Improvisation

Our director made the choice to make the second section of our performance improvisation based. We learnt an exercise called physical riffing. We are going to use this in our performance. We began this by forming a circle and starting a continuous clapping, step beat. Then someone would begin a movement in the center  The idea was to explore different types of movement until they found something which maybe felt dynamic or interesting to watch or maybe had some kind of emotional connection visible to an audience. People began moving on their own then we developed the exercise to have more then one person in the center.

The clapping in the exercise worked as a way of encouraging people in the middle to keep exploring and to not feel embarrassed or alone. When people were in the middle they often closed their eyes. From what I saw I felt like when they did this they really let go and discovered something interesting in themselves. This may have been because they weren't concentrating on how they looked but more on how the movement felt. It was difficult to watch people when they felt self conscious because there was no reason to be. I felt this most when we were told to stop clapping and people had to move without us. This meant they didn't have a beat to work with or a support system.

We are going to use this in our performance by standing in two lines opposite the person/people in the middle, and allowing the physical riffing to happen in the middle. We will continue this for around 8 minutes, but it could be any amount of time depending on how well it is working. From this we are going to going into emotional flocking which we did a few weeks ago. As well as this we will be telling a short story of something that happened to us, then picking out the key words and combining it with an action, then again but just with an action and sounds. Then we will all speak about something we are passionate about.