Using role and scene to discover moments of high dramatic tension

The second workshop exploring the Brothers Grimm Tale "The Fir Tree".

Present: Me, Merv, Bonnie, Chris

The Konnektiv plan is to create a shadow puppet theatre in which to show an artistic representation of the story, in a performance that will include the story read off a 45rpm record, that had been read by Boris Karloff.  The performance will also include dark soundscape by The Flesh Eating Foundation.

We are using drama to explore the story, because through our inprovisations, using scenes and characters mentioned within the text, we discover elements of personality and moments of dramatic tension, that we would not necessariy appreciate if we merely made up a storyboard based upon the text alone.


The process is everything in Konnektiv.  That includes long and thorough warm ups, that may take up a good half hour or more of the session.  Warm ups are very important.  You can do more in a shorter time following a good warm up than in a longer time following a rushed warm up.  Warm ups are for many reasons:
1. To warm the body, energise the muscles, and soften the joints
2.  To raise body awareness, heightening the sensations experienced when moving about the room, or contacting with self and other.
3.  To introduce different dynamics of movement - some light, some heavy, some fast, some slowly.
4.  to introduce different characteristics of movement - emotionally charged movement.
5.  To introduce the idea of different characters in context or relationship with each other.
5.  To release the creativity and expressivity of the actors.

Today's warm up was quite typical.  Highly energetic, experimental.  I aim to bring about a session that is as uninhibited as possible.  I join in the warm up, especially in the intial stages of a new group or project, for two reasons.  Firstly to reduce the self consciousness the new group feels if there is someone watching.  Secondly to model an approach to experimental physical drama that includes being able to take dramatic risks and produce a variety of interesting dynamics.

Ultimately the group will do these things quite well without me joining in, and I will get to observe the warm ups, and the group will get to practice dramatic movement with an audience.

The warm up itself has several levels of tension:
1.       An energetic "Follow the Leader", which goes on for some time, and with a gradually increasing energy - exhausting and enlivening in one.

2.        Each person makes their body into a big star shape, reaching for the corners of the room.  The stretch out and feel the heat of their flesh and their heart beat, which has been raised by the lively excersise previously engaged in.  The star shape in big and bold, it imbues on a feeling of confidence through being held.  The actor becomes more at one with their vital organs through acknowledgement of the activity of the heart.

3.       Gradually relax arms, feeling release as they drop and hands hang.  Tension is released.
4.     Finally, to aid balance and flexibility, we do some slowly moving stretches.

by now the group is well warmed up physically, and it is time to unleash the collective creative juices.  A game based on cauldron is used, but starting with sculpts.  Two people in statue pose, one is touched by a third.  The touched person leaves and the third assumes a sculpt that is in some way complementary to the one remaining.  After a while, The words "Action" and "Freeze" are used to bring the sculpt to life and return it to its statue pose.  Different positions, and different relationships assumed within the sculpt result in very different dynamics of movement, often vocal sound is used to emphasise the dynamic.  This occured naturally in this highly expressive group, but in a less confident group it would take a while for sound to be incorporated to the same level.  The photographs in this weeks blog are all of the sculpts produced in this part of the warm up.

Finally we get to working with the story, the theme of the moment.  It might seem a long winded way to get started, but by now the group is ready, warm, excited and primed for action.

We share memories of the last session, the different elements of the stories that were explores:

a.       Characteristics of tree (dissatisfied, searching, vain)

b.      Children (spoiled, competitive)

c.       Story (sad, moral tale)

d.      Situations (Christmas – different responses of tree, incredulous disbelief, some fear and vulnerability

e.      One painful situation to another

f.        The lack of appreciation of the tree for it’s original surroundings

We then listen, again, to part 1 of the story.  I want the group to listen actively, so I ask them to take on the role of saplings, being read to by a rather scary old granddad.

At the end there was silence for a while.  The saplings subdued and unnerved by the first half of the tale.  It is indeed a disturbing one.  The performance, we agree, will not be promoted to a child audience.

We only had time to create one scene, but this was an extremely powerful one, and incredibly painful to watch.

The scene was when the tree was felled by the woodcutter.  Introduction of characters through enrolment methods; the robin; the woodcutter and the father of the household who buys the tree. (the last character was not introduced by Hans Christian Anderson, but rather inferred in the story, and this is the sort of thing that gives us licence to explore beneath the ripples of the text.

 A imaginary scene is created, with chairs positioned to suggest a thick forest, and two placed together to suggest the woodcutters truck.  We gave the woodcutter human depth, forming impressions of his character and motivation by first improvising him talking about the tree to the housefather.   Woodcutter is a genial but wily businessman, making a decent living especially at Christmas.  Playing the vanity of the housefather by use of flattery and persuasion.  This appeals to the housefathers vanity, and the woodcutter is commissioned to cut this lovely tree down for the largest house in the area     The point of this is to give a back story to the cutting down of the tree.

The robin's character is further explored; inquisitive, chatty, fickle.  Loves to talk of the goings on in the big houses, decorated trees etc, the gossipy voice that feeds and nurtures the fir trees dissatisfaction with it’s life.  Then another aspect to the robin is revealed, as during the improvisation it realises a sadness when it's friend the tree is cut down.  This is typical of the kind of dramatic twist that makes good theatre.  From fluttering gossip to faltering bereaved in but a moment, tragedy at it's finest

.At the start of the scene painfully related events concur, which build tension;  the chattering of the robin, wittering on about the bright bauballs of Christmas, The full and lofy pride of the Fir Tree, and in the background, the sharpening of the axe by the woodcutter.

Build up of the tree as the finest young tree in the forest.  A tragic twist, as we observed in improvisation, the Fir Tree, who had been enrolled as very beautiful, healthy, proud and vain, is felled by the woodcutters newly sharpened axe.  In one blow the tree is transported to a place of incredible pain and greif.  It was difficult for me to watch, even though I now know the story so well, and expected what was going to happen.

After all of this dramatic tension, a thorough derolling is necessary.  As in this style of improvisational theatre, the actors give of themselves, and maybe give voice to elements of themselves that are usually silent.  This can be very beneficial, hence the use of improvisation in dramatherapy, however it does need to be managed, and this is done by the leader facilitating techniques used by the actors to dispel the drama and reintroduce the 'real world' to the room.

The final part of the session, and running out of time as we were, we looked at some images that Merv had collected from the internet to demonstrate his vision for the set and puppets, and to inspire our creativity.  There were images of Victorian children, trees, christmas decorations and fireplaces, which will inspire the setting, and of German black and white expressionist cinema, which will inspire the style of presentation,

finally, we decided that we can't take enough time out of the drama sessions to spend on the buildng of set and puppets, so we will have 2 workshops each week, one for drama (Wed eve) and the other for set/puppet design and building (Fri 4pm)

Beginning Shadow Puppets

4^th March 2015

Konnektiv Shadow Puppet Workshop (1)

Present: Nicky Barron, Mervyn Price, Chris Frid, Julianne

Starting a new project is very exciting.  Albeit it is the second attempt at starting this particular new project.  And this is it.  A shadow puppet and dark noise production of The Little Fir Tree.

Story written by Hans Christian Andersson

Read by Boris Karloff and recorded onto 45 vinyl

Shadow puppets by Konnektiv Drama

Dark noise by The Flesh Eating Foundation.

That’s quite a collaboration that I for one am very proud to be part of.  Obviously Hans and Boris didn’t get much choice, but I like to think if they were here they wouldn’t mind too much.

The point of this blog is to describe the dramatic processes that we embark on when devising the puppetry element of the production.

You may ask why we have to use physical drama to devise a puppet show. 

Well the answer is this: Physical Drama has the power to reveal elements within a story that might otherwise slip by unnoticed.  These elements, when fed into the creation of the puppets and the puppet theatre, will ensure that the final outcome of the piece will be a true work of art with depth, authenticity and truth.

So how do we do this?

The session has drama elements and art elements, the two feed into each other. 

Physical warm ups are essential to start, in terms of people being centred and present in their bodies.  The warm ups have to have elements of

1.      Focus and center

2.      Experience of moving and changing the movements (still – body awareness and range of movement)

3.      Experience of travelling around the room in different ways (raising the cardiovascular system, exploring dynamics of movement)

4.      Experimenting with shape (creativity)

5.      Physically connecting the group (cohesion)

In parts 4 and 5 I entered a task in which I told the group to make shapes on different levels, 1 being lying on the floor, 2 being crouched in some way or kneeling and 3 being standing up straight and maybe reaching.  I would say each number in turn and each group member had to think of a shape at that level.  In part 5 I said that the 3 shapes had to connect, and at this point especially, the group started to grow in cohesion, and the stories told by the shapes became shared and the shapes, visually, very interesting.

At the end of this everyone was lying on the floor and I instructed the each person in the group to find a comfortable position, as I was to play the first part of the story.  I said that each person should listen actively by creating a two tone image in their mind, visualising the story.  I also asked them to be very aware to how their (by now very warmed up) body was responding to the story.

At the end, whilst getting out the art table, I asked each group member to silently reflect on their experience of listening to the story, and decide which scene had the most valence for them.  After this, each person drew an image of the most valent scene, in a single colour, on a plain sheet of paper.  I told them to choose the colour and the paper.

Each scene was discussed in turn, with each artist.  Different elements of the image were discussed, and the main point of the scene was highlighted.

Finally, each person got the opportunity to create and lead in their own scene.  By now, each scene had become really well developed, and some of the characteristics and motivations of each character had been teased out.  I used different techniques to help each person enrol into their character.  There are in fact a myriad number of enrolment techniques, and the one I use will depend on the requirements of that particular moment in the scene.  I will often say “Give three feelings” or “Tell me three characteristics” of the character.  We may spend a little while playing with the idea of who the character is and what they want, fear, or think.  This will often raise the energy of the scene, heightening the moment and the experience of the actor.  Other actors in the scene need to interact in some way with the lead person, to give a sense of shared purpose.  The will also have names, characteristics, motivations.  It all takes quite a while. 

By the end, we have uncovered, discovered, or created much more detail into the scenes that we started with.  It is always a surprise and a joy to see what there is to find hidden in elements of a story through these explorations, using the creativity and expressive skills of the actors.

And of course the actors may well find hidden elements in themselves while they are at it.

I had planned following this part of the session, to make our first trial puppets.  However we ran out of time and the session needed to end at this point.  Merv did give us a little talk about how we will go about creating the final puppets and of course very importantly, the Shadow Puppet Theatre itself.