Negotiating change and finding our part in the machine

Last week, I didnt' get around to blogging, however, we did have Lauren to take some photo's, so here are a selection of the ones that she took.

The theme was still death, the action was more like a story, rather than the abstract interactions of the previous week.

Phenomena that we came across included sabotaging the story plan in order to avoid the intended killing, which actually make the killing happen sooner.

Also the need to end the death process, to "get it over with", which also sabotaged the initial point, which was to have drawn out, dramatic death scenes.










Anyway, on with today's session, altogether closer in time and easier to remember, however no pictures this time.

Warm up - Sound
Inspired by a music therapy awareness workshop that I went on earlier this week, I started the group with a sound based warm up. In a circle, group members used their body, including their voices, to create sound, eg stamping, clapping, whistling.  They were instructed to change the sound that they were making as often as they wished.  When they felt ready and comfortable to do so, they closed their eyes.  I moved slowly round the circle, In turns putting my hands on one members shoulders.  This person was to stop making a sound, and just listen to the sound that the group was making.

Questions I wondered about included:
What was it like creating the sound?
What was it like being made to stop contributing to the sound?
What was it like listening to the group sound without being part of it?
How was it joining back in again once the person had stopped?

Some people enjoyed listening to the sound the group made, however, others felt that they wanted to get back in again and weren't so keen on just listening.  The eyes being closed helped to focus on the sound and be involved, however two group members didn't like having their eyes closed.  One of these found it easier to stare fixedly at one spot on the floor.

As time went on group members became more comfortable with making the sounds and contributing to the total sound, we got some quite adventurous rhythms, and I also noticed that some people were very physically involved in the sound that they were making.  These may have been more relaxed.

There was talk of a "trancelike" feeling, of being part of the group sound, and when listening to it as a witness.

Internal and external changes, fitting in, accomodating, negotiating and initiating change.

The group became a machine, each with a different interacting part.

Once the action of the machine had a smooth and interactive flow to it, I said "stop".  Based on the position each person was in, they had to decide on how they would change their move when i said "start" again.  Everyone of course, had decided on a change but then they had to accomodate the changes made by others, so a period of initiation, negotiation, and accomodation had to take place, in order for the machine to become functional again.

Changes that we made included:

Making the parts of the machine closer together and further apart
Making the parts of the machine have contact with each other
Introducing sound (some people did this automatically, for others it was more difficult)
During the stillness part of the exercise  deciding upon a "primary other" to interact with when the machine started moving again (of course this also would conflict with the "primary other" that other group members had decided upon)

The transition was quite a challenging period for the group, and lots of variation was witnessed in terms of how different people negotiated the changes imposed, and fitted in with the machine.  At times one person would seem to be separate to the rest of the machine.  Some would take on a liaison role, linking different elements of the machine together.  Sometimes, there would appear to be two or three different machines rather than one.  At times the complete machine was quite a spectacle to witness, smoothly operating, with differently functioning and interactive parts, all having negotiated the change period without exchanging a word.

At different times I took group members out of the machine so that they could witness from the outside, the functioning, changing, negotiating and refunctioning elements of the machine processes.

I would like to explore this further in different ways:

Have a biological machine (inspired by the interactive functions of the living cell), which has random elements to its activities.

Have people change their function one at a time, so that the machine has to restructure itself in response to someone changing what they do, or even leaving altogether, and maybe rejoining at a later time.

Ending ritual:

We did a group story for the ending ritual.  With eyes closed we composed an adventurous journey with heroes, lost maidens and fierce and friendly monsters.

As a closing thought I note that Everything that we have done today, and for the last few weeks, has been about building group cohesion and the sense of complicite.  A good thing as we have lost and gained a few members, so the shape of the group is very different.

I would like to do some more work on slow movement and body awareness, in the near future, and then maybe come January to start working once again on bouffons.

Discovering Death

This was a fabulous session.  I have spent quite a few weeks wondering about how to approach this season's experimental work on life, death and rebirth.

I didn't want to sound like a mad hippy.   Too much emphasising of the seemingly cosmic nature of the cycle of death and rebirth, could reduce my discussion to the level of the religious.  My intention is to be academic.

During our lives, with varying degrees of success and difficulty, we need to be constantly adapting to the environmental changes that we undergo.  These may be thrust upon us, such as a death of a close family member, or disability following an accident.  They may be changes nature bestows upon us, growing up, growing old.  We may choose these changes willingly - a course of study ending in a professional qualification, having a child, or getting married.  The changes may be big, small, sudden, planned, slow and tortured, or marked by grand celebrations.  They all result in the necessity for our brain to make huge adaptive neuronal changes, as it remaps it's world, over and over again.  Accompanied with these stages of adaptive neuronal changes are emotions.  Emotions like sadness, anger, fear.  These are also adaptive, but how we respond to our emotions can make the difference between sanity and breakdown, wellbeing and dis-ease.

In stories such as that of the phoenix, rebirth is often depicted as a cosmically beautiful, glowing, triumphant even.  This belies the transitions that we go through in our own lives, which can be painful, undergone with reluctance, dread, anger and perhaps terror, as we finally give in to the need to let go of memories of the old and familiar and step into the realities of the new and  unknown, in order to psychologically keep up with our ever changing reality.  This is one of the bedrocks, if not the bedrock, of optimum mental health.

So that's the theory.  Mine anyway.

Here's what we did yesterday in the first of a series of sessions in which we explore and discover our knowledge, attitudes and feelings around death.

Group Discussion
there is a philosophical element to all of this.  I wanted the group to discuss their own feelings around death before engaging in the drama.  This was to provide a framework through which we would dramatically explore the subject.  I felt the need to remind the group of personal safety.  The subject of death is still a taboo.  I reminded individuals to be aware of their responses to the drama's, and to make the group aware if they started to feel distressed.

In fact, no-one did.

Following our initial conversation, which touched on many subjects such as fear of death and religion, we ended up centering around the idea of death being a necessary tool for social and biological evolution to take place, we agreed on an improvisation strategy.

It was to be free improvisation, in all aspects, except that I would secretly elect one person to be the one who at some point, was to die.  Once I had let the elected person know that it was to be them, we all sat in the audience chairs, and one by one, the individuals in the group entered the drama space.  Once in the space, each individual improvised around their own feelings and responses, and those of the people around them.  Once all of the group were engaged in the drama, when they were ready, one of the group died, in whatever way they wished.

Findings:
1)  everyone wanted to die.  Being able to die on stage is a form of expression that we don't normally get.  Some individuals were distressed that they hadn't been chosen to die, and I comforted them with the assurance that over the next few weeks everyone will get the opportunity.
2) People tended to distance themselves from each other in the dramatic space.  There was a subdued element to the improvisation.  It was very focussed and concentrated.  People were focussed more on their own responses than that of the whole group.
3) Saying that, there were brief moments of intimate interaction within the improvisation.
4) People differed in their stated need to be surrounded by others at the time of death, death would be prolonged if people noticed and cared.  Without this, the person dying might die quicker, wanting to escape the fear of ultimate aloneness.

In the final improvisation, I again secretly elected one person to die, but this time, they had an infectious disease, that during the drama, everyone would catch, and eventually die.  For myself as the audience, this was of all the most tragic of the dramas.  It was a bit like watching a slow motion, silent armageddon, as the virus was spread through the group by the infected person, who was the first to die, then followed by others, some alone, and some being cared for, temporarily, before the carer themselves became too ill and began to die.

There were brief moments of humour in these dramas.  The main tone was thoughtfulness.  The playing of death was done simply yet dramatically, with just enough melodrama to remind us that it was play.  The responses to the dying person were varied, mainly focussing around trying to help or distancing.

At the end of the session, all of the group said how much they had enjoyed it.

We will be doing more of this, and also looking at birth.  Also in a literal way, rather than using the elusive metaphor that I had been seeking.

Viewing and reflections - Japanese Fairy Tales

Thanks to Kaush Patel we now have a dvd of the Japanese Fairy Tales performances from the summer.  It's great to finally have a film of the performances that reflect the work we put into them and that we can be proud to show off.  The dvd will be on the You Tube from Sunday, and there will be links to this site.

We had a group showing at Staffordshire Performing Arts this Wednesday instead of the usual drama workshop.  I felt very proud watching it.  There were certainly things I would have changed if we did them again, but that will always be the case.  In all, the performances were as picturesque as I had hoped, helped by the fantastic extra costume design from Becky, and Sam's backdrops looked great (although we could only see the bottoms of them).  All of the performers were very natural in their presentation, and looked extremely confident.  They were very familiar with the material, and the style of performance that we had devised.

Now it is time for Konnektiv to move on, a new chapter is opening up for us, and I am not quite sure which way it is taking us.  However I did have a bit of an epiphany this week during a conversation with Merv.  I had been really stuck on how to take the cycles of life theme forward.  I'm worried I will sound like a mad hippy, and I'm also worried that I will scare people off with my crazy ideas.

However, there is no point letting worries stop me taking this thing the way that I want to.  I want to look at cycles of life (including themes of death and rebirth).  I really think that this has to be done by first looking at death.  How is death portrayed in film/theatre/books/video games?  What do we make of the stories of death?  What does death mean to us?  How can we portray our own ideas of death in a way that make sense to ourselves and others?  Once we have done this, the rebirth element can come later.  However we need to examine death first.

Anyway, the next step is to approach the Newletter and see if they will do us an article looking for some new members.  We have lost members to education, pregnancy, illness and the winter nights, and the group is feeling a bit small.  That's fine for me, I'm happy to have a small group; it's better in many ways.  But I just think that as the Performing Arts people are keeping the Centre open for us especially late on a Wednesday night, we need to have plenty of members so they think it's worth while.

It may be that the artsy drama-ish populace of Stafford don't want to come out of their houses on dark cold winter nights to experiment with ways to experience and portray images and themes of death, but you never know.  We may start of a fashion.