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 :)