Storytelling week - starting - 6th - 9th

Monday - Blog about the workshop – Jack and the Bean Stalk – Movement to music

On Monday 6^th January 2014, we thought of a well-known story and broke it down into 8 parts, which reminded me of the Stanislavski method, which helps actors break down the stories to find the objectives. We went though the story and broke it down into sections we were also allowed to add bits of the story that we wanted to put in.

Poor Boy:

Intro Jack

Intro mum

Intro dad

Describe house

Eat berries and figs

Farming

Bread & Milk

Sending Jack to the market with the cow

Walk to the market

Filled with joy of the sight of the market

Converses with the magic lady

Barters

Get beans

Gives away cow

Witch warns him

Doesn’t listen to the warning

Makes his way home

Arrives home

Finds beans

Angry dad

Hits Jack

Throws beans

Hates son

Sends to room

Bean start to grow

Wakes up

Goes outside

Discovers giant bean stalk

Tells dad the stalk has grown

Dad says stop telling fibs

Jack climbs the beanstalk

Reaches clouds

Sees big house

Goes to investigate house

Hears song (fee fie foe fum)

Sees George the giant

Hides behind            a bean

Sees the gold egg

Climbs back down the bean stalk

Tells dad about the golden egg

Dad says to go and get it

Climbs back up stalk

Plans steal

Pulls out harp

Plays harp to distract the giant

Giant is distracted

Seeks the egg

Sees the chicken

Steals the egg

Hides in house

Giant returns

Try’s to sneak out

Jack kicks giant spoon

Giant hears

Chases Jack

Drops egg down the stalk

Jack climbs down

Dad

Ax

Chop

Chop

Giant climbs down the beanstalk

Stalk falls

Giant is dead on the floor

All is well

After we had written this all down we were given in our groups of three 15 minutes to improvise the story before telling it to the rest of the class. We decided in our group that we would take it in turns to tell parts of the story and well as adding in movement, tones of voice and sound to captivate the audience. I believe that when we told to story we added more movement and voices into it that we hadn’t thought of, this gave depth to our story and we played along with it adding comedy which entertainted the audience and kept them involved in the story line.

After lunch we incorporated story telling with more movement and showing how we could show a story though our movement with elements of dance and physical theatre. We improvised movement to different types of music and seeing how that changed the way we moved and responded to it. All that we learnt though-out the day we put it into a improvised piece to music which we interpreted into war, ship battle music and each of us was showing our own little story within the bigger story about loosing/finding our loves ones, post traumatic stress disorder as well as showing status.

Tuesday - Stories we looked at – Turkish Bride – The Magic Well – Improvised

We started the day off by reading different folk stories in our groups of three and picked out the main features of the story and wrote them down. We were then asked to write down the 4 main points of the story and come up with 4 freeze frames for each of the main points, we chose ‘Don’t Judge A Book By Its Cover’, ‘Trust’, ‘Status’ and ‘Greed’ as they applied to us more than the other points because theses were more hard hitting and different.

In our groups we had to come up with a story that showed all of the 4 points, we mashed up different stories together to create dimension and depth. We combined ‘The Magic Well’, ‘The Wizard Of Oz’, ‘Rapunzel’ and ‘Snow White’ which created such a fun, enthusiastic and bubbly play with a comedy twist which showed us that we can show a dark, hard hitting point but in an opposite way. I really liked the way it turned out because the way we performed it, in around the audience were more into the story and seemed to laugh along with it but then realizing the darker said to the story which gave it dimension and an uninspected twist

Later in the day we got told a old folk story called “The Turkish Bride” and were asked to memorize it and to perform it on Thursday 9^th to a teacher and try and convince her that we had rehearsed it. The point of the task was that if we couldn’t convince her that we had rehearsed the story, us as a group couldn’t pull off any story and make it convincing to the audience. This was our chance as a group to come together and show what we are made of and how we could bounce off each other.

The rest of the day was to tell each other our party tricks, hobbies and activities outside the class room that we could bring into the show and show off each other’s talents.  

Wednesday – Gamelan Workshop – Folk Stories – Personal Stories

On Wednesday 8^th January we started the day off by learning and playing different types of musical instruments that are played in gamelan music, I played the ‘Saron’, the ‘Kempul’ and the ‘Kenong’. I personally loved playing with these instruments and made us think as a group that we could add in music to our performance, this would give it a personal but entertaining feel to the show.

During the afternoon we told each other old folk stories from Rumpelstiltskin, The Bear Who Found Fire, the alternative Cinderella, Buba Yaga Bony-Legs to the story of how Ganesha got his elephant head. Each of told our stories in different ways using voice and movement, even thou this was a rather simple task I found it rather hard as my inner actor came and told the story instead of me so it sounded rehearsed and wasn’t that interesting. If I did it again I would have chosen a slightly different folk story and describe it using more movement to captivate the audience.

On the other hand we had to tell each other a personal story and I found this much easier than telling a folk story as I could play around with how I told the story and how I could make it more interesting using different tones and scales of voice and movement with my hands, body and facial expressions.

•   Do we tell one story from different perspectives?

I really love to do this because you could show the story in different ways, maybe using music, song, lyrics, rhythm, dance, movement, physical theatre, Artuad, Stanislavski but also it could be set differently. The audience could move from room to room and in each room experiencing a whole new experience from the last room they were in (maybe the same story or different story, could almost become a murder mystery in the way it has been set).

Do we tell lots and lots of stories, mythical, folklore and personal? Do keep interrupting our fictional story/stories with personal anecdotes? Maybe every time a certain word or prop is used it triggers a personal story that interrupts the action? Maybe not all stories need to be finished.

I am open to the idea of just using one and adding extra mini stories in-between the main story or just using one. I like to explore all these ideas during rehearsals and during college time with my class mates and working out who would like to do what and what we are best at doing. To get a better idea later on it would be helpful to perform something to a small audience and see what they think of it before sticking to one idea and carrying on regardless.

Thursday – Telling story to Sarah – Beowulf – Paper

From the task that was set on Tuesday we had to convince our teacher that we had rehearsed the story that we were telling (which we hadn’t), surprisingly it worked out really well, even thou at the beginning we were all a bit stick. Jakko took to role of telling the story and then the four of us acted it out. I believe this was better for the audience to listen to one voice instead of all 5 of us, which could get confusing. It was comedic the way it turned out as we didn’t rehearse it (like what we were told to do), but because the story didn’t have an ending it made the audience want to know the end of the story to see who the princess chooses out of the three brothers.

We were set into groups of four and were given paper and we had to incorporate the paper into our story of Beowulf, we chose as a group to create the wings of the dragon (Beowulf’s son) and parts of the body that would be cut out the sword which would then be thrown/dropped onto the audience. When we performed it, it was rather uneven and hadn’t really thought this thou because we couldn’t use the dark room until we got to perform it, but nether the less we all pulled together and it worked really well. The wings of the dragon you could feel as it brushed passed you and you could feel the air which gave goosepimpless to some people and then we using a flame from a lighter to create the moment where Beowulf has his send off on a burning boat, which was really effective and I could love to add this in to our performance.

We then got asked to tell the story using:

·      All bodies (The dragon as it fly’s)

·      Hands (sex scene, using hands and voice)

·      Isolated parts of the body (The dragon, arms, legs, feet, head)

·      Shadow (The ogre)

·      Paper (the pub at the begging)

I loved doing this exercise as it opened my imagination as we performed it in the dark, creating freeze frames, using paper, concentrating on one part of the body and using light and shadow which gave our piece more dimension and it was more interesting to look at and well as to perform it. I think what also made this piece work was the people who I was working with as we all had good, imaginative ideas which we could bounce off and expand on.

I then had to change groups and use paper in a completely different way and we did this by telling a different story of a pancake running away from different animals and then get’s eaten. We showed this by drawing mouths, noses, ears and tails on to the paper to show the different animals of the fox, pig and horse. I liked exploring this idea but I don’t think we could expand on this idea as it is rather hard to get the story across and make it work well and pulling different parts of paper on and off can we quite messy.

Over all this week has truly opened my mind into what we can do and what we can achieve as a group. I am now constantly thinking about how could we improve as a group as well as actors, I cant wait to see where this takes us.