Last Saturday I attended a 'theatre workshop at "Alliance Francaise' here at Tiruvanathapuram. I wanted to participate largely to be able to later work with children and help them stage skits and plays. The lady who conducted the workshop made us - about 15 adult participants - go through some exercises to express our sensory perceptopns. She also demonstrated how to express emotions and an excellant act of pantomime of getting into a small car, driving, getting out and removing luggage from the boot. I also learnt the difference between mime - just imitating a bird, animal or any non-human object - and pantomime where a human acts with objects which are only imagined. My experience to be expressive made me appreciate and respect the professional actors and their performance.
The first set of exercises were to convey to the audience our sense of sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste.
Seeing a beautiful sight; Smelling a old hat which smells rotten; Holding a burning bowl or pan (not to drop it though!); Hearing a 'Bad' sound such as a false note or sudden burst etc. (not to close your ears for indicating that); Picking up an imaginary glass, gulping something and finding it tastes bad.
Tips to keep in mind: The eye isght must be at the audience level and not to look up or look down. Distinction between touching something that is burning versus touching something dirty / scary must be clear. Sequence of gulping and then expressing the bad taste must be correct.
All this seems so trivial and easy; but when you see how unsuccessful the participants are compared to the demonstration by the instructor, one realises the importance of practice and talent. Looking forward to the next session on Oct 1.
The first set of exercises were to convey to the audience our sense of sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste.
Seeing a beautiful sight; Smelling a old hat which smells rotten; Holding a burning bowl or pan (not to drop it though!); Hearing a 'Bad' sound such as a false note or sudden burst etc. (not to close your ears for indicating that); Picking up an imaginary glass, gulping something and finding it tastes bad.
Tips to keep in mind: The eye isght must be at the audience level and not to look up or look down. Distinction between touching something that is burning versus touching something dirty / scary must be clear. Sequence of gulping and then expressing the bad taste must be correct.
All this seems so trivial and easy; but when you see how unsuccessful the participants are compared to the demonstration by the instructor, one realises the importance of practice and talent. Looking forward to the next session on Oct 1.
2 comments:
30 September 2011
Raja,
Nice to note that you have resumed your ramblings after a gap of nearly 5 months. I shall follow them.
I also resumed my Blog after a gap of 7 months from January 2011. I am quite active in this area since then and could manage to post 9 observations so far.
I hope to maintain this tempo in future also. I find that there are enough observations to make and comment upon, even without much movement from the house which is my present situation.
I wish you success on putting into practice, at least some of the lessons and skills that you have learnt in the Theater Workshop in the last session as well as future sessions.
Kannan
Raja,
The URL of my Blog, for your information if you don’t have it already, is ananthk.posterous.com.
I tried to incorporate it as a hyperlink in my comments, but I couldn’t succeed. I don’t know why. Hence this further comment.
Kannan
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