from word to action

Jonathan's Notes

These are Jonathan's notes on the first group on Monday Dec 5th. He also worked with the Wednesday group, I assume reprising the same method.

Each person gave a short statement about how and in what way the play had
touched or moved them or provoked them. What did it really mean to them.
One idea about directing is that you have to do it from a real inner
passion.

The students then divided into their groups and started to work on their
selected scenes. They were asked to make a short presentation and to ground
their presentation in a key statement about what the action of the scene
was. They then were asked to give a description of all the characters in
the scene giving any qualities and features they thought were important and
to describe the action of each character and cross reference to the action
of the scene. They then had to relate the scene to the play as a whole. How
was it necessary? How would the play be without this scene?

The groups made presentations along these lines. They were presentations in
progress. Principles were enunciated: any means could be used to present
work on the scene (powerpoint, movement demonstration etc), variety and
originality in the presentation was good for the group as a whole: all work
on the scene had to be grounded in the approach indicated above:
encouragement was given to other graphic means (music, images, photographs,
drawings, charts) to make the scene presentation communicative: it was not
necessary to do an enactment of the scene.

Students at the end of the session felt on the whole they were on the way to
being able to make presentations next week. One or two expressed some
'nervousness'.

Emphasis was placed on spending time reading the whole play again over the
next week.