This post marks the end of Theatre Ruminate’s first day working with D.C. Everest Drama on their production of Once Upon A Mattress. Our goal for this week is to help the cast members and directors see how theatre can be used as an educational tool and how the work we do on stage is deeply connected to our classrooms and our communities. If you are curious about who is facilitating this residency or want to learn more about our organization, please visit the “about us” tab.

Before we get to the specifics of what we did today, we just have to say that the kids are AWESOME! They are so talented, bright and their enthusiasm is contagious.

SESSION #1: WHAT IS THEATRE and THE ACTORS TOOLKIT
Our first day always starts by focusing on answering the questions “what is the purpose of theatre?” and “what does theatre mean to me?”. In order to understand the true importance and impact of theatre it is crucial to start by looking at history of theatre and understand that we are part of centuries old tradition. Theatre is about so much more than standing under bright lights and being recognized for your talents. It’s about communicating stories that reflect humanity, our cultures, our similarities and differences and to bring people together through art. As a group we decided that the purpose of theatre is:

• To bring people together
• To teach lessons
• To entertain
• To celebrate cultures and different time periods

We also introduced the idea that these students can be (and are) so much more than actors–they are artists. They are using their voices, their talents and their passion to influence others. With this in mind they were tasked with answering the question “WHAT THEATRE MEANS TO ME.” Students were asked to think of the question on a personal and community level and then represent those thoughts on paper. The resulting visuals that the students created were deeply thought-provoking and informative.

We then transitioned into learning the Actors Toolkit. As actors and artists we are tasked with creating authentic, genuine and real characters, but in order to do that we have to first learn the basic ways we can communicate with others. The Actors Toolkit focuses on four main tools that every actor uses, facial expression (telling stories using our face), gestures (telling stories using our arms), body language (telling stories using our body), and statues (combining all three elements). From there we explored tableau work by creating frozen pictures using multiple statues. We first started out in small groups, and then moved on to creating a large tableau as a group.

SESSION #2: SCENE WORKSHOP
After lunch we came back and work shopped three numbers from Once Upon A Mattress (An Opening For A Princess, Shy, and Happily Ever After). During these numbers we focused on the following ideas:

1. Make Bold Choices!- As actors its our job to know our character and be able to make choices that are inline with how our character would react in that moment. Not everyone on stage reacts the same way. The absolute worst thing we can do as actors is wait for our director to give us the exact detail of what to do at any given time. The best thing we can do it make a bold choice, even if we’re not sure it’s the perfect/correct choice. If we don’t try things we will never know if they work. If we try small choices they will often get swallowed up and we’ll never be able to fully explore what our character is capable of.
2. Be Present!- Often times we can get tired of doing the same numbers over and over again, or once we’ve really nailed a number we get lazy since we know it. It’s important to remember that when we are telling the story to an audience it’s their first time seeing the show. We need to keep things fresh and engaging, so staying in the moment and focusing on the specific task at hand helps to keep us fully engaged, thus we are more able to fully engaging out audience.
3. Storytelling is EVERYTHING- Everything we do onstage serves the overall story. It’s important to identify the important information the audience needs to learn in that scene/song in order for the story to make sense going forward. Once we’ve done that we must communicate that through our movement, vocal and acting choices. If we just dance pretty steps and sound beautiful while smiling we are not fully telling the story.

SESSION #3: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
The final part of the day was spent working on character development. The students were split into two groups to get a quick taste of two different approaches to character development: Inside-out and Outside-In.

The “inside-out” acting technique which is a method of developing a characters “brain” before diving into a scene or play. This method is largely based on the techniques of Constantin Stanislavski who was a famous Russian actor and director. The students worked on their own and in groups to answer questions from their character’s perspective such as “what is your biggest fear?” and “how does your character behave in crowds?” These questions allow actors to decide who their character is and how they would act and carry themselves. We all have secrets, hopes, loves and fears that we never share with the world, so do the people on the stage. Before we can play another person, we have to understand that person.

While Inside- Out focuses on creating the character’s brain first and then letting that inform how the character speaks and moves, “outside-in” does the exact opposite. Everyone has a different part of their body that propels their movement through space. We started out looking at how leading with different parts of our body can inspire different character types/emotions and discovered the following:

• Head: elderly, airy, bright, confident
• Nose: Stuck up, curious, nosey
• Shoulders: Sad, Shy, Closed off, Show off
• Heart: Regal, Calm, Confident
• Hips: lazy, model, sassy

Using statue work and movement work we explored how our character walks and how we physically react to things. By exploring this we are able to examine our character in a deeper way.

We closed out the day by handing out the first part of a longer character project, where students are asked to answer who their character is, who their family/friends are, significant moments in their character’s life and what their character’s future goals/dream are. Later in the week we’ll look at these answers and use them to build out an awesome project (more on that Wednesday).

We had a blast today and cannot wait to see what tomorrow brings as we dive into scene analysis!

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