The Climbers

On December 15th we all met back at the Dandenong Community Arts Centre for a after show get together. There was lots of food and laughter.

Larry and I made the announcement to the group that we had been successful in receiving significant financial assistance (in the form of return airfares) to get some members of Fusion Theatre to Hong Kong for the IDEA congress in July 2007. This announcment caused much excitement and many people immediately expressed their desire to be counted in on that! We talked about the requirements of participants in the Hong Kong experience as representatives of Fusion Theatre and explained that there will be a process of interview and audition before a panel of three. 

After the excitement and questions died down a little, I asked if anyone wanted to contribute any final thoughts to the blog.

Here is what people said:

Jean-Marie: We’ve had a great year and the 10th anniversary year will be even better (2007) and we’ll do even more than we’ve done before. Some of us are even going to China which is exciting and wonderful. I really hope to go!

Mandy: I hope everyone has a great Christmas and New Year and I hope we have a great year of drama. I hope I get to go to Hong Kong.

Andy: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I’m thinking about how good we all are and especially thank-you to my dad, Joe, for all the work. (Joe was our lighting tech.)

Andrew: Great year! Great show!  See you next year. As for Hong Kong! Thanks for a once in a lifetime opportunity. I’ll do my best and give it my best shot.

Vicki: I liked being pandora. I wish everyone a happy Christmas and New Year and I hope I get picked for Hong Kong.

Debbie: I liked the show. Merry Christmas.

Paul: The Deakin students are nice to work with. They are like a part of the drama group. And kate is fantastic.Everybody just did a fantastic job.

We also had some awards -presented to each person with some words about their development of skills over the year and their part in the performance. We looked at photos of the performances and rehearsals of Museum Mythica - everyone had some to take home.

So- it is over for 2006 but we all look forward to 2007 with a sense of excitement and anticipation.

Thats all from me for 2006.

Warm wishes to all,

Jo

 

This was a rehearsal where I tried hard not to call out any instructions or reminders! Not easy but people have to think for themselves! On the whole it was pretty smooth - the few odd rough bits add a little character! We may manage to smooth them out on Monday!

Quick costume changes were causing some concerns - necks in arm holes and garments inside out -that kind of thing! A new Deakin uni student - Emma - joned the team for this rehearsal and will be helping stage manage and handle quick costume changes, props etc. YAY for Emma!

After the run through we had the famous tea break, I read the recent blog entries and asked for some final comments to go on the blog.

Here is what some people wanted me to write in the blog:

Debbie: It’s good!

Vicki: I’m feeling good about it. I haven’t performed since I was at school.

Andrew: Been there done that! I’m as cool as a cucumber! (Andrew is feeling great because of lots of performance experience.)

Pauline: I love everyone! People should come and see the performance. Especially people with disabilities.

Cheryl: I think families should come and watch our show.

Margot: I think Kevin is coming.

One more rehearsal and then the season! There is no turning back! Break a leg and all that!

Jo

It was a different sort of night tonight as we had Larry back to visit for a week. Larry will be directing the group while I’m away in Darwin. So this is Jo’s last post for a little while.

Our warm-up included some of the exercises that group members are very familiar with and are getting better at. We able to do the opposites version of ‘Walk, stop, jump, clap’ which is very tricky. ‘Eleven’ was well done – got to eleven twice without repeating numbers. Crazy orchestra was really well done with some inventive conductors.

We worked on the new story Arachne and Minerva. A few good ideas were raised for this one. We worked on the weaving contest and the transformation of Arachne into a spider.

We had cake in the break! Some comments were put forward for the blog.

Pauline: The group has been wonderful to work with and I’d like to thank people.

Andrew: I’m very glad that the drama has taken a different direction with the Greek mythology. I’m very glad that I’m able to contribute to it.

Paul: I drama you get to know other people and do lots of different things even behind the scenes with equipment. The Deakin students are a great help.

Mandy: Some of the things we’ve been doing in drama I’ve used in my work. It can help you. I got employee of the month.

At the last workshop we had a visit from Larry Boyd who has directed the group for years previously so we were able to show some of our work for this year and talk about some ideas we’ve had for the future. Larry was around at break time when we go over the blog from the previous week. People talked about the blog and how it gave us a public forum or presence.

In this discussion it seemed as though everyone had something to say! Mandy talked about wanting to have more recognition for the group and to do bigger and better things. This provoked much discussion about the motivation for this desire - is it to have fame or is it something else. Katrina said is was important to move in stages and to ‘walk before you run’ so to speak. Alex expressed his opinion on how far peole had already developed and changed and improved.  Larry and I reminded the group of the many achievements already made over the 9 years of the group being around and that these were significant. Jean- Maree and Andrew agreed and added to this argument. Andrew explined that fame was not something everyone wanted necessarily.Mandy agreed and further explained that it was not so much the fame but the recognition and public voice for people with disabilities that she was wanting more of. She explained that People with disabilities are not seen much in the broader community and needed to be represented more. People agreed. We talked about the blog as a chance to have a voice and just wish that people would PLEASE COMMENT so we know that people are reading about the work of Dramability and Fusion Theatre.

There was a lot of other talk about the important contribution of the Deakin students - Paul mentioned this again and a lot of people agreed. Pauline, Cheryl and Andy talked about the qualities of the group and why they like coming to drama.

Phew!! - it was a big discussion and very earnest so I hope I’ve captured it here!

Fusion Theatre Inc.

Tonight a meeting was held after the workshop for participants, family and carers and this meeting was a necessary step towards the incorporation of Fusion Theatre. This is an exciting step. Larry is doing the organising of this and lead the meeting. Many members had excellent questions and comments to make about this process of incorporating Fusion Theatre and what it means for the group. Well done Larry it will be worth the effort!

Most importantly, we performed the version of Pandora’s Box that we’ve been working on for the audience at the meeting as a ‘work in progress’. Well done everyone - it is good to have an audience!

Mandy: I want to see the blog get bigger and better with more exciting things happening in all the groups. I hope everyone else is really well. I’d love the chance to get together with all the other drama groups one day and exchange ideas.

Cheryl: I just want to come every week and I like doing drama.

Pauline: We are all good people and there are other people with disabilities joining the drama group. There is a lot of kindness.

Deb: I like drama. I like working with Vicki and Andrew but they are not here tonight.

Paul: I agree with what Pauline said. My idea is to get more people with disabilities involved. It is great to see people having a go. We shoud have more Deakin Uni students here. They are fantastic to work with. They always look after us really nicely. We should get more people involved.

Alex: To pee or not to pee that is the question.

Workshop on 26th April

Firstly some comments from the actors for the blog

Cheryl: I love drama on Wednesday. I think the blog is a good idea.

Katrina: I love drama so much. The end of the year performance is going to shape up to be a good one because everyone has got such good ideas and its going to be active.

Andrew: I like the way ideas are put together and I’m learning more words from the walking dictionary!

Deb: I like drama. I liked playing the drum tonight.

Jean- Maree: I love drama! We come up with new ideas all the time and we’re going to get better and better.

The Workshop

After a stretch and focus we had a warm-up prepared by Amara. This involved walking as if being lead by different parts of the body - Amara ran us through lots - head, chest, stomach, shoulder, nose, knees, bottom - you name it. This lead into the next exercise which I had prepared as an antidote to the previous weeks’ work on The Seven Deadly Sins - none other than The Seven Heavenly Virtues! These are basically the opposites of the 7DS - kindness, chastity, patience, liberality, diligence, humility, abstinence (we renamed them to bring the into the 21st C). The exercise involved striking a pose, bringing it to life, interacting in the mode in pairs and then doing ’spotlight on’ various pairs to watch their improvisations. We then tried paired impros putting the sins with the virtues which was strange!

Pandora’s Box

Next I told the ancient Greek story of Pandora’s Box. A few had heard the expression ‘Like opening Pandora’s Box’ and knew what it meant though few knew the story of Pandora who was entrusted with a box to mind with the strict instrustion not to open it. Do you know the story? This was at a time when the world was all peace and happiness. Pandora’s curiosity grew and grew until she could no-longer resist so she attempted to peek into the box only to have it burst open and from it came all the evils of the world (back to the bad things again!). Try as she might she could not put them back into the box but she noticed one last thing come out of the box - it was hope. So though we have evils and hardship, we have hope! I told a longer version with an emphasis on creating the dramatic tension with sound (audience participation) and percussion! We moved into two groups for the performance making task - enacting the story. We watched the two different versions - both were very different and good but we indentified the best bits of each and thought we could make one really good version out of them - another time.

In the break I read out the actors’ profiles we put together last week and that were posted on the blog- everyone enjoyed hearing about themselves and each other and seeing their photos.