THE DRAMA WORKSHOP

THE DRAMA WORKSHOP

We are writing this message to tell you what we liked and didn’t like about the workshop that we did with Andrew Wilson, on 17th March.
First, we liked the warming-up and the game of the mirror in English since we are used to doing it in French : it was very different.
A thing that we are not used to doing is the still pictures, which was easy and funny, especially at the end when we came all to the middle of the stage to form a huge frozen scene.
The next exercise was more challenging. It was not easy to improvise a theatre scene, especially in English, although it was very funny : finding the vocabulary, doing gestures in relation with the scene. We would have liked to have fewer warming-up activities and more improvisations, but we really learnt some vocabulary.
On the whole, the workshop developed our imagination, our actors’ talents.

Maxime and Lauriane

Andrew proposed different physical exercises. We warmed up our voices, shoulders, heads… We played the mirror game, which was funny and entertaining. The still pictures were very difficult because we needed to improvise, knowing that we have no imagination of the whole. Then we really had to improvise on scenes from Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime.

We liked the physical exercise “Ping Pong” because it was energetic and it was a great idea. We enjoyed to keep contact with just a finger. The most challenging exercise was the mirror game and the easiest was the “Ping Pong”. We liked Andrew’s imagination because he proposed many exercises and gave us lots of advice to help us act. He had good ideas to explain the English words we didn’t understand … We learned English by playing. Generally, we loved the whole theatre workshop, and we would like to do it again one day.
It was very nice.

Feth-Allah and Coralie.

Drama workshop with Andrew Wilson – 17th March 2010. Follow-up Work

We really loved the work we did with Andrew.
It made us laugh a lot. Before the meeting we told ourselves we would not understand what he was going to say but eventually, with the signs he was making we understood everything. It gave us much pleasure to spend almost a morning with him. We particularly loved his funny warming up exercises, the funniest exercise was the one when we had to propose to someone, the ones we liked most were when we worked in groups but we didn’t really like when we had to speak in front of everybody . In any case, it gave us great pleasure.
We really had fun.

Sara et Morgane

The workshop

First, to put us into the right mood for the workshop, Andrew suggested singing a song about a ping pong ball. When he said “ping” a part of us jumped and when he said “pong”, the other part jumped. It was surprising and it relaxed everybody.
After that, we did little improvisations on the play. We were free in our interpretation. Someone played Lord Arthur or Lane, and others Sybil. We had fun but it wasn’t easy.
Though the workshop was about the play, we did still pictures of other subjects.
One pupil went in the middle of the stage and he froze ; then another came, did something and froze too. At the end, everybody was on the stage. This exercise was the best because it was so funny. We were in a good state of mind.
Finally, we learned not to be shy, to dare to express ourselves, to do improvisations and to listen to the others. We thank Andrew because his workshop appealed to us and taught us aspects of an actor’s job too.

Fanny and Perrine.