Different Strokes
The two Groups were very different today.
B went first. They launched themselves wholeheartedly into the warm-up but when it came to throwing the ball round the circle, the words butter and fingers came to mind. 8. 2. 11. 5 catches were all they could manage. I wondered how long it would be until they could even begin to throw two balls. But slowly - slowly - focus came and we did get to thirty throws and beyond with three and four balls.
We went round in turn in the circle to say anything we knew about Marxism, what 'the revolutionaries' of The Mother would have studied and known intimately. Very little, it seemed was known formally among the group. However when we opened the subject up, instinctively and indirectly, much more came to light. We touched on the idea of Ownership; 'Ownership is Theft'; Selling your Labour. We talked of the situation in South Africa. About whether Nelson Mandela was a stooge cooked up to manage the CONTINUATION of the same system in power after Apartheid as existed before Apartheid - except without the Apartheid bit.
A different energy emerged among the group than had existed as we went round the circle. Much more focused. Much more committed and passionate. We talked about Nike. What we pay and what the people who make them get paid. Profit. The international trading system. Cash crops. Low wages. Good contributions from Tanya, Chris, Hannah and Joleen - who's from South Africa. Good focus from everyone. Grace asked me at the end where she could find out more...
Gestus. Or not. I admit I'm not sure if I understand Gestus. But I say I understand 'Body Language'. We look at each others. We copy it. Accurately. We look at its variety. We look at the story it tells. The are some chairs put into the space round which we stand and I ask each student in turn to sit in a chair to tell a story. Some slouch. Chris sits like a ballet dancer. Some are attentive. Some bored. None are unclear. We watch and say what the story is we see.
We then move to the door. I ask for a volunteer to come in and say the 'Police!' line. We have a number of attempts and each attempter has a number of shots. The tendency in the early stages is for people to do too much. To run too far into the room. Not to realise the power of the doorway itself. Of the entrance. As ever. Just by bursting through the door you achieve so much. Little more needs to be done. We coach this and the results are much better.
We then take the line of the Policeman: 'Don't move or I'll shoot'. Tom has a go. Chris. We are much exercised with details. Just as in the Installation exercise, SMALL THINGS TELL BIG STORIES.
We take the entrance of the Police Inspector. We position the policeman in the doorway looking out but we have the door half closed so we, the audience, can't see the Inspector. The Policeman then has the line: 'It's Sidor Kalatov's sister, sir' and the Inspector is to come into the room. Jordan is the first Inspector. She does pretty well. Not too much. We have observations but what she does is economical. Tanya has a go. Again good. Again economical. Joleen too. We notice Joleen's tapping on the back of the chair. I comment on how she put clasped her hand behind her back at the beginning and at the end of her version and how I felt that when she allowed her arms to be free she looked - and was - much more high status, relaxed and in command. She agreed.
Interesting this: that I then asked Cat to have a go and she didn't seem keen and said she was 'too tired'. I persist. Maybe, 'insist' is the better word. She accepts. I whisper to her that this time, as before treating us, the audience, as the revolutionaries, she comes up very close, right into our faces.
She does this and she does it really courageously. Very strong eye contact. She improvises good lines and uses our reactions, at one point bawling out Tanya who starts to laugh with embarrassment: 'What? Find it funny do you? I don't think there's anything to laugh about. You're in really deep trouble'. etc
Sometimes the least willing can find a piece of gold. Energy lurks where you least expect it.
We finish by looking at The Bread Trick from Stephen Lowe's Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and a brief discussion on what the title means - why RAGGED TROUSERED philanthropists? Are the men complicit in their own exploitation? Electing their exploiters to Parliament etc.
Group A were strange. All the same stuff. But reactions? Different. They were the star team in throwing the ball round the circle. They were the star team when it came to the discussion of Marxism. Again we had a South African - Charlene - to comment on Cape Town and it's lack of black people in a country where 75% of the population is black. Certainly a lack of black people driving nice cars and not working as street cleaners, waiters and people to park your car. Egle, the Lithuanian, talked very interestingly about her parents experience - and her own - in a country that when she was at Junior school was a 'Communist' country. And is now, certainly, a capitalist one. A little bit of 'Ostalgia' on the part of her parents, maybe?
There is also Josie. She thinks Empire was a good idea. Good luck to those who went out and won land and resources for their country! Good on them!
But progress elsewhere is slower. We get to the Inspector. But only just. Natalie is strangely impatient of us taking our time to take our time. Sandra leaves early, citing family reasons. But then comes back five minutes after the lesson ends, having forgotten her notebook in the rush. However, Claudie and Charlene will not be deflected and they do good work. I suggest to Charlene that she uses the door. Doesn't rush in. Her first attempt at the Inspector is a little scary, tragic even. Egle says it looks like Chekhov. Charlene holds on to the door handle maybe too long for our liking and when she comes into the room, Claudia follows her, both walking with folded arms and both stopping next to each othe as a mirror image. It's a strange, slightly formal picture. We coach. Charlenes takes the notes. Is looser. I suggest to Claudia that she doesn't lean in towards the door. She takes the note.
I suggest to Claudia that she waits much longer before she begins, giving the audience time to focus; insisting the audience focus.
But we don't have time for the Inspector(s) to walk round the room. We don't have time for The Bread trick at all..
Focus. Energy. Saving your energy for what it is needed for...
B went first. They launched themselves wholeheartedly into the warm-up but when it came to throwing the ball round the circle, the words butter and fingers came to mind. 8. 2. 11. 5 catches were all they could manage. I wondered how long it would be until they could even begin to throw two balls. But slowly - slowly - focus came and we did get to thirty throws and beyond with three and four balls.
We went round in turn in the circle to say anything we knew about Marxism, what 'the revolutionaries' of The Mother would have studied and known intimately. Very little, it seemed was known formally among the group. However when we opened the subject up, instinctively and indirectly, much more came to light. We touched on the idea of Ownership; 'Ownership is Theft'; Selling your Labour. We talked of the situation in South Africa. About whether Nelson Mandela was a stooge cooked up to manage the CONTINUATION of the same system in power after Apartheid as existed before Apartheid - except without the Apartheid bit.
A different energy emerged among the group than had existed as we went round the circle. Much more focused. Much more committed and passionate. We talked about Nike. What we pay and what the people who make them get paid. Profit. The international trading system. Cash crops. Low wages. Good contributions from Tanya, Chris, Hannah and Joleen - who's from South Africa. Good focus from everyone. Grace asked me at the end where she could find out more...
Gestus. Or not. I admit I'm not sure if I understand Gestus. But I say I understand 'Body Language'. We look at each others. We copy it. Accurately. We look at its variety. We look at the story it tells. The are some chairs put into the space round which we stand and I ask each student in turn to sit in a chair to tell a story. Some slouch. Chris sits like a ballet dancer. Some are attentive. Some bored. None are unclear. We watch and say what the story is we see.
We then move to the door. I ask for a volunteer to come in and say the 'Police!' line. We have a number of attempts and each attempter has a number of shots. The tendency in the early stages is for people to do too much. To run too far into the room. Not to realise the power of the doorway itself. Of the entrance. As ever. Just by bursting through the door you achieve so much. Little more needs to be done. We coach this and the results are much better.
We then take the line of the Policeman: 'Don't move or I'll shoot'. Tom has a go. Chris. We are much exercised with details. Just as in the Installation exercise, SMALL THINGS TELL BIG STORIES.
We take the entrance of the Police Inspector. We position the policeman in the doorway looking out but we have the door half closed so we, the audience, can't see the Inspector. The Policeman then has the line: 'It's Sidor Kalatov's sister, sir' and the Inspector is to come into the room. Jordan is the first Inspector. She does pretty well. Not too much. We have observations but what she does is economical. Tanya has a go. Again good. Again economical. Joleen too. We notice Joleen's tapping on the back of the chair. I comment on how she put clasped her hand behind her back at the beginning and at the end of her version and how I felt that when she allowed her arms to be free she looked - and was - much more high status, relaxed and in command. She agreed.
Interesting this: that I then asked Cat to have a go and she didn't seem keen and said she was 'too tired'. I persist. Maybe, 'insist' is the better word. She accepts. I whisper to her that this time, as before treating us, the audience, as the revolutionaries, she comes up very close, right into our faces.
She does this and she does it really courageously. Very strong eye contact. She improvises good lines and uses our reactions, at one point bawling out Tanya who starts to laugh with embarrassment: 'What? Find it funny do you? I don't think there's anything to laugh about. You're in really deep trouble'. etc
Sometimes the least willing can find a piece of gold. Energy lurks where you least expect it.
We finish by looking at The Bread Trick from Stephen Lowe's Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and a brief discussion on what the title means - why RAGGED TROUSERED philanthropists? Are the men complicit in their own exploitation? Electing their exploiters to Parliament etc.
Group A were strange. All the same stuff. But reactions? Different. They were the star team in throwing the ball round the circle. They were the star team when it came to the discussion of Marxism. Again we had a South African - Charlene - to comment on Cape Town and it's lack of black people in a country where 75% of the population is black. Certainly a lack of black people driving nice cars and not working as street cleaners, waiters and people to park your car. Egle, the Lithuanian, talked very interestingly about her parents experience - and her own - in a country that when she was at Junior school was a 'Communist' country. And is now, certainly, a capitalist one. A little bit of 'Ostalgia' on the part of her parents, maybe?
There is also Josie. She thinks Empire was a good idea. Good luck to those who went out and won land and resources for their country! Good on them!
But progress elsewhere is slower. We get to the Inspector. But only just. Natalie is strangely impatient of us taking our time to take our time. Sandra leaves early, citing family reasons. But then comes back five minutes after the lesson ends, having forgotten her notebook in the rush. However, Claudie and Charlene will not be deflected and they do good work. I suggest to Charlene that she uses the door. Doesn't rush in. Her first attempt at the Inspector is a little scary, tragic even. Egle says it looks like Chekhov. Charlene holds on to the door handle maybe too long for our liking and when she comes into the room, Claudia follows her, both walking with folded arms and both stopping next to each othe as a mirror image. It's a strange, slightly formal picture. We coach. Charlenes takes the notes. Is looser. I suggest to Claudia that she doesn't lean in towards the door. She takes the note.
I suggest to Claudia that she waits much longer before she begins, giving the audience time to focus; insisting the audience focus.
But we don't have time for the Inspector(s) to walk round the room. We don't have time for The Bread trick at all..
Focus. Energy. Saving your energy for what it is needed for...
posted by Steve at 10:00 AM
2 Comments:
I was totally misquoted in this session, I did not say that there was a lack of black people in Cape Town, on the contrary my point was that before South Africa was colonised by the Dutch and the British that the indigenous Black people did a fine job of running their country and that it was the foreign settlers who brought division between people in the form of apartheid .
Dear Charlene
Thanks for that. You're dead right, I expressed myself badly here. I should have said I asked Charlene to comment on Jonathan Freedland's article about Cape Town. (see the Post and Link 'Has Anything Changed? Feb 25th Post)
About him saying that, in his experience, black people seemed very thin on the ground in Cape Town unless it was waiting tables or parking people's cars for them.
And Charlene then made the point, excellently, as she makes it again above.
Steve
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