Tuesday 25th March 2025

Derby Theatre Performance

Friday 2nd May 2025

●       Gentle shake out of the body

●       Rub down the body – starting with hands, creating heat.

●       Arms, shoulders, torso, ribcage, lower back, legs, lower legs, hold your knees and give them some warmth. Hold onto your feet, push them down and connect to the ground. As you roll up, give yourself an energising tap all over the body. Release sound with an “ahhhhh” as you do this.

●       Head and neck

●       Head facing down, hands interlocked behind your neck. With a soft jaw, give yourself a gentle neck massage. Then raise your head and tap all over your head. Now move this onto your face (as if you are splashing water on it)

●       Gentle shake out again

●       Raise your shoulders up to your ears, then release and bend knees with a sigh

●       Lift your arms towards the ceiling and flop down.

●       Bent over, hands to the ground, gently sway side to side.

●       Push down into your feet and gently roll up, your head being the last thing to come up.

●       Ankle / Balance exercise:

●       Roll your left ankle round and step that foot forward into a stretch, front leg bent. Now step forward onto that front foot and see if you can balance. Roll your ankle in the balance and shake your leg out.

●       Put your weight on both feet. Feel the difference between the one you’ve just moved and the one you’re about to move. Name the differences in your head.

●       Now repeat the movement on the other side.

“Centre” – move into the centre and have a point of contact with a hand on someone’s shoulder.

“Clear” – move to the side of the space as quickly as you can

“Swap” – try and end at the opposite side of the space at the same time as everyone else

“Person” – find someone and give them a hug (this is person 1)

“Music” – stand and point at where the music is coming from in the space. Make this a strong gesture

After a few minutes of devising:

Instruction 2:

This sequence should feel epic. The sequence should flow from one to the next, no stopping and starting. Think about how you can make it epic – what does this mean for physicality? Breath? Sound? Movement quality?

Instruction 3:

Join with another group, choose one person to lead and teach both groups what you have made to create one group with six obstacles.

Instruction 4:
Run through your sequence and at the end, read the line on p.7:
“Ok. Let me see... I’ll have… the squid. Thanks”

Find a space and close your eyes. This is just for you, so think of it as quite a private exercise for now.

Hands by your side. Feet shoulder width apart. Take a couple of breaths into your body.

Vicki gave the group four words. With each of these, they spent some time exploring what they felt like as a movement.

Word 1: Friction

Word 2: Hollow

Word 3: Contortion

Word 4: Blank

Place your hand where you feel that word in your body. From that place, is there a movement that might happen that represents the word to you? How do you bring the internal feeling into an external movement?

Once you have a movement, you can start to become more familiar with it. How would you describe it? How would you teach it to someone? Start to get it into your body, what this movement is to you.

Once you have done the exercise for the first two words, try joining the movements together.

Then repeat the exercise for the third word and once you have created that, try adding it onto your sequence. Think about how dynamic the changes are, how do they flow from one into another. Is it sharp? Fluid? Sustained?

Once you have a movement for all four words, add all the movements together:

Now explore them at 150%. What does this do to your breath? Your movement?

Now go back to 100% (or, the ‘normal’ version). What does that feel like?

Now take it to 50% - how does this feel? The intention is still there, you are just shrinking the material.

What happens if it’s 20% of what you originally made?

In pairs, create 6 movements that are focused around ‘preening yourself’. You’ll both be doing it in unison.

Do one version which is calm - as if you have been meditating for 40 minutes - and one version where you are panicking.

Split the group in half, to become an audience and performers.

A volunteer stands at the front as the Head Teacher. They perform their meditative sequence once, and then begin to read First Impressions. The rest of the performers do their meditative sequence behind the Head Teacher until the text begins and then they immediately start their panicked sequence.

Vicki reflected that on having created this initial sequence, she would then play with the dynamics of it. She might squeeze the group really close together so you have Head Teacher at the front and everyone else fanning out like a triangle. She would also play with how it ends, there’s a lot of fun to be had.

It can be helpful to think about what you might want to see, then work out how to achieve that - Vicki often knows the essence of what she wants to make and then there is a process of discovery to find what that looks like.

Exercise: Looking at verbatim text

Instructions

Record a minute-long voice note about what you did at lunch time. This should be a stream of consciousness, and no stopping and re-recording – just enjoy it as it comes.

Get into pairs and swap recordings. Listen to the recording you have been given and try to re-create what you hear. You can make notes, however helps you embody the recording.

Perform the recording back to your partner.

In small groups, read the lines one by one.

Read the lines again, each person recreating the line the person before them has read, in the same way they read it, before reading their own line.

Instructions

In small groups, choose a scene that has more than one character. Read through the scene you have chosen.

Looking at the text make some decisions as a group about the characters, the location, the situation. What is the regret in this scene? What can you layer on top of the text?

Have a go at staging the scene.

DISTINCTION

(B6.D2)

Comprehensively express how individual actions and decisions led to performance developments, with clear reference to relevant, reasoned, and detailed examples and developmental targets.

MERIT

(B6.M2)

Express how individual actions and decisions led to performance developments, with clear reference to relevant examples and detailed developmental targets.

PASS

(B6.P2)

Express how individual actions and decisions led to performance developments, with some reference to generic examples and developmental targets.

These should include the following.

·       Skills audit at the start and end of the process

·       Research into the style of the performance

·       Research into the character you will play, or this style of performance

·       Videos of in class and independent rehearsals and commentary on how and why you have chosen to play the character in this manner.

·       Weekly targets stating what you would like to achieve, why and how you will do this and then reviewing said targets.

·       How your individual actions have impacted moments of the performance

Evaluate the final Performance.

Targets could include

• Physical Theatre movement

• Transitions between scene

• Learning the movement

• Learning the lines/ dialogue

• Character development from little information given

• General performative skills such as projection, accents, movement, characterisation