Camden youth theatre Workshop

In todays lesson we had a workshop lesson lead by Gemma,a teacher from the Camden youth theatre.
Our main focus of this lesson was movement and interacting with others,devising and physical theatre.
We started of with an engergectic physical warm arm to loosen our bodies.
We stood in an equidistant circle  and were tod bounce on the spt.
We then had to invokve our arms and legs shaking them as we bounced.Loud music was paying in the background and a lot of energy was put into our movemebt,we created a lively atmosphere.
this warm up helped us preare for the hysical theatre excersises we were going to take part it later,it also warmed us up as the there gets very cold in winter.
We then got into pairs and shared individually on what we thought devising was.
Me and Georgia came up with the definition that: Devising is "Inventing/creating  a fresh piece of drama using your imagination".
Gemma then told us to walk around the space,whilst we done this she shouted out pharases such as :Walk around the space as if you were rushing to goo somewhere","move as if you were in a hurry" Automattically we were put into imaginay circumstances,my thought was to imagine if i was late and rushing to college.
Whilst we were walking around the space Gemma gave us a set of instructions to follow,
She shouted "Centre" -This meant everyone had to gravitate quickly towards the centre of the theatre.

She then shouted" Clear the space" and told us that when we were told to clear the space, it meant to clear the space and go to the edge of the space.

When she shouted "Favourite" we had to point to our favourite person or thing in the room(Obviously i pointed to myself).

When she shouted "Fold" everyone had to go as low down as possible,bending our knees touching the floor,and when she said "Unfold"  we had to go out from our postion(fold)and reach as high up as possible.

Our last Ignore was "Hide" This meant we had to find a way to hide in the space.

We played this game a few times following thwe intructions Gemma gave us,it has gave me disapline as an actor and has helped with my listening skills.

whilst repeating this activity she sometimes told us to disobey her orders and we had to do the complete opposite of what she said for example unfold would mean fold.

Our next task was to get into groups and create still images and become objects.
My group became a book,i was the spine and with there arms Hayden and Tobi were the pages.Gemma then had to guess what it was and unfortunately was unsuccessful.This excersise made us work quickly and had our imaginations running wild.

My favorite part of the lesson was trust excersises and physical work.
i worked will William and found it very hard to complete the physica work we had to do.
one excersise involved falling in to our partners arms, another excersise involved pushing your backs together to get yourselves down on to the floor,this one was very challenging for me and i was almosyimpossible for me to get back up frpm the floor but My partner William and I adapted to the situation with the help of Gemma. We then were told tha we had to create a prison break scene using the moves we  just learnt.Me and will started with a jump,then a back to back excersise but as i couldn't get up from the ground we decided to roll on the flor and pretend we were spys.
For me and Wilkam there excersises were quite difficult,probably because there was a lack of trust from both sides.
Our last task was to do with devising but before we got into this we had to write abouth something important to us.
I wrote about money and concluded to the question "How can i make more money?"
We got put into 5 groups and 5 questions were picked at random,my groups question was "Why do some perope make it in life,and others don't"
this was written by Pele who was in our group and automatically i had ideas of hw w could perform the piece using physical theatre.
I had the idea that me and Pele could be back to back sitting down and on the lines "Why do some people make it in ife"We would raise up to show levels and prgresssion.
Even though i found it challenging perfore i mnaged to do the exercise with Pele,maybe its because we are of the same height.I thenthought that on the lines "And others don't the rest of the group could do the same thingbut go down (showing failure).
As the piece was not long enough me and Pele thought we could say "Connections" in response to the question whilst leaning back and holding arms.
Our performance was very good and we gotgood feedback from Gemma