachers as we make curricular decisions. The program for the play included the script and I look forward to working through it to discover the educational opportunities present in the text.

Wednesday, July 14

Off to Regents College....

Complicité Workshop with Judith Ackroyd

1. Judith welcomed the students to Regents College, explained it’s place as a private institution, and provided a bit of background of Complicité, as the work they will be doing in the following two days will be based on that theatre company’s style of work. It should be understood that Complicité is based upon the idea that the group should be so deeply connected and working together that they behave as a part of a whole and not as individuals.

2. Judith went around the circle allowing each student to introduce him or herself. Thereafter, the group stood in a circle and passed a boxing glove around, at first reciting their names, and then just passing it back and forth with Judith. She then indicated that eye contact must be made before the glove could be thrown to someone across the circle. Two went around at once, then three, then an umbrella, a rubbish bin, and finally (and on its own), a chair. Debrief followed the chair bit—highlighting the skill necessary to successfully catch the chair.

3. Using chairs, the group worked on a musical chairs type concentration game whereby each student had a chair placed somewhere in the space and they sat in it. The goal was for the seated students to lock eyes and exchange chairs without the ‘out’ person getting in a seat first. Rather than being one seat short, however, there were actually enough seats available for everyone – so it’s really a concentrated group effort to move chairs and keep the ‘out’ person continually without a seat. The ‘out’ person could not change direction until the seat they are heading toward was filled. This was a walking activity, and not a wild run in spite of everyone’s desire to speed it up. The real goal is to maintain a constant pace of movement for both those seated and the ‘out’ person. In an advanced turn, one member of the group stood on a chair and tried to conduct the movement.

4. After a break, the group participated in “Red Light/Green Light,” whereby the leader was at one end of the room with his or her back to the group who were at the other end of the group. The group’s objective was to touch the leader, but they could not move if the leader was watching. The objective of the leader is to catch individuals moving, and the penalty for being caught is to be sent back to the beginning. Judith encouraged the group to work together instead of as individuals—one large mass moving toward the leader. Thereafter, the group worked in two smaller groups with the props utilized in activity 3 and created a series of images of the group moving together (still in the same framework-so the leader never knew what to expect when he or she turned around) Some additional items were added (like hats and scarves) in order to offer more variety and each item was a gift of sorts, with the group trying to pass the objects around as part of their movements. Each person was to have held at least three items by the time they were finished. The division allowed half the group to act as audience and assess the work.

5. An extension of activity 4 - Philip is in a garden reading, and the students are throughout the space with props. If Philip looks up, everyone freezes, but when he’s not looking, the group is morphing and moving around him. The parameters from activity 4 still held: each person had to handle at least three items. Leigh was the reader in the second go, and this time the piece was shaped by having the members of the group disappear at the end.

**I left at the lunch break in order to continue assessment of the lesson and unit plans.

Monday, July 12 and Tuesday July 13

On these days, the students were at the school sites teaching the lessons they prepared for the students. In fairness to all, I will not discuss individual lessons. Instead, I will offer one bit of advice from our cooperating teacher that seems invaluable:

Assessment for Learning:

Stop the action and talk about what's going well and what needs improvement. If you do not do this, you never know what's going on inside the children's heads in the moment, and this truly is the only way to assess learning in terms of form and content in the drama classroom.

Love Never Dies

If films can have sequels until the money runs out, why can't a musical?

In theory, it can. In practice, however, if the original was as huge a success as Phantom is, it's best to question why the success was had, and work from there to improve upon the original. Alas, sequels rarely do improve upon the original. They hope to capitalize on the success of the original and fade into oblivion. Love Never Dies is no exception.

A generation of school music students came up playing the melodies of Phantom in orchestra and band or sang them in choir. Phantom brought the spectacle back to the musical theatre, but it was supported by music that simply could not be forgotten, haunting theatre goers for some time after the curtain fell. In a way, it is the music that makes Phantom never die (and I know many a music aficionado would find fault with it--but pop music is not for everyone). That said, Love Never Dies never soars as it could or should because the music is not as memorable as it should be. This is perhaps Sir Lloyd Webber's biggest failure of late--not being able to write songs as he once could, regardless of the works that inspired him. The sung dialogue is jarring (Glenn Slater has written better), and as the melodies are predictable on a note-by-note basis (which is typical of Andrew Lloyd Webber), they are not emotionally moving.

Now, many an NYU student LOVED this show and were weepy at the close, but I was not so inspired. For any budding young directors out there--take note - bringing the curtain down every five minutes for projections or scenery changes is disjointing to an audience. There has to be another way! Emotionally manipulative works must be handled with delicacy--your audience should cry because the characters have moved them - not because you told them to. To budding playwrights--having a character obsess over his life-like mannequin of another character for a better part of Act One and then never seeing it again is bizarre. Phantom Part 3 - the mannequin Christine conquers the world? I hope not.

Henry IV Part Two at Shakespeare's Globe

Tonight we attended another wonderful production at the Globe. The cast is performing Parts 1 and 2 in repertory, so it was wonderful to see some familiar faces reprising their roles from Thursday or conquering new ones. Like Thursday's performance, tonight's featured equally simple staging and an economy of properties and sets allowing the words and characterization to tell the tale.