united kingdom feedback and comments

The workshops were well received and important to both Theatre Venture's groups. The East London Performance Ensemble (ELPE) and New VIc's Youth Theatre Ensemble (YTE) devise their work in a collaborative process and your work complimented our methodology.

Your Development Workshops were good for both groups to experience because they experienced a different Director with a different style and fresh eyes to the art form.

Also, the subject matter was "more serious" than our normal material and it was important for the participants to see that theatre can be used as a very serious tool in the "real" world.

The consequences of the work were a collection of freeze frames and words reflecting conflict and, with the East London Performance Ensemble, more detailed work on resolving the conflict and addressing how it was resolved.

On the whole the groups liked the workshop leader very much and gained from his experience and approach to theatre-making. There was a mixed response to the workshop itself and the more mature members saw experienced a deeper meaning. Members of the YTE were impressed by the amount of work that was achieved in a relatively short workshop. It is difficult subject matter because our sessions tend to be more light and up-beat but I think this work is incredibly important because it highlights the life-changing power of theatre.

I was very open minded about the workshop. In this respect I personally was very impressed and pleased by the workshop and how the groups reacted to it. I saw certain members in a new light and I was glad that so much work was produced.

We will build on the freeze frames and a selection will be in our final performance.However, I respect the importance of doing this work justice for the participants and how an audience might receive it. I'm a Theatre Practitioner and I do theatre and not therapy and I think work like this can only be done in skilled hands.

I think it would be good if we were able to keep in touch with you and see how the work progressed via the web site. And the future? Who know's but there might be more working together in the future.......
Ray Downing, Associate Theatre Director, Theatre Venture

Creating the voice around the missing shape of somebody else's body was extraordinary. I absolutely loved this and found it ‘freeing’ and deeply interesting- it evoked, for me, the sensation of keening. The sound that emerged was instinctual and not pre-conceived and a different sound sometimes came out depending on who had just been there and what part of the body they had been holding onto. And I found then when somebody replaced the missing body with their own- my sound changed. The images created with everyone doing this exercise was gorgeous.

Louise Burns, Az Theatre

I enjoyed coming to see the workshop and was impressed with the young people's performance, obviously I would have liked to see more young people, but understand how difficult it is at times to get young people to be persistent in their commitments.

I really enjoyed the workshop. It was wonderful to concentrate on the voice in such depth. Its difficult to keep the motor running when not doing theatre work, and it's horrible going into an audition with a cold voice.

Robert, Adam and myself have been meeting up once a week to workshop ideas so at least we get some practise that way. We are writing a new project based on the theatre of fear. We have researched a lot of the Grand Guignol transcripts at the British library, and are adapting them with modern news stories. I've also being doing a lot of research on the internet. There is some horrific video material available. "eBaums World" has a large selection of extreme videos of a violent nature. The interest for me has been to observe peoples' instinctive reactions under immense stress or
pain. I felt that what we were exploring yesterday had certain similarities with this. What I've been looking at has been far more basic and vulgar; a base jump that goes wrong, or someone being hit by a car, someone breaking their back, or someone witnessing a tragic accident. The
similarity would be vocal sound that they produce, and the effect that such an intense shock has on their bodies. I was once at a party and someone fell down two flights of stairs. He remained on the floor without moving but produced the most horrifying sound I've ever heard.
It was a low guttural moan. When the paramedics arrived he didn't know
why they were there or what had happened. He had broken twelve vertebrae. I don't mean to be so morbid, but I am fascinated with how the human body deals with physical shock. I imagine what you are dealing with is of a much greater psychological and emotional nature, but that reverberates through meat and bone and is therefore closely linked.

The hugging exercise was beautiful, and accurately portrayed grief
and loss, a desperate clinging and urgent want. Very painful. It seemed a
shame to break before it because the Barons Court smog seemed to suffocate the throat a little, and the voice wasn't as open as when we did the Ohm exercise.

I hope you didn't think that I was trying to take over in the devising
exercise. Jamie's story was butchered a bit because we had to change
the characters so that we could fit them all in. I was also apprehensive of offending him, I guess because the story is personal and close to the heart. This is a big crime on my part, because as an actor I need to be prepared to take that step. The stakes must be enormous with the work that Az Theatre deal with. But Jamie and the guys were great, and again it was rewarding to construct a story with such scale of emotion so quickly.

Thank you for a positive start to a creative week end. Please keep me
informed about your work. Take care.

I completely love the searching way you work in the workshops: I enjoy
them very much. If you would like more specific feedback, I thought this recent workshop was clearer in terms of what you're trying to discover and
achieve. So the breathing and movement exercises had a context from
the start because of your initial explanation. But then I quite liked not
being sure where the exercises were going last time.

I enjoy discussing my feelings about the play after reading. I felt the
discussion being invited was about what's happening in the scene or
differences between translations, whereas I would enjoy being
invited to give any response. I wanted to have a rant about loss and
relationships and how I feel about Admetus! That's just my taste, but it
might inform the next section, where we use our own stories by encouraging the actors to confront those themes.

But ultimately I love the workshops as they are. I love the pace of them
and find them soothing and challenging and cathartic and inquisitive. I
hope that's helpful.