Workshop Blog

The workshop blog ended after Week 8, but we thought it helpful you to see what we get up to so we left the reports and details on our website for you to browse. Please accept our apologies for not having recently posted new items

In reverse chronlogical order:

Week 8: 1st March 2007: Using Emotions

A really interesting workshop tonight, focussing on how we can portray emotion on stage. After an initial exercise Jamie took us through what we had just done step by step and in greater detail: feeling the emotion yourself; then moving this on to being aware of other individuals and finally interacting with another person and vocalising if necessary.

What I found interesting from the exercises was how little, physically, actually needed to be done in order to portray an emotion. Okay, so we were working in a close proximity to each other but small changes made a big difference. Watching individuals or pairs portraying certain emotions, either just physically or together with inflection in the voice, the group was able to pick up on what the emotions were and discuss how people were achieving this. Yet again a really useful workshop which promoted a great deal of discussion which adds to the whole experience.

Following on from last week's workshop that focussed on the voice this week we considered the body and how to use this 'tool' effectively. Jamie took us through exercises that made us think about our own and other people's body language. We also considered how we can use our bodies to create certain illusions on stage: how do we make a balloon look extremely heavy or full of very strong helium? Also how does our body change when we imagine the balloon is something very precious, such as a baby? It was interesting and useful to consider other peoples take on this.

Following on from this we worked in groups to create tableaux of short stories, using our bodies to create inanimate objects as well as characters and actions in the tales. It was interesting to see how the groups interpreted this and challenging to think about how you could best portray what the words were saying by just holding a position.

This was an good workshop and was ended with another interesting exercise. Choosing an animal as our basis, we thought about some of their physicality’s and tried to embody some of these to create a physical impression of a character. Quite an unusual concept really but good to have an idea about.

Sarah Green

Week 7: 22nd February 2007: Status Play

Workshop this week was looking at the role of Status in acting. In groups we had to decide all the factors we thought affected people's status ranging from intelligence to family background, the type of job somebody has and their wealth. We learned how status is relevant so that for example a manager would have high status compared to one of his employees in a work setting but if the employee left and the director of the company came in then the manager who now have low status. We then explored how as actors we could convey status looking at height, body language, voice etc.

We then played a number of excercises the first one involving three chairs and a table and as teams had to rearrange the furniture according to which item was given higher status by Jamie. This got us working as teams and looking at the factors involved in physically representing higher status.

We also looked at how treating an object in different ways affected the status of that object and we used a chair again in a variety of ways, changing its status each time.

This workshop gave us an clear idea of what status is and how status can be portrayed on the stage.

Rachael Nicholson

Week 6: 15th February 2007: Using Improvisation

This week’s workshop was to work on improvisation skills. As we came in, we were allocated a number which was used all night for randomly picking people for the improvisation games. Great idea – it meant that people didn’t just partner up with friends for safety. We had a sheet to fill in with several games played, another helpful idea as I can go back to this should I ever need to. Improvisation often frightens the living daylights out of actors and these games were all about helping the actor set up the best environment not to fail. They were a lot of fun whilst getting over the key points; for example, don’t block, ask open ended questions. The workshop sped by and was very entertaining.

Sarah-Jane Waters

Week 5: 8th February 2007: The Body

Following on from last week's workshop that focussed on the voice this week we considered the body and how to use this 'tool' effectively. Jamie took us through exercises that made us think about our own and other people's body language. We also considered how we can use our bodies to create certain illusions on stage: how do we make a balloon look extremely heavy or full of very strong helium? Also how does our body change when we imagine the balloon is something very precious, such as a baby? It was interesting and useful to consider other peoples take on this.

Following on from this we worked in groups to create tableaux of short stories, using our bodies to create inanimate objects as well as characters and actions in the tales. It was interesting to see how the groups interpreted this and challenging to think about how you could best portray what the words were saying by just holding a position.

This was an good workshop and was ended with another interesting exercise. Choosing an animal as our basis, we thought about some of their physicality’s and tried to embody some of these to create a physical impression of a character. Quite an unusual concept really but good to have an idea about.

Sarah Green

Week 4: 1st February 2007: The Voice

The first three weeks have been great for those new into acting as a taster of what is hopefully to come over the course of this term. The first week concentrated on starting us to think about what the tools of an actor are: The Mind, The Voice and The Body, then we experienced how groups of actors get to know each other and then we were given a thorough insight in how to get a part. Week four began to look at the tools in more detail as we studied "the Voice".

This workshop used various exercises to enable us to think about how we can use our voices differently, what we can change technically and what this conveys to an audience. This was not an accents workshop so those wanting that would have been disappointed but we looked at tone, pace, volume, mood and other ways of changing the voice. The workshop was made up of essential vocal warm-ups, (including tips on how to breathe!), studying pictures and imagining how someone would speak, telling stories as a group and African chanting. A real mix.

Rachael Nicholson

Week 3: 25th January 2007: Getting the Role

This week we discussed how to get THE part, A part, ANY part. Jamie talked us through the professional structure of finding out about auditions and creating a theatrical CV, as well as getting the information you need about the audition prior to the day.

The amateur theatre I've been involved with previously never really used any audition process as part of the course but I'm finding that when wanting to become involved in productions for other societies this is very much part of it (obvious really I guess!). As such, for someone like me, to who the reality of an audition is relatively new this was a really useful workshop for me to put into practice after as well as giving an insight about the professional world of auditioning and casting.

The most interesting and useful part of this workshop for me was looking at how to effectively sight read a script in an audition. I don't think I would ever have thought there were so many things you could do in a short space of time to enhance you reading of the piece. Going through the piece finely, picking up information about your character from stage directions and what the other characters say about you: where are you from, how old are you, what is your demeanour etc. etc; information such as this may or may not be there. Jamie went though a piece of 'Look Back in Anger' and we picked out the amount each character said and considered the punctuation for how lines were meant to be said and thought about what this told us about the characters and their relationships. It was amazing what a quick scan of the page, looking for the right things, could tell you about the piece in order to put some empathy behind the lines. Jamie also spoke about how to interpret words in the script that were emphasised in italics for example and what to do when a line was cut off by another character. This latter point was really interesting for me, just thinking something to continue the line so that if the actor who is meant to cut you off doesn't in the audition there's not a long, awkward pause. Okay so this, long with a number of the things I've so far said I've learnt at the workshops seem common sense when they are written down here but, for me, they are little things that I would pass over completely if they weren't pointed out to me and discussed in these workshops. I think it's these little things that can make a big difference!

Sarah Green

Week 2: 18th January 2007: Building An Ensemble

Following on from looking at the actors individual tools last week, this time we focussed on the importance of teamwork. It was really good to start off by looking at how relationships between a group of strangers needs to be developed if they are going to perform together strongly and effectively. I felt the exercises Jamie used with us really highlighted the need to be 'in tune' with one another and no one person taking the limelight.

Lots of the exercises continued to develop the 'tools' focussed on last week while building a rapport within the group: making people aware of each other physically and otherwise. Jamie further connected back to last weeks workshop by giving us the photos previously used to create a character profiles for us to mimic the freeze frames of the photos and then improvise a continuation of the scene. I have to say the word improvisation sends fear through me and I find it hard concept as I become very self conscious but I've found that the trick is to have a go and get into it, then the environment and structure of the workshops dissipate these feelings and I start to get into it a bit more. This exercise started to show me how much improvisation can actually start to build a team of people: you have to think about physical interaction and listen to you team members in order to make some kind of sense to the picture you are creating as well as adapting your interpretation to fit with others. All in all a really useful workshop and made me think a great deal about what makes a good cast.

Sarah Green

Week 1: 11th January 2007: The Actors' Tools

This work shop focussed on the fundamentals of acting. When you are told that the three tools an actor has are mind, body and voice it seems a fairly basic concept but I always find it surprising how much it helps to have these highlighted and discussed.

In a group of mostly strangers the initial exercises really start to warm people up. Before starting workshop I'd never done any warm up exercises in a theatrical environment and, if I'm perfectly honest, had always thought they were an arty waste of time! Having attended various classes with Actorsworkshop though I've been proved very wrong and really have started to see how much benefit they can provide. It's always surprising how much tension from my voice and body has been released just through using some of the techniques Jamie goes through - and this is doing something that I'm not even nervous participating in!

In terms of thinking about the mind, Jamie spoke about 'not editing' and going with your first instinct. I find this hard and I'm probably not alone I guess (I hope!!) as a natural instinct is not to do anything to make yourself look stupid in front of a group of new people. Jamie spoke about this and I think you start to understand through discussions after each exercise that everyone is in the same boat and as the workshop continues I start to become less conscious about such things.

The final exercise started to touch on how you can approach a role using information that may be given in a script - usually not much! Looking at photos of people we started to build character profiles and histories for them -- a really interesting exercise to start to understand the basic concept of the method approach to acting.

Sarah Green