Telling+our+Stories+workshops

Drama Workshops ** The class was made up of residents from Northcott housing estate, Glebe public housing and some natural born performers from about the place, all members of inner city communities. We were a very mixed bunch, despite this everyone managed to get on famously, most of the time!
 *  TELLING OUR STORIES

The structure of our classes was very fluid and the atmosphere was one of total inclusion. If you could make it to class great, if not no biggy. Over the weeks we saw lots of faces, some on a regular basis some just dropping in. The one constant week to week was the fun we had together and the learning and growing I witnessed of the group. I saw many of the class participants really come out of their shell to tell their story and to me this was the most successful aspect of the course.

We started every class with a cup of tea or coffee; sometimes a bickie if we were lucky and a chin wag about our week, what we had been up to, what obstacles we had faced, how we were dealing with life in general. I always mentally noted these topics in order to maybe feed them in as themes in some of the improvisational exercises later in the class.  During the classes we looked at many other aspects of Drama as well as Shakespeare and improvisation. We examined characterisation, how to create a character both from a physical aspect and a physiological one. One week I set homework to answer some pretty confronting questions about our own characters in order to help everyone bond and feel safe and hopefully understand themselves a little better. Self knowledge makes an honest and engaging performer. The responses from the students were brave, insightful and very moving. I also gave the homework to find a piece of text that you would like to perform; this is an extract from the poem that Marla decided to recite, //I think I could turn and live with animals, they're so placid and self contain'd, // //I stand and look at them long and long. //  //They do not sweat and whine about their condition, // //They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, // //They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, // //Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, // //Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, // //Not one is respectable or unhappy over the earth. //  // From Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman // <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Each week, if we had a new member in class we would introduce our selves and say why we had decided to attend the class. The most common responses were along the lines of wanting to learn new things, meet new people, have fun, gain confidence and perform. what did we aim for? <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">so how did we do it?