After Closing Time at the Museum
Jo Blogs
Some days have passed since the last creative development workshop on 19th April - its all become a bit foggy so here is an impressionistic outline of what we’ve done. Tip for the day: Its always better to blog sooner rather than later!
After a physical warm-up lead by different members of the group ( all members are to take some responsibility for this now) we worked on a vocal warm-up. This included the crazy choir / emotional orchestra vocal activity - some people remembered this from when I worked briefly with the group last year.
Whats this play gonna be anyway?
Mandy asked ‘What’s the play going to be called?’. I explained for good reasons we haven’t got a name or even a fixed idea of what it will be like yet. At this stage it seems our performance will be near the end of the year so there is lots of time and I really don’t want to have to make hard decisions until we’ve had this creative development phase. There are plenty of ideas to try out and lots of performance styles to experiment with. Our three Deakin Drama Education students - Amara, Linley and Brendan were all involved this workshop. They are also joining in the experimental work and having some creative input - we love having them involved.
Deception after Dark
Improvisational work was continued along the lines of the Seven Deadly Sins. We then worked on the Museum after dark idea trying different people in the roles. First we took the idea of deception and shared ideas of what this meant to people - lies, sneaking, dishonesty, trickery and Debbie came up with the brilliant connection with masks remembering the last performance by the group in 2005. We created a sculpture with about six actors based on the deception theme - A sign that said ‘Deception’ was placed by the sculpture. We then tried a couple of different actors in the role of the cleaner who enters the museum to clean the sculpture - needless to say the sculpture was somewhat deceptive and each time the cleaner turned his/her back the sculpture moved and did something sending the cleaner into spiralling confusion and panic. All members of the ensemble contributed ideas to make the scene more effective. Additional characters were added as necessary. There were a couple of really interesting versions and we had lots of laughs. We did a similar thing with ’sloth’.
Who we actually are
In break time I read the blog and noted that Alex had already put up his profile. Everyone wanted to have all actors profiles on the blog. Katrina came with hers completed and she and her mum, June who is also a great assistant to the group, had prepared a profile sheet. We interviewed each other to create actors’ profiles and then had fun taking some photos for the blog. Everyone was able to have a look at their photo and see that they were satisfied with it. Take a look on the sidebar at Actors Profiles - they’ll be up soon! Then you’ll know who we are.
ciao for now - Jo