feedback and comments

Unity is an important defence. Forgiveness is the only solution to prevent further violence, and to allow us to live again as brothers and sisters.

Comment from Mlle Dalila Abed in Bordj Bou Arreridj when asked why the recent Referendum in Algeria was important.

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.