Artaud - Total Theatre piece

Friday 27th November

In order to round of our work with Artaud, his Teatre of Cruelty and Total Theatre, our task was to produce a piece of theatre in groups of 4, with an aim to take the audience on some kind of sensory journey.

After much discussion, we came up with the idea of taking the audience through the experience of a plane flight and crash, involving different sounds and use of levels.

Below is a rough script which we created for the aeroplane voice-over.

I was then set with the task of hunting for various sounds which could be used within our journey, after grasping an understanding of how important sound can be within not just total theatre, but any performance.

Artaud - Importance of Sound

Thursday 26th November

Continuing our work with Artaud's ideas around Total Theatre, we begain to explore the use of sound within Theatre and Artaud's "assult of the senses", alongside use of foreign languages, with our own interpretations.

We began to explore the idea of taking the audience on an imaginary journey in order to create audience participation within theatre. For this, we got into pairs and took turns to guide our partner (who was blindfolded) through a journey which we created, explaining to them all the thoughts and feelings that they would be experiencing. The journey which I created was one involving a beach walk and I included the sound of the sea, feel of the sand and green rocks etc. My partner Kitty took me on an imaginary journey through history, as a soldier and general, fighting in legendary battles and crawling through trenches. This for me was an incredible experience, how the loss of sight, can lead you into believing that you are somewhere completely different, and also proved a good way to control and manipulate your audience.

In order to investigate the importance of sound within Total Theatre, we then grouped into 4's and were given a choice of different props that could be used to create a sound-scape. Our group chose to create a sound scape for a battle scene, using various objects, such as blowing into bottles as horns, using stilts to bang against the floor as a march etc etc. The audience were placed into a circle, blindfolded and back to back, we then stood around them in a circle while performing to add to the atmosphere. We were then able to take part in the other groups Total Theatre experience, in which a stormy, raining soundscape was created.

Through producing and being an audience member within these sound scapes, I began to understand that senses do work in the way people say; that if you loose one, others become stronger. In other words, as we had lost our sight, from descriptions and soundscapes, we were able to create our own visual picture with our imaginations of the scenes being created.

Artaud - The Theories

Friday 20th November

Today's lecture involved, completing our group language interpretation pieces, and a more detailed look into the works of Artaud, as shown in the Theories and Artaud handouts below.

Artaud: The Theories:

Antonin Artaud:

Artaud - The Interpretation of Language

Thursday 19th November

Today was spent looking at the many different ways of interpreting language, and how it can be interpreted through movement and gesture. We also worked on producing in small groups our own physical interpretations of words through the use of metaphors.

Split into two groups, first we created small pieces for the other groups to guess the phrase that it was based on. Then we wrote down metaphorical phrases for eachother to perform in the next lecture.

This was a useful activity as it helped us to move away from the reliance on language that we had built up within our monologues, and focus on new theatre aspects.

Artaud - Theatre of Cruelty

Monday 16th November

Today was our first introduction to the works of Antonin Artaud, and his theatre of cruelty. Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty is very much based on the idea that actors should be pushed to their limits, in order to expose a truth to the audience that they don't want to see. Artaud disagreed with the way that theatre was being "taken over" by text and speech and so opted for a more physical theatre use of language and gesture.

Arteud was also fascinated by the idea of his so called Total Theatre, a theatre which insults the senses, whilst playing with perception. He believed that theatre should challenge the audience and encourage audience involvement, rather than being a passive experience.

For our introduction to the meaning behind Artaud's idea of pushing his actors to the limits, we took part in an activity involving complete focus. In this activity we paced around the space, aiming to reach a personal goal in our minds, and the only way to reach this goal was by pacing. We could only pace in straight lines taking 90 degree turns with complete control.

I found that during this activity my body went into a sort of "auto-pilot" where my thoughts were fixed on reaching this goal. We spent over 30 minutes on this activity and after which I felt quite exhausted, both physically and mentally. Obviously this was nothing compared to the limits which Artaud would push his actors in order to create the horrors that he wanted to shock and control the audience with.

Final Monologue Performance

Monday 9th November

The day had come to perform our monologues that we had spent over a month preparing, complete with costumes etc.

After the hot seating session on Thursday, and continued preperations on friday, I felt very confident about performing my monologue despite the nervous vibes.

After a quick vocal warm up, which consisted of the usual 'aahhhing' and breathing from the diaphragm, we got started on the performances. Overall, I felt that mine went quite well, but unfortunately I managed to mess up one of my last lines, and was unable to prevent this from being understood by the audience, as I came out of character, despite pulling it back for the last few words... what a shame...!

I thoroughly enjoyed our insight into Stanislavski, I felt that I could relate to many of his ideas, and was also able to use some of them in a workshop which I carried out as part of my CAS at my old secondary school!

Hot Seating!

Thursday 5th November

As a final rehearsal, today was spent hot seating each actor in role as their chosen character, whose monologue they would perform.

This activity encouraged us to think about and join up all the research into the character that we had undertaken so far in the project, so that we could answer any questions thrown at us.

This was a good activity as it placed us in the head of the character, thinking on the spot and answering questions as we believed they would. It improved our improvisation skills, while also building the relationship between actor and character.

Final Monologue Rehearsals this week!

Monday 2nd November

Today I finally finalised my costume, and what did I do? Forget my shoes… nice one! Never mind, I just about did without them ;)

Once again we knuckled  down to rehearsing our monologues today, I am finally coming to terms with my lines, which are slowly becoming more natural.

After rehearsing individually inside our “little bubbles”, we performed a group rehearsal activity which proved to be a break through moment in my rehearsal process.

The activity involved performing the our monologues in three different ways:

• Singing was the first, and the idea behind it was that emotion is often unlocked through singing. I found this the least useful, mainly because my rubbish singing ability put me off, causing me to loose my place in the monologue.
• Overacting, this proved very useful as I came to realise how the tone of my voice was very similar, and noticed that there was no change in vocal expression throughout. I was unable to overact much more than I had already been performing.
• Speechless, this was a very difficult activity, I got completely lost. This was virtually impossible, I found that I had no planned movements to support my monologue what so ever. This meant that if I was to make a mistake with lines, I would be likely to come out of character and therefore loose the believability of my monologue.

The lecture today was rather hard hitting, but left me with a few rather large points to work on next lesson. A rather daunting prospect considering we are due to perform a finalised piece on Monday :(

IB Theatre – No Lectures :(

Thursday 15th October and Friday 16th

No Theatre for these two days, leaving less time for monologue rehearsals, gutted :(

On the brighter side, we had IB residential which was awesome! we also found out that Cara was on a course and so wouldnt have been in the lectures anyways, so no worries! :D

IB Theatre – To the Costume store

Thursday 23rd October

I arrived today to find myself a little behind schedule, thanks to my illness on Monday, with most of the group starting to feel the staging of their pieces coming together.

After wasting the first ten or fifteen minutes of the lecture (trying to find a copy of Look Back In Anger, after forgetting mine!) I sat down for a proper read through of my lines, while trying to add meaning to them, and getting to know my character.

In order for us to feel that we new our character better we performed the following activity:

Character imagination – Everyone lay down on the floor and closed their eyes Cara then asked us to imagine the character, as if they were standing in front of us. We were then told to build a visual image of our character's first impressions, e.g. their stance, posture, clothing, facial expression, clothing etc. We then ‘jumped into our character, getting up into the same figure we had imagined, then went around the room greeting all the other characters in the room. This was a very useful activity as we were able to gain an idea of how the character would act being in their shoes in relation to others. To finish we shared ideas and opinions on everyone’s character and explained our first impressions of each other.

IB Theatre – Autumn Half Term

Monday 26th – Friday 30th October

No Theatre for a whole week!

Never mind, Half Term :)

IB Theatre – The senses

Friday 24th October 2009

To start the lecture everyone started with a little run through of our pieces, trying to understand what exact mood the character was following for my chosen section.

Once we had established the general mood, for me I found that my character Jimmy is very agitated and annoyed with his wife’s behaviour at the time, we did another imagination type activity:

Senseless – This activity is very much linked to the works and ideas of Stanislavski, and his ideas behind naturalism. Everyone took a space within the room and lay down, relaxed on the floor. The leader of the activity then went through various senses, with us using our imagination in order to relate these to experiences etc.. For example, A strawberry, this would trigger the participants’ imagination to the smell of a strawberry. Feelings and emotions were also used, in order to trigger are memory of certain emotions and feelings and the idea is to recreate this within our pieces, and the emotions portrayed by our characters.

This for me was a very useful activity, I could see Stanislavski’s theory behind this activity; being able to place your emotions and feelings into another characters shoes.

IB Theatre – Not another lesson missed!

Monday 19th October

Dang… I hate stomach bugs, no Theatre for me today :(

IB Theatre – Monologue Analysis

Monday 12th October 09 -

  IB Theatre is awesome, even if we did do paperwork for virtually the whole one hour and twenty minute session.

Today, now that we had all decided on our monologues, for our first assessed performance we set about analysing the character that we were to play. As a guide we used the following points, in relation to our character:

• Identifying the given circumstances -
• Prior scenes, characters mind state
• Facts by the character, portrayed by the playwright -
• Setting and location etc.
• Stage directions
• Other present characters and their speech etc.
• Character Objectives (what the character is trying to achieve)
• Units of action – splitting the monologue down analysing where the character experiences a change of thought or the overall atmosphere in a piece, and naming each unit.

All of these points are shown in relation to my character in note form below!

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

I really enjoyed today's lesson, as I have never before studied a character that I have been given to perform in such an in depth way. The techniques have inspired me and I will use them in the future for my CAS project; a production that I hope to direct with a group ok KS4 students from my old secondary school… bring on next lesson, which unfortunately won’t be until next Wednesday, due to IB Residential fun, fun, fun… :)

IB Theatre – We’re on our own

Friday 9th October 09 -

  We’re on our own boys, its time for a monologue. Today's lesson was spent in the library researching different naturalistic monologue playwright’s. This was sooooo hard, I spent ages searching and the most interesting one I could find was extremely sexist and being the only guy in the group thought this wouldn't go down well.

  I've taken two books home over the weekend: ‘The Contemporary Monologue Men by Michael Early and Phillipa Keil, and John Osbourne’s ‘Look Back in Anger’. and I’m hoping that one section from these might enlighten me so to speak :/

IB Theatre – Is it believable…?

Thursday 8th October -

  WOW… My head is spinning, what an eye opener that was, and I thought theory of knowledge spun my head.

Today's, lesson was based oh how an actor is able to make a character believable, for us to understand this we took part in a few different activities:

• Just Keep Clapping – This activity is exactly as the title suggests. As a group we formed a circle sitting on chairs with all but one person clapping their hands continually. The chosen person then walked around the circle to each person individually and told them to ‘Stop clapping’ however way they wanted. When the person clapping felt that they were being asked in a convincing way they would stop. Each person was then given a go at asking people to stop. It became apparent that the most believable way was to look the clapper directly in the eye as this got their attention.
• Good Times – For this activity the group got into pairs and shared a memory with each other. They then discussed and chose who's memory each of them would perform to the group. Once a decision had been made the circle was reformed and each person in turn gave their memory. The aim was for the group to guess who’s memory it was and establish what gave it away. We found that their was a certain state of mind that was shown when somebody is recalling a memory of their own, they almost become separate from everyone else in order to go through the memory in their head. On the other hand the person lying was able to make more eye contact etc… A very interesting activity!
• Just Sit on the Chair – and that was the task, the group sat end on and watched one person sitting on the chair, that was all the information we were given. This was the activity that hit me the most, it should have been easiest, but instead was the hardest because you unconsciously performed, whether by making lots of face movement (me, very embarrassingly) to simply laughing. This focused on the idea that you become a character rather than just perform as a character while on stage.

  The reason for us doing these activities was that in tomorrows lesson we will be researching a monologue to use as our first assessed piece. It is to be a naturalistic monologue and therefore must be believable for the audience, which should be interesting…

IB Theatre – Session 12

Monday 5th October

  As a starter to today’s lesson, we used extracts from our ‘The Lesson’ piece and deliberately performed them, making mistakes. The mistakes included, laughing, over acting, blocking each other and drawing attention from our partner. The reason for performing our pieces with mistakes was for us to get them ‘out of our systems’ so that we would not make these in performance. I found it very useful as in doing this activity I realised how unprofessional it looks to make these mistakes on stage, hopefully preventing me from doing these in the future.

  We then had twenty minutes to ‘perfect’ our pieces for performance, in which time me and Georgia added in a few more comic sections and learnt lines. We were then asked to fill in a review sheet for a certain group member and I chose to review Kitty, using the sheet below.

  Each pair was able to produce the script from a completely different viewpoint. I am really enjoying creating pieces of Theatre and seeing how everyone's ideas can differ when all based on the same thing… ITS AWESOME! I can’t wait to see what awaits us on Wednesday! 

IB Theatre – Session 11

Friday 2nd October

  Who suggested the idea that we started today with paperwork… yes it was me :( To start today’s lecture we went through our first proper written assessment based on ‘what we think theatre is’, using an extract based on ‘the field of drama’ which is shown below.

  Cara then informed us of a fantastic  opportunity to watch a performance of  six characters in search of an author at Plymouth’s  Theatre Royal on the  27th – 31st October. We were also told that it may be possible to receive free tickets, thanks to a scheme for people aged under 26. It looks like an awesome production and I hope I can get a ticket :)

  After a long discussion based on the theatre trip and what was involved in the essay, we finally continued rehearsing our ‘Lesson’ pieces, But I had a problem. Georgia had to leave early, which meant I was left with no partner, but Jenny also had no partner so we teamed together and had a discussion as we were both playing the same character. Our little discussion opened my eyes to how differently one person can visualise a scene to another. Jenny saw the professor as a very powerful man who was able to manipulate the pupil, through status control over the piece. I on the other hand saw the professor as a little delusional and stuttering, the typical over the top, crazy professor. The same script just performed in completely different ways… 

IB Theatre – Its not about you, its me…

Thursday 1st October 09

  Today wasn't just about me but all of the Theatre Arts group, and how we consider ourselves as artists expressing our interests, inspirations and development in drama to the present. After two weeks preparation, the daunting task of presenting our ‘Me Project’s’ was finally here.

 

  At first I found it very difficult to think of images that portrayed these points realistically, so in the end I chose pictures that represented the ideas on the task sheet in a more abstract way.

  I was very nervous before giving my presentation and wasn't sure how people would respond or whether I could make it last long enough, but once I had started I felt confident and well prepared. 

  It was once again a very enjoyable lesson as you got to see how many ways these ideas could be portrayed by different people and also the creative ways that they were presented. From a plain PowerPoint like mine, to an artistic washing line of images, all based on the same ideas. Another amazingly open and creative IB Theatre task…

IB Theatre – The Lesson

Monday 28th September 09 -

First thing on a Monday morning and what a lesson it was! Straight away we were assigned a new task; to produce a piece in pairs using an extract from Eugène Ionesco’s ‘The Lesson’, could it be that difficult?

This for a change was a piece of theatre which I found easier to work with and produce than the last two performances. I find that once I have something to work with in the way of an understandable script its easier to visualise the scene that you wish to create, creating something from scratch is currently a weakness of mine.

Before we started performing the script we as a group made sure that we were familiar with the nine areas of the stage:

• Stage right, left and centre,
• Up stage right, left and centre
• Down stage right, left and centre

Once me and Georgia who I would be working with were familiar with these areas we were able to make a stage plan for our performance in our journals, as shown in the attached image. We then discussed who would be best allocated each role, the final decision being me as the professor and her as the pupil. Together we then made a start walking through the extract of the script, discussing ideas and make notes on our scripts, which I have also attached.

IB Theatre - Lecture 8

Friday 25th September 09 -

After the usual late start to our Friday afternoon session we were able to make 'finish touches' to our 'What is theatre' pieces. Or in other words, to our group that meant run it through. After we got off to a slow start on Thursday we hadnt really got up on our feet to practice our performances, and to make things worse Kitty was also ill today, an added bonus. This shrunk our group to just Me, Daisy and Jenny. We eventually came up with an idea of what theatre is to us, based on the feelings you have when on stage. The idea that you are completely transformed when performing, and how all the worries you have just evaporate, whether your watching or performing theatre.

Eyes closed, walk around - What a relaxing end to a Friday afternoon, tranquill music and a wonder around the space with our eyes shut. The group spread out accross the room and closed our eyes, we then moved around the room in any way we fancied but making sure our eyes were kept shut.
This was a very strange sensation at first, worrying about who and what you would bang into. After time you became very focused but at the same time relaxed, I was able to sense where other people were through sound rather than vision. From an audience point of view, Cara was the only one with her eyes open, and she would soley be watching and guiding us if we were going to bump into certain objects. She found that it was very interesting to watch as often at certain points in the music we would move in syncronisation unaware of eachothers movements.
I felt that this activity helped me to understand the effects of music on my feelings and movements, showing that sound can be a vital part of a production.

IB Theatre - What is theatre?

Thursday 24th September 09 -

Yes, I did forget to buy a ticket for DV8, that was clever forgetting about the first IB Theatre trip. Oh well, I'm sure there will be more...

Anyway, today we started in a rather unusual way, Journals out and a quick brainstorm of ideas based on:

• Theatre in the world
  
• Theatre in the making


• Theatre in performance

As you can see from my scribbled ideas of what exactly was meant by these terms, I clearly needed to reread that little IB Theatre Arts booklet that I was given at the start of term! After a discussion in more detail of these areas we were then set another very open task - What is theatre (what does it mean to you)? This was the performance we were to show in Fridays lesson. After a long period of time planning and brainstorming the difficult task myself, Jenny, Kitty and Daisy, by the end of todays lecture had a rough idea of how our performance would look tomorrow, but have not spent enough time rehearsing and will only get 20 minutes on friday... Fingers crossed...

IB Theatre - Not I Revealed

Monday 21st September 09 -

Not I Revealed - Our performances of Not I were completed today, we viewed each others performances and formed a group discussion on our opinions of our work. Everyone as I thought they would, had come up with completely different interpretations of Beckett's, what seemed random script. None of us even came close to the way in which Samuel Beckett originally staged and had the performance produced, which is shown in this YouTube video link (Not I Video). It shows the mouth of a female actress and the mouth alone, performing the entire script. I also am aware that a cloaked figure is also present on stage, who does nothing but point throughout the piece.
At first, the way this is produced appears plain and boring, but when the piece is studied I began to realise that actually it takes a very skilled actor or actress to perform such a piece. It is performed at a very fast pace without a break and the lips themselves become a character. If I learnt anything from studying the extract it was:

• That there often there can be no right or wrong answer in theatre, as everything can be interpreted in different ways.
• Never as an actor to underestimate the power of speech

IB Theatre - Not I

Friday 18th September 09 -

Last lecture on a Friday afternoon and we always find ourselves feeling shattered. Sadly I didn't dream that I was the only guy in our Theatre group, because now I AM! Jack my traitorous little friend had decided that the 150 hours of service required of us as part of the IB was too much for him (In other words he was too lazy ;) and had dropped out. This leaves me with me with seven girls. I'm not complaining, but the girly talk before lectures isn't exactly exciting. Well, at least that guarantees me the best male part ;)

DV8 Theatre Trip - Today we were informed of a theatre trip opportunity to see DV8 at Hall for Cornwall, Truro on Thursday 8th October. Tickets are limited as only a certain number could be purchased meaning there were less tickets than students, as it is also open to all performing arts groups including A and AS level students and they would go quickly at only £6.50 a ticket.

Not I - For the main part of the lecture we got into groups of 4 (Myself, Daisy and Alice) and were given an extract from Samuel Beckett's play - Not I. Cara instructed us that we could perform any section of it in anyway that we interpreted it. Yes, I know this does sound like an easy task but trust me it wasn't. As you can see from the attached image of the Not 1 script, it was difficult to interpret, but also could be interpreted in many different ways. I am sure that each group will come out with many different ideas.

IB Theatre - First group task

Thursday 17th September -

Today we produced our first piece of IB physical theatre, I'm begining to discover how different IB Theatre is to GCSE Drama; we are given so much more choice about what we produce, and how we go about it. So far its proving to be a lot to get my head around.

And all that Jazz - As usual we started with and intersting warm up activity, today this involved dancing around carelessly to jazz music in any way we liked and not to worry about anything or anyone else, just to let it out. After we became focused we then began to copy other dance moves that people were doing, as and when we fancied. It was an amusing activity but encouraged us to put our all into what we were doing, and not worry about what people thought.

Theres only three rules - You can only - 1. Lift your arms 2. Move your head to either side and 3. Cross your legs. And that was it... we had to create any piece of theatre incorporating just those three rules, and nothing else. My group consisted of Me, Jack and Alice (YES, I'M FINALLY LEARNING NAMES) and we came up with the idea of create some kind of restraunt themed idea in the 20 minutes that we were given.
After a few minutes brainstorming our ideas, we were up on our feet and rehearsing. we were free to interpret the rules however we wanted as long as we obided by them... we chose to use them in a comic way, basically using them to over react any movements we made.
We then watched each others performances and made comments on them, it was really good seeing that each group had created there very own individual pieces, with there own highlights.

IB Theatre lecture 3

Monday 14th September 09 -

Week 2 and trust was the focus for today, the aim was for us as a group to feel comfortable when working together and to feel that we could trust others in the group.

Colombian Hypnosis - To start with we paired in twos and took in turns following one another, one leading, one following. However, this wasn't just any normal game of follow the leader, we were following our partners hands. At first this was a very strange and amusing activity, the prospect of following each others palms around the space, but after time the group became focused and we used all sorts of different levels to add variety to our movements. I found that when following, you became solely focused on the hand you had to follow and became almost completely unaware of what was going on around me.
When Leading on the other hand ( see what I did there ;), you had to be constantly watching to make sure your partner was safe, while also thinking of creative new movements to use. I enjoyed leading as you had control over your partner as they did exactly what was asked of them but at the same time I found it difficult thinking up different moves to use when leading. I also enjoyed following as you were able yo become completely focused on your movements when following the hand and zone out from everything else!
In doing this activity we became aware of the fact that within theatre you must learn to be both a follower and a leader. I discovered that if there were too many leaders then there would be arguments, making it difficult to come to decisions, but if there are too many followers there would be no ideas and so the group wouldn't move forward.

The Trusty Circle - This is an activity which involves the group forming a circle, in which one person is placed in the middle. The person in the middle puts their hands on their shoulders and become completely relaxed and let themselves be moved freely around the circle by the group, keeping their legs straight. We would start with hands on the person in the centre moving them around and then eventually letting go and passing the person around the circle to each other.
This was a very good game as you had to just trust that you wouldn't fall over and just let your self be moved around by others; beings supported and supporting others a key skill within theatre.

IB Theatre lecture 2

Friday 11th September 09 -

Todays lecture was in complete contrast to the first, we spent most of the lesson up and on our feet, getting to know one another and building trust. We we did this through various activities:

• The Hair Rub Game (as I call it) - We all formed a circle, placing our hands on the shoulders of the person in front. We then were instructed to rub the hair of the person in order to identify them, with our eyes closed (which was followed by laugh and giggles). Eyes still closed we left the circle feeling rather vulnerable and walked around the room. Following Cara's call we then made are way to where we thought the Centre of the circle was, and attempted to reform the circle by feeling the heads of various group members until ours was identified (no doubt much to the irritance of the girls whos "hair might get messed up"). We then opened our eyes to find the circle as it was when we left it
  
• Dares - To start this activity Cara told us that whatever stupid things were carried out inside the walls of the theatre would stay there, and not to worry about what people would think and put our all into the task. We again were split into pairs A and B, on Cara's call one of the pair would have to dare the other and it must be the first thing that comes into their head. Within seconds the group was turned into Ballet dancing Opera singers or thumb sucking babies (A time at which anyone could have assumed us to be from some kind of mental asylum).
  
• Walk, run, start, stop - This was a game of teamwork and focus. The group spread out into various parts of the room. The task was for all of the group to walk around in silence, and coming to a stop in silence, before taking off again as and when it felt right to do so.
  

The lecture was very much based on a childhood theme where we were aloud to just mess around playing games like the 'Dares' which you do as a child and just having fun together, something which makes Theatre Arts different to other lectures.
This helped us to get to know eachother and be confident as we were all 'in it together' performing embarrassing tasks. A lesson which prepared us very well for working together and focusing on the productions that we would perform together in the future :)

IB Theatre lecture 1

Thursday 10th September 09 –
The first lesson of IB Theatre Arts, WOOOP-WOOP! I walk into the first lecture and find a group of only 8 people, me being one of two guys (whether this is to be a good or bad thing I have not yet discovered). The One hour and twenty minute session was spent getting to know the nature of the IB Theatre Arts course, and familiarising myself with the course structure. I also found out what is required of me as one of the 'higher level' students in the group (basically a few thousand words more when it comes to assignments), alongside getting to know the group that I would be working with over the next two years.

We spent the first part of the lesson virtually in silence as no one knew each other. To break this tension we played an ice breaking game which encouraged us to speak to each other, which I named-

• The 1 minute talk game - The group was split into pairs and each pair was given a letter, either 'A' or 'B'. Cara (Our lecturer) would then ask either A or B to speak about a given subject, 'Your best dream' for example. The chosen partner would then have to speak about that topic continually for one minute without stopping or pausing, after a minute the other partner would be given a new topic to give a speech on, and so on...
  

The activity was very useful as it made me feel comfortable when speaking to others in the group, which would make future lectures easier. After leaving the lecture I felt that I had known the group for a long time and am looking forward to the lessons ahead :)