18th July 2011 - The Group Grew!

What a session!  Got there late, French exchange student and reluctant daughter in tow, had lost key, rushed home, found key, rushed back, a new face arrived, "great"  I thought.  Barb called - could she come along?  "Yes of course! Welcome!"  I replied.  A few minutes later another new face, and then Josh, an old face.  By the time Gabi and Chris got there at 7pm we had a room full to the brim.  And what an exciting session.

Performances and being in the audience are both important
parts  of the processes we work with

The initial part was not spent in role development as we usually do.  I changed the plan because there were so many new faces that I felt rather self conscious and didn't feel confident in my ability to absorb the group in the process of me enrolling the three narrators, as I had originally intended.  Instead, we played a game in which everyone very slowly walked around, keeping the distance between them and the people around them at all times the same.  Being aware of where everyone in the room was.

We facilitated the awareness by the fact that occasionally would shout someones name, and everyone in the room had to turn and point at the person whos name I shouted and they had to die in the most dramatic form they could.

Whilst doing this I was also reminding people to remember to move very slowly, and to be aware of any tension in their shoulders, and their centre of balance in their pelvic are, and keep their knees pliable.  This was to prepare the bodies for the next stage of the game.

New people bring new ideas to the group

In the next part of the game, I asked everyone to close their eyes, and keep moving very slowly around the room.  To try to keep the awareness of where other people were, and if they did brush against each other, they were to shake hands (this is to counteract the possible effect of brushing against each other feeling incorrect or wrong, and distracting from the point of the game).  I watched in growing amazement, as in this extremely full room, the group walked slowly around for over a minute, and for the great majority of the time there were no physical contacts made at all.  

We then carried the game onto another stage.  Members of the group each became a tree, and a few people took it in turns to move through the "forest" with their eyes closed.  One group member suggested a "pinball game", in which people got pushed around by the trees.  This was a good idea, but conflicted in practice with the original point of the game, which was to get people to be very aware of the physical sensory experience that you get just by being close to another human being.    Some people think of this as a sort of sixth sense - like when you are aware someone is behind you, though you can't see or hear them.  The group members spoke of the awareness of this feeling, though wether it is actually a sixth sense or whether is it an awareness of subtle changes in light, or sounds occuring outside of our conscious awareness, or the heat, or even subtle smells of others, we could not say.

For the benefit of the newcomers, we showed a part of each story, with Urashima being shown in it's entirety. Chris  played the drum, so that he could become more aware of the particular scenes and characteristics of each performance from the musical standpoint.  Also - we have agreed that Chris should recieve a recorded copy of each story so that he can start creating the music over this.

Lauren works in the kitchen
 area with some new members

Following this, we continued to work on each story, creating between one and three more sculpts  for each one.  The new arrivals took the Badger Kettle, and brought some lovely new angles to the performance, which is always a benefit to the group.  As always, we finished with performances of the new material.  Part of the instructions when getting into  smaller groups were that the narrators should be working on their characters and movement.  As time goes on they are becoming more confident with these, to the point where they were starting to come quite close to the audience, engaging intimately with them.

Next week - we are going to start working on very dynamic physical movements.  There are two places in the stories where these are needed - firstly in the Badger Kettle - the Badger is very active and I would go so far as to say athletic.  Secondly, in the Good Thunder, the storm scene.