Autumn Leaves - 3rd October 2013

Autumn.  A new season.  As 2013 begins to decay, the new academic year begins.  Hopeful students embark on new courses, eyes shining, pens full, pages empty.  Leaves begin to fall off trees.

A drama group of people who know each other well meet up as arranged, as is now usual, at Gnosall Community Fire station.  They share news.  Each has stories to tell.  It is already getting dark outside.

I'm the facilitator.  I facilitate.  Sometimes I don't know what I'm going to facilitate until it happens.  Plans go awry.  Sometimes, and this is a total secret; I don't have a plan.

We talked about Autumn.  There's a start.  I ask people to walk around the room, and think about the autumn, saying all the words they could think of that describe Autumn.  "Leaves"  "Chilly"  "Wind" "Boots" "Dark"  "Acorn". The words come out randomly, in flurrys, like falling leaves, layering, making little heaps.

We are beginning to immerse ourselves in the themes of this season.

Next, I ask people to perform a movement to go with their word, everyone is to reflect the movement back.  Now everyone is beginning to act as a group.  The words come out one by one.  We have time to focus our concentration on each word, and to  internalise what it means, physically, so it is more than just a string of letters.

Now I ask the group to stand at one end of the room, and one by one, each make up part of a group image, saying their own word, and creating an accompanying sculpt.  Now other things start to appear, "squirrel" "mud"  "boots" "rain" "hedgehog".

At times members come out of the picture, and gaze in on it for a while, before joining it again in a different role.  The picture changes, morphs, stories come and go.

I change the task once again.  An image gives itself to me.  A pile of multicoloured fallen leaves.  I ask  each member of the group to become a leaf.  They all describe which leaf they are - oak, chestnut, willow, beech, a green leaf and a fir cone.  I tell them to imagine they are hanging on a tree.  What is the tree like?  What is it like on this tree?  What can they see?  What are the other leaves like?  What about animals in the tree?  What can they see when they look down?  Are they firmly attached to the tree?

After some silence to consider this, I move the story on.  They begin to change colour.  Slowly the stem that is holding them to the tree is wearing away.  They know they are soon to drop to the ground, leaving the tree.  How does it feel to know that they will be leaving the tree?  

A little more silence, and then I describe the last few strands of stem breaking.  The leaf falls.  How does it fall?  How does it land? 

The group are lying on the floor.  A heap of leaves.  Multicoloured.

Night falls. An owl hoots. It is a warm night.  It rains, quite heavily.  The leaves get wet.  In the morning the sun comes up, and they begin to dry.  As they start to dry, they start to notice each other.

________________________

At this point the group all look round, noticing each other.  I divide them into pairs.  In the pairs, they share their stories, about their life in the tree, the moment of leaving the tree, and how they feel now that they are lying on the floor, in a little pile of leaves.  I let them know that they will be reading each others stories, and tell each person to let their partner know the three main things that they should remember in their story.

After some time in preparation.  The group are all lying down.  They take it in turns to read their partners story, in this way;  in random sequence, one member says "Once upon a time..."  At this point, their partner gets up, and hears their leaf-life story being read, whilst they move through the events physically.  One by one each person's story is told.

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We spend some time reflecting upon the experience, of telling, sharing, hearing.  The conversation changes.  Someone notices with regret that we didn't include the Yew tree.  We talk about the Yew tree for a while and I suggest that the group can make one.

Everyone lies in a ball on the floor.  Slowly they get up, and move in towards each other.  They twist their legs around each other to form a great big trunk.  Then they stretch their arms out, slowly, in all directions.  this forms a single large Yew.

I ask someone to find a poem about a Yew tree on their mobile phone, she finds one - by Sylvia Plath.  Group members take it in turn to read the poem, as the rest of the group forms the single tree.  This is done three times, each time the tree grows closer, legs more tightly tangles, arms finding smaller holes to stretch out through.  We form a hot damp knot of humans, all heartbeat and breathing.  there is some giggling, though this reduces over time.  

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As nature prepares for the long winter sleep, Konnektiv start to plan our next season of activity.  More changes are afoot.  Big changes.  It's going to be an interesting time.

 The Moon And The Yew Tree By Sylvia Plath

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to. 

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky --
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly bong out their names. 

The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness -
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes. 

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness - blackness and silence.

Secret Goings on and Photos from the Past

It's all gone a bit secret here at Konnektiv, because we are finally working exclusively and deliberately on The Machine, our streetside humanoid installation that will bring delight and wonderment to the heart of our dear town on September 7th, the date of Stafford Arts Festival.

We have been trawling the internet looking for interesting bargains to be had to embellish our costume.  We are seeking novel interesting and very economical ways to create the half machine half madness performance.
Also the fortune cards.  They will be very very special, and a wonderful thing to have, for anyone who has a spare £1 coin rattling around in their pocket.  It's not much to ask for such a thing of great beauty and magic.

As always, we incorporate many different art forms into our performance, here we have the drawn image (art), we have the art of sound (percussive, shrieking, hissing, general strangeness in a machine like way that explodes into a fireworks night of cacophony), we have movement, almost dancelike in it's ritual and precise display, then chaotic, clownish, bizzare, maybe a bit frightening.  (Grotesque laughter....).  And finally the art of the written word, as we draw on the souls of the six dimensions of time, to bring us the dreadful and wonderful predictions that will embellish our fantastic fortune cards.

And for now that is all.

Speaking of the six dimensions of time, here is a randomly produced photograph from our past, with a little story:

Here is the 3rd ever Konnektiv workshop.  Konnektiv started on 10th January 2011.  The members were Lauren, my mum, my daughter Sophie, and Sophie's then boyfriend, Josh.  Oh, and me of course.  The workshops were held at the Spiritualist church, which I was slightly apprehensive about initially.  In fact, the space ended up being lovely, and we had a really nice time there.  And it was free of charge, just what we needed as we had no money whatsoever.

Lots of time and events have gone by since those early days.  Many changes of venue, and a few different members (tho all those original ones stay in touch).  My mum was, and still is, living with cancer, other members of the group had their own health issues.  

From being a band of 5 people with a generously donated space once a week, we have now grown, we have several projects on the go, and currently meet 3 times a week. We provide dramatherapy and mental health awareness workshops for adults with mental health issues, drama for health for children and adolescents, as well as these, we produce performances, stories and generally fooling around in public places. Most excitingly, we are about to become the proud proprietors of a community hall in Doxey, Stafford.

There have been many changes in our group, and many more to come, watch this space ...

Konnektiv Drama: Group Juggling, group energy, sub groups

Konnektiv Drama: Group Juggling, group energy, sub groups: I love doing the group juggling.  It is a really good thing for us, as it brings out the side of our group that is playful, adventurous, a...

Group Juggling, group energy, sub groups

I love doing the group juggling.  It is a really good thing for us, as it brings out the side of our group that is playful, adventurous, and unpretentious.  I think that it would be fantastic to incorporate these into the routines we put together for The Machine.  Only one problem, at least half of our group can't throw or catch. 

But we can practice!

This is great  - a way to test the theory that anyone can do anything if they really want to, and another theory, that practice makes perfect...

Note to self - check that everyone in the group wants to be able to learn to throw and catch.

Also, just to be on the safe side, we will also invest our time into choreographing the physical movements of the machine, which is something that we are all already quite skilled at.  The actual period of the Machine Project starts next week, as we begin to rehearse at Gnosall Fire Station.  The group juggling isn't just a way for us to learn to throw and catch rings and clubs, it's mainly a way to bring about the important group complicite that will be essential for us to perform The Machine.  It's also very physical, and entails us using and developing our group energy. 

The Group Energy
This is something that the group produces and it is extremely important in performance.  We want to entertain, above all.  We want to attract audiences, and having attracted them, to hold their attention.  Initially, we attract audiences by our presentation, in the case of attending family festivals, this presentation it intended to be quirky and amusing. 

The Group Skill
Having attracted members of the public to watch us by having a quirky and amusing energy, we then need to keep them engaged in our performance.  This is where the skill factor comes in, and we need to really play to our strengths, using the tried and tested techniques in performance that we know look good.  However we also need to be constantly testing our personal boundaries, and making sure we don't get trapped in inhibiting comfort zones.  In this way we hone and develop our skills over time.

Sub Groups

Whilst we played with the juggling equipment in the park, we experimented with using sub groups.  That is three of us stood in the middle and juggled clubs, and four around the outside juggled rings.  This gave the impression of quite a complex whole, despite the fact that the individual subgroups weren't doing anything that complicated.  We did video this, but due to much hoop dropping, I've decided not to put the video onto the blog.

Watch this space - hopefully next week we will be able to show something.

Costume
Billie has started to think about putting costumes together.  We are on a tight budget, and so need to be economical.  Saying that, the costumes are a really important part of this performance, so we are really grateful that Billie has taken this on at this point, hopefully giving her time to come up with some really interesting steampunk/clockwork/automata styles.  I'm sure the rest of the group will all be helping her with ideas.

Promotion
Thanks also to Sara who is putting together a small sound byte each week or fortnight, in which as a group we describe a bit of what we are getting up to.  She will be sending this off to Stafford Radio in the hope that we get some promotional airplay.

Konnektiv Drama: Devising Stories at Home

Konnektiv Drama: Devising Stories at Home: Konnektiv Drama workshop – 17 th July 2013 Devising Stories Once again, konnektiv are ‘floating’.  The Performing Arts Centre is n...

Devising Stories at Home

Konnektiv Drama workshop – 17^th July 2013

Devising Stories

Once again, konnektiv are ‘floating’.  The Performing Arts Centre is no longer open to us, as it now the summer holidays.  Happily, unlike our previous experiences of having no workshop space, we feel reasonably safe in the knowledge that (strategic hiccups notwithstanding) we will have access to Doxey Community Centre from September.  

For the duration of the summer we have booked Gnosall Firestation up to 3 times per week, and so thankfully we are not actually homeless at this time.

However, this session, there was no venue, and so, we ended up devising stories in our Peel Street living room.  Fortunately the room is reasonably big.

Stories.  

Me and Merv devised a story last week in the Lake District, and told it to a bunch of friends around a midnight bonfire.  It went really well, everyone liked it.  It’s a story that wants to be retold, developed, and retold again.  We read the story again at yesterday's Konnektiv workshop.  It didn’t go quite so well.  It was ok, but seemed to lose something in the second impro. A lesson in not resting on one's laurels!

We explained how the story had been devised – simply from a couple of location based inspirations – old tumbledown stone cottages; being lost in the winding thinning roads atop the lake district hills (or are they mountains?); sat nav playing silly buggers, sending us the long way, changing its mind; a cow that roars to the morning sun, making a noise more like a dinosaur than a bovine creature.

All of these stimuli became features in our Lake District story.  Our group of friends recognised the features and through this identified with the story, engagement was high.  This was different with the second, Stafford reading, which was with a group that didn’t have the automatic engagement as the location was different.  Maybe a more thorough description of the scene would be useful, but then, maybe not…  people create their own images.

I think that we will be performing a story at the next Staffordshire Knot Storytelling club, (though I am not entirely convinced of this, having received mixed messages from the organisers.  Need to chase up!?)   The theme is going to be on Stafford folklore.  I have bought a book on this, which has lots of stories.  But Konnektiv are a group who devise to perform, rather than learn prewritten script.  And we didn’t want to tell a folk tale as such, rather, we wanted ours to be a ghost story.  However, like our Lake District story, and the folk stories in the book I have started to read, we wanted there to be a connection with actual reported facts, or gossip, or old wives tales.  Anything to tap into the local folk ‘zietgiest’.

We had been talking about this previously, and had decided that with Staffords history of ghosts, that this would be a good subject matter.  It has to be said that Stafford is not the most interesting place in the world.  It is extraordinarily ordinary.  Quite grey, but not too grey, that would be seen as extreme.  Just averagely grey.  Stafford.  But ghosts!  Wow, what a plethora of spooky sightings and goings on have been reported.  

Just the other week, my eldest daughter came home from work, with a story of a cleaner that had been found hysterical in one of the bedrooms of the Swan Hotel.  She had seen, it transpired, an apparition.  A man sitting in one of the rooms, who said to her the words “spit on the bible”.   

This was fantastic inspiration for us.  A quick internet search confirmed Stafford, our little town full of hanging baskets and litter free respectability, as a Very Haunted Town.  One of the most haunted spots, we discovered, is the Swan Hotel - this was built on the site of a Drowning Pond – used to put an end to people found guilty (or not) of witchcraft. 

Armed with these two facts, the group devised a plot.  It involved a priest with a dark, guilty secret, and a young girl accused of witchcraft.  It also involved the drowning pond, the witchfinder general, and the words “spit on the bible”.  Once the group had devised the basic plot (which I’m not describing in detail here, in case any of the blogs readers comes to the reading), I split the group into 3 pairs of readers. Here my creative input, apart from taking photographs, ended.  However, for the pairs of readers, the process had only just begun.  

Each pair had to work their own version of the story.  Adding detail, and, if they wished, changing detail.  

They didn’t have much time – 10 or 15 minutes.  After this each pair collaboratively performed their story.  Each story was engaging in detail and had some lovely moments of performance.  We got to see in less than an hour, how stories become adapted over time, sometimes with changes to detail, other times with great big structural changes to the whole tale.  The three stories, whilst similar in theme, could have been written in very different places, and under very different circumstances from each other, reflecting the variety of characters and interest of the people in the room.

Each story will be further developed, and at least one, maybe all, will be performed, at some point, at the storytelling club.

Another exciting development at Konnektiv Drama.

Workshopping our storytelling technique

Aim of the Session

The aim of this session was to work further on developing our improvisational story technique.  Last weekend, our debut Story Tent performances at Doxey Day was a great success, everyone enjoyed the sessions and we had lots of children being very creative.  However it did get a bit chaotic at the end, and we are not a group to rest on our laurels.  

There will always be learning experiences, and we can always improve the way that we perform the stories, and facilitate the engagement and  of the audience.  We have much to learn in terms of how to modulate the energy levels in the tent.  In addition to this, we need to remind ourselves of the methods of telling stories in an engaging way, to be as entertaining as possible, without seeming forced or stressed.

Energy Ball

We started the session with the energy ball.  This is an exercise that I have devised that is designed to focus our awareness and energies.  It is loosely based on a sort of yoga or tai chi exercise, and has a similar effect.  We have done this as a group several times, and after a comment from a group member about its usefulness, I will do this at the beginning of each session.  The group is becoming more familiar with the exercise, and as this occurs, the potency of it to facilitate a focused energy and state of calm alertness. 

I led the energy ball part of the session slightly differently to usual, when I do the actions as well as instruct the group.  This time, I just instructed the group without doing the movements myself.  This worked well in that I was able to watch how people did the movements and remind them of certain elements of style, however it was surprisingly difficult, given how many times I’ve done the movements, to remember precisely what to do, including when to breathe in and out, without actually doing it.

Once the group had run through the sequence once in this way,  I then joined in with the movement, and each person did it in their own time, some of us closing our eyes.  I find it useful to close my eyes, as it increases my ability to really concentrate on the physical sensations and movements.  We don’t all move together, but rather, on this run-through, each person absorbs themselves in their own movements and breathing.  I tell them it doesn’t matter if they don’t do it exactly right, and they can make up things if they forget what to do.  After all, I just made it up in the first place.

At the end of this element of the session we stood in silence for some time.  I felt reluctant to speak and break the silence, it felt very peaceful. 

Physical warm up – co-ordination, complicite, focus

In the physical warm up, we passed juggling rings around the circle.  Everybody had a ring, and passed this to the person to their right, at the same time, so the circle of rings passed around, creating their own circle, each exactly in time with the other.  There were five people in the circle, and each person was told to watch and follow the person two places ahead of them, and because of this, each person in the group was linked to another, and the whole circle was linked to itself, and the timing of the passing of the rings was very tight.  We played with it, passing the rings at low and high levels, and passing them flat, or turning them during the passing.  

I love the way a simple action, such as passing a juggling ring from one person to another, can become complex and visually interesting, by developing it in relatively basic ways, such as adding more people doing the same movement, carrying out the moment at different levels, and so on

Voice and story warm up – improvisation.

The first game was basically the group telling a story in a circle, one word at a time.  This was difficult, and generally a long, senseless sentence was produced.  However this was difficult enough, and so I decided not to enforce a rule in which the story had a beginning, middle and end, and made sense, however, in future weeks, this will be the ultimate aim.

In the second game, each person made a statement, but didn’t complete it, requiring another person in the group to complete it.  This time, we didn’t go round the circle, but each person came in to the story as soon as they had thought of something.  At first this worked really well, and we were snatching the story from each other, so great was our enthusiasm and energy.  

However as the stories went on, we got tired, and this really showed in the telling of the story.  The plot dragged on; more and more characters and twists were added, and eventually we just seemed to run out of steam with it.  

Watching this video, of the storytelling, I am aware of good storytelling techniques that were present in the improvisation.  There was good use of vocal intonation, displays of empathic reflection and the story was passed between the tellers rather smoothly.  However, the tiredness of the group shows, and this affects two elements of the telling.  First, and importantly, there are times when it doesn't really feel that the tellers are interested in their own story.  Improvising stories is very difficult - not only must the story flow, and appear very natural and easy in the telling, but it must be interesting, to both the teller and the listener.  Part of the problems of engagement in this session was the fact that tellers would bring in a detail that had nothing to do with the initial themes that the story contained.  Doing this is destructive to the process - engagement is lost because the listener doesn't know what they are listening to, the spell is broken. Using technique to sound like the story is interesting, is pointless, the story may end up sounding strained.  Two important lessons are learned:

1. Keep the threads of the story simple, you don't need more than 2 or 3 themes.
2. Keep it interesting.  To yourself as a narrator, and to the particular audience.

Keeping interested in the story, and telling it in a relaxed yet engaging style, are of utmost importance, and 

Entertainingly Emotional

We ended up with a game of expressing emotions and empathy in story style, which involved playful exaggeration, and a lightness of expression.  If expressed in this way, even emotions such as sadness or boredom, can be engaging.  This is important, because we want the audience to engage with the emotion contained in the story, without being personally

affected by it.  So being tired, is played by large, loud yawns and stretching, and falling asleep always involves loud snoring noised and maybe a bit of lip smacking.  In the game, one person expressed an emotion (e.g., I feel naughty), and the rest of the group had to reflect the emotion, displaying both empathy and engagement, creating a conversation in which some part of a story is played out.  

While we are doing the stories, each person does not merely have to tell part of the story, but they also have to be very engaged in what everyone else is telling.

Closing Reflections

There is a sense of positivity following the success of the Story Tent at Doxey Day, however we acknowledge that we still have much to learn.  Continually reflecting on our performances and techniques, and practicing new and used methods, we will reduce the likelihood of performances going awry, and increase our competency, meaning that over time, we give better shows for our audiences.

Impro Stories, and More Experimenting with Machine ideas

Last week we developed our technique for the story tent.  It was slightly different to how I had invisaged.

Orignally I had thought we would get all of the ideas for the development of the story at the start

 In the workshop we did things slightly differently.  The narrator would begin the story, and create the themes and characters as they went along.

Occasionally the role of narrator would change, with one person coming in to take over the storytelling role, leaving the previous teller with a choice to leave the performance area or to become incorporated into the story.  
This shows how much more confident we are becoming as performers, being able to spontaneously come up with ideas, and take over the storytelling role, without waiting for permission or having specific rules about how this is done.  
There is also a feeling of generosity in the group.  Very important, both in terms of taking over the narrative, as this involves a certain degree of risk, and in being able to give up the narrator role, or have one's ideas modified mid flow, without feeling that something has been taken away.

The pictures show how the stories unravelled - in one, four cities, each with a different characteristic, love, war, peace and sweets, end up in battle, over competition for the sweets.  Luckily love and peace win the day, and war learns a good lesson in sharing. 

In another, a poor apple tree with no blossom, a bumblebee and a golden eagle all make friends, and the golden eagle goes to find some magic potion with which to magically cure the apple tree.  The tree becomes full of blossom and gets many friends, and through this realises that his most important friends were those that loved him even when he had no blossom.

The themes are both ridiculous and archetypal, and the stories use original ideas and juxtapositions to basically retell traditional themes, such as journeys, quests, battle, morals, friendship, loyalty and so forth.



We hope that on the day, the audience give us lots of different themes for characters, settings and plots, and in practice, I'm sure that they will.  However should we get an audience who really have no ideas to feed and stimulate our narratives, after this session, I feel very confident that we will be able to come up with original and imaginative themes on demand.

There are many skills for us to develop - and each as important as each other.  First there is the skill of engaging with the audience.  The person who takes the first narration role will be initially responsible for this.  I think that the first few seconds of a performance are very important. If you get the attention and interest of the audience at this point, then they will be very friendly and much more accepting and appreciative of whatever turns up in the performance next.  This is also the time to put the audience at their ease, and to encourage them to become involved in the story, both as a contributor of ideas to the plot, and, for those very brave audience members, to take up roles and perform the story as it is told.  

Another skill is to be able to tell the story with a dynamic emotive energy.  This is especially challenging in that the narrator will be making the story up as he or she goes along.  Not just are they making it up, but they must put in all the details that the audience have mentioned, not missing anyone's idea out.  If they are really enjoying themselves, they can play with the audience and the actors, using the story as a tool to make people respond and behave in certain ways. This has great opportunities for comedy, which of course goes down very well in this style of performance. 

However we should also, I think, also use themes of tragedy, pathos, romance etc, because it is good practice for us, and will ensure a varying dynamic through each day of performances, which will be good for both us and the audience.

Another skill that we need is to be able to take up any character, and perform this physically, in response to the story as it is created. This should be really enjoyable, and certainly everyone in Konnektiv is very capable of this.  However our space on the day will be much smaller than our nice, roomy workshop space, and we have to be very careful, whilst being lively and energetic, not to squash each other or the audience.

Sensitivity needs to be used throughout.  Characters must compliment and fit each other, a subtle and important skill for us all.  I don't expect that all of the members of the group will be at any of the days that we have booked.  In addition to this, they will not be performing all of the time - especially if we have a great audience who all want to perform themselves!

Should it happen that we have more actors than we need for the performance, no-one will have wasted their time by turning up, as those of us who are not narrating or in role as characters, will be creating sound effects, or encouraging audience participation by calling (e.g., boo, hooray, gasps of surprise, shock, fear, etc), so no-one will be bored.

Now you may be wondering about the machine that I spoke so much about last week.  We are still devising this, and half of the session was spent physically improvising around our ideas for the machine.  The group used basic shapes such as circle and straight line.  These are not intended to be used in the actual performances, but are really so that we can get an idea of how it looks when a movement is sequentially overlapped between characters (have a look at the vid if that seems a bit confusing).

Due to lack of technical skills and an important cable, I havent' been able to put the video straight onto the blog this week, however thanks to Damon, they have been put onto Youtube, and here are the links.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peJ_r0WvkKM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=jehaR7aw9KY&feature=endscreen

If you have any comments or questions about anything that we are doing, please post them onto the blog, we'd love to hear from you.

Free Impro Rules!

This must be one of the most amazing Konnektiv sessions ever, and once again I am reminded of several things.  The learning process is quite incredible, and some of the deepest learning happens when we don't even know that we are doing it. 


We learned a way to juggle two balls and two hoops, as a group.  We realised towards the end of the 3/4 hour excersise, that we had not just learned to pass a ball and hoop in a certain way, but that we had learned something of our relationship to the rest of the group, and we hadn't even known that we were learning it.


I watched sometimes and sometimes I was in the thick of a dynamic, flowing improvisation that really seemed to take on a life of it's own at times.  I wonder what someone who isn't a member of the group would think if they saw us rehearse.  

Hopefully they would see the skill, the interactions, the energy, the friendliness and generosity, the ability to take risks.  We are now a very mature group.  The main danger is that we may, if not careful, get 'stuck' in certain roles.  It is normal that we have an 'improvisation character', though we ideally have several, that we can move between, because in free improvisation we can become entrenched in one form of expression, which is contrary to expectations, because of the variety of dynamics that is available.  It may be that it is just this variety that causes the entrenchment, as there is literally too much to choose from, and people tend to stick to the one that is familiar.  

This is hopefully assuaged by the giving of a theme.  In a sense, by giving structure, we may actually increase the available options, because there is a framework on which to hang our choices.

In this case, the structure is the machine.  We have worked with this theme in many ways, and have been through different ideas about how it will eventually be expressed in performance.  At first, the machine was very rigid and robotic. 
 Gradually it has become more human, and thus more interesting, both in terms of performing and watching.  The humanness of the machine requires us to be more observant of each other, and aware of the part that we play in the ever changing dynamics in presentation.  The whole is greater than the parts, but only if there is a homeostasis, that is all of the parts are in balance and there is a true synergy of expressions.  


Much of our rehearsals will not be about precise choreographed routines, or learning exact orders of events, but they will be around gaining an increased sensitivity and awareness of each other, and how we all work in relation to each other.  They will also be around play - a very important creative medium - play does two things, firstly it takes away the fear of being wrong - and we have sometimes to relearn this after years of trying to play by the rules, we now discover that we can play without rules.  This is safe.  

Of course there are some rules we choose to keep - we are respectful of each other, we are inclusive, non-judgemental, and open.  within these rules, we have a great amount of freedom.  The other good thing about play is that it makes it safe to work with themes that may be challenging - death, fear, the unknown, power, rivalry, and so forth.  We become familiar with what these themes mean to ourselves, and what they mean to the group, and we begin to feel that we have mastery over them.

Rhythm
Rhythm is of great importance.  From the rhythm of our heartbeats, our lungs, the seasons and the years, to the rhythm of our footsteps, synchopated by words, tears and laughter, the often conflicting rhythms of the ticking clocks that we try to live our lives by, and those of our emotional cycles, that we often try not to (but perhaps we should!).

Much of today was around creating rhythm.  When we start to use vocal sounds, our movements change, our movements take on a different life, and we at once increase the range of opportunities for expression before us.  This doesn't work for words, but with a small exception.  Short sentences can be used repeatedly to good effect 'she owns that'; 'these people are crazy'; are two of the phrases that were repeated over and over, to great effect.  

The rules of music apply - Repeated phrases, varying phrases, turn taking or vocalising as a group, with one breath.  The importance of indispersing variety and surprise with some predictabiltiy and repetition.


Movement
The dynamic of the movement has two main themes - firstly integration, when all of the group are integrated into the machine, there is a strong, predictable, regular rhythm.  
Parts may be doing things, but they will be in precise time with everything else, bringing about a balance of what the viewer sees and hears, and seeming very complete and satisfying.  The other theme is chaos.  The chaos is unpredictable and exciting, it will do unexpected things, it may be funny or frightening, it represents breaking down of order, and leads to the birth of a new expression.  Because when the chaotic energy subsides, the regular, mechanical rhythm returns, but the beat is rather different, bringing about a new expression.  As the needs of the group or the environment change, the new expression should be able to meet these needs better than the original one, which becomes ill fitting.

Prolonged predictability.
What happens when a rhythm is kept the same for a very long time?  Maybe it becomes boring, or maybe something else happens - a different state.  

There is something of the shamanic in this.  A very regular, repetitive set of sounds could be tedious in the extreme, but also could lead to entrancement.  What is it that decides whether we are bored or entranced?  Ourselves?  Our social situation?  Our environment?  The precise physical nature of the beat itself?  This is an interesting train of thought to me, and one that I might well return to at a future time!