Friday

Observation. We do the Installation exercise. I tell each group that everything in the room has been put here by an artist, including all the articles, bags, coats, shoes, water bottles they've brought in with them. They've come here, by themselves, to see the installation. I suggest that this is not an imaginative exercise but one of observation. What do they see? The other people are in the room, I tell them, but they have no need to interact with them, other than stand next to them or walk by them.

They begin to walk round. I let them do this for ten/fifteen minutes. We then stop. We go into a circle and people in turn talk about what they saw, what they liked, what caught their attention. People notice: the arrangement of electricity sockets round the room; a spoon with a piece of used chewing gum resting in it; a cutting from a newspaper stuck on the front of the TV saying: Unhappy ending; a hole in the ceiling through which someone may be watching us; 'stars' shining through another series of small holes round a light fitting; the pattern made by the fold-up desks on chairs looked at from a certain angle, a single unswept-up 'pearl' from a broken necklace in the corner next to a dustpan and broom; some fluff; a mark on the wall; a pipe on the wall; a pin on the floor; a beautiful poem written on one of the fold-up desk tops; another fold-up desk with God is Dead written on. Etc

Many of these individual observations are greeted with both amusement and murmurs of recognition from the others in the group.

We then do another circle of the circle and I ask everyone how they think this exercise might relate to Brecht. Many comment on how the simplest things contain a lot of detail or history or information. How when they first came into the room - and most hadn't been in it before - they thought it was rather boring and uninteresting, but that when they were asked to do the exercise they found more in it than they'd at first thought.

Quite a lot of people thought the exercise was interesting because it corresponded with the idea that Brecht had about looking at things afresh. About really looking at something. About not taking it for granted. About how he wanted you to look at something you thought you knew but actually didn't. Maybe that this was connected with this idea of making something strange. Making the familiar, unfamiliar.

I asked both groups why Brecht might want to do this. Was it just for its own sake? Just to get people to be more questioning about 'life'. Both groups thought it was more specific than that. Felt that it was because he felt that there was another way of looking at society....

We didn't really go any deeper into that issue .... it's only our first week! we can't get everything at once! Anyway, it's Friday, it's almost 5.00pm. It's been a pretty long first week. Let's leave time for thoughts to simmer.

The second half I asked each student to recall an accident or event that they witnessed. There was a drowning, a number of street accidents, including a man pulled into the path of a car by his dog, a 'happy slap' incident, a fight outside a club in which a man had a row with a doorman and then got punched by someone else who wouldn't let him back in the queue. Before each witness spoke of the incident to the group s/he 'roadtested' it with another students, in formal and more formal ways.

What was interesting was the simplicity of the stories' telling. The simplicity of gesture. In Carlos' story, a blonde girl who was knocked off her bike had long hair. He didn't say she had long hair, he only said she was blonde - but he did a gesture of drawing his hands down the side of his head which indicated long hair and I believe he did it both times - the first time when he told the story in Spanish and the second time when he told it in English.

I'm really glad I asked him to tell the story in Spanish too. Because Nuria in also a Spanish speaker and she was the only one to understand it the first time. From time to time she expressed surprise or horror as he heard the details. The only thing the rest of us could understand was 'Waterloo Bridge'. Then I asked Nuria to tell the story - again in Spanish. To my eye it was pretty similar. It seemed true to the original. Then I asked Carlos to do his same story - but this time in English - and now we understood it. Then I asked Abigail to tell the same story again - in English - but as Carlos had told it, including using his Spanish accent. To my mind she did it pretty accurately.

A number of people told other peoples' stories in the way that they had told them. Tanya told Tom's skateboard story like Tom. Hanna told Kayleigh's story about laughing at a woman who slipped in the street.

What I liked about all the work was it's economy. Amir's story about the man being pulled into the road by his dog was illustrated by a very memorable - and economical - gesture of the lead being wrapped round the man's wrist. It was so strong that in each subsequent version of this the 'imitator' adopted the gesture. Similarly Claudia's drowning story had one real gesture which was the way she saw the woman being lifted out of the water by her arms. It looked both playful and functional, the way two people might throw a flour sack off the back of a lorry.

We drew no hard and fast conclusions. The only point I made at the end was that though the stories were told economically they were not told, or retold in a lifeless or deadly fashion. That economy ≠ deadly or lifeless.

I announced that Roger Watkins would be Monday's teacher.