Emotional flocking

How to do emotional flocking

The first level of this you can begin in a circle. One leader begins an emotion or noise, like crying. Everyone else picks up on this emotion and mimics it. The leader can choose when to change to emotion or story. You do not need to remain in the circle. As you develop and make it more complex you do not have to have one person leading but you can allow anyone who wants to start something new. It works best when everyone commits 100% to whatever is happening in the space. 

Level 1

At this stage we just mimicked and reacted to one persons decisions. So if they started crying so would we. You could pick up on the energy in the room without having to look at the person directly. This worked well as everyone committed themselves so what was happening. This meant I didn't feel self conscious of what I looked like or if what I was doing made sense. As an actor is was an enjoyable experience. I felt like I had the chance to go crazy on stage, which is often hard to do. It meant we had the chance to push our sound and emotional and see what happened. It was like an experiment of ourselves. It felt like this could be used as a tool to begin devising some work. The only issue was that the emotion we were showing was fake. We were simply copying one persons ideas and there was no personal connection for each of us. In this sense any performance we created from this would be shallow and have no depth to it. 

Level 2

Instead of just copying and mimicking fake emotion we had to tie in our own emotion to what was happen. Also, we didn't have any one leader, if somebody felt to start something they could. This was difficult because it meant that instead of copying we had to think through why we would find something disgusting, or why we were sad. If you were to use this version of it to create work it would be a much more emotionally effective piece. This version worked as well as the last because everyone still committed to what they were doing. When we did it more of a story began to emerge. Rather than random emotions, people had purpose with what they were doing. At one point somebody started banging on the walls, asking for help as though they were trapped. Everyone picked up on this. Even though we had copied or used someone else's idea it felt like everyone still had their own internal thought process behind what they were doing. We were told that we needed to try and trick ourselves into finding something scary, or disgusting, as a way of developing our own emotional connection. This was a helpful way of working through it but it was quite challenging. The ability to do this will help me to adapt to many situations within plays. 

What does it take to do it well

You have to commit fully to the process. If everyone does this then nobody feels self conscious of what they are doing and are more likely to push themselves. For this to be effective you need to be able to find your own emotional connection to what you are doing. You must allow a story to develop. As this is an improvisation based activity it is important you say yes to everything that happens and not block anyone. Let yourself react honestly, think about your own emotions within the space. This will allow real emotional depth and will mean that if an audience were to watch they would be able to connect with it as well. 

How does it benefit actors?

It can be used as a devising technique. You can begin to develop a story from it which could be interesting to watch. It allows you to work through situations reacting honestly within your company. I felt it helped working through it today as it was our first session with a new group. It started to build up a respectful relationship between everyone in our class. The same logic could be used within a theatre company. It really gave me the chance to express emotion. It can allow you to remember how to let go onstage and push the limits of your emotional expressiveness.