i am fascinated with how the human body deals with shock

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.