Today we began the session as usual, by warming up. Three different students led a physical and vocal warm up and a game to get us into the right mindset for beginning the session. The leaders were very clear and assertive in what they wanted us to do, so led effectively. It was good to warm up vocally and physically because it prepared us for what we were going to do later in the lesson and the game got us working as a team and was a fun way to focus ourselves.
After the warm up, we worked altogether as a company on 'the joy of walking' sequence which enabled it to evolve since we started it a few sessions ago. I personally thought it worked better with us all working as a company rather than being split up and working in small groups, because people were generally more focused, allowing us to move on more quickly. Everyone doing one item at once meant that whenever someone had an idea about how to make the piece better we could try it out and collectively make a decision about what looked best.
From this, everyone was working well and we moved on to the sequence about mothers. Actually devising the piece was fine but the problems arose when we were thinking about using every piece of information that the patients at the hospice gave us. Our mentors suggested that we include a piece about Mad Max who said very emotionally that his parents had passed away when he was 9 and 10, but some of us thought that we should not include this because it might be painful for him to watch, and we did not want to make him feel uncomfortable. I think it is always an issue with using true stories from people's lives to make a piece of art, because it is difficult to know the boundary with what they will be pleased with and what will upset them. It was important that we discussed what should go in and came to a mutual agreement and I think we managed to get the balance between creating a piece of work that they will be proud of and being sensitive to the issues and remembering they are people's lives.
After our break for lunch we did another Boal exercise as a warm up and focusing activity. We all closed our eyes and the leader said she would tap one person on the back, then we opened our eyes and without saying anything had to guess who we thought had been tapped based on their facial expressions and body language. We pointed at who we thought it was, then closed our eyes and were told another person would be tapped, and again had to guess who it was. She then revealed that the first time everyone had been tapped and the next time no-one had been tapped. It was really interesting to see who looked 'guilty' and how people disguised that they had been tapped. The skills I learnt from this were how to read people's body language and understand others in the group. I found it interesting that a few people thought I had been tapped the second time, even though I hadn't. This made me reconsider how I present myself and what my resting body language may say about me. It would be a good exercise to do with the patients from the hospice, as it is simplistic, requires no physical movement and is fun.
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