New Landscapes Week 2 – Acrobatics and Archetypes

Afternoon all! It’s been a fun second week with Coventry University 2nd year theatre students. We’ve been getting stuck into the physical side of outdoor performance, visiting basic and intermediate acrobatics and acro-balance, then looking at developing archetypes and stereotypes. The acro sessions, as always, were good fun with many people wanting to experiment and push boundaries. Already plenty of good rolls, cartwheels and handstands to show for it and I’m looking forward to see what comes together for the big acro piece at the start of the show! In the following session with each group they presented their scratch pieces that was assigned to them last week. The outcome was very exciting: 8 great short pieces of theatre with so much potential for an outdoor spectacle. Now that their parameters have been extended and they know these will be their pieces to present in the show I’m curious to see how they utilise the playing space and the audience. Then after a singing refresher we moved on to a technique that has had many names and the practitioner who taught it to me called it ‘The Ministry of Silly Walks’, reminiscent of the Monty Python sketches. I used this technique to develop […]

New Landscapes @ Coventry University

How’s it going all! So this week marked the first week of The Fabularium’s project with Coventry University Theatre and Professional Practice second year students in their outdoor performance module ‘New Landscapes’. For the first three weeks it’ll be just myself with course leader (and Fabularium Associate Director) Glenn Noble while Gareth is away working on another production, but then he’ll join in the mix and we can see how things take shape! We’re currently running skills sessions with 53 students and providing them with the styles, techniques and exercises to help develop and create a piece fit for high primary school age that is suitable for outdoor performance (in this context the specifics are no tech support). In smaller groups they’ve been given a story to adapt into a 5-minute scratch piece ready for next week, which is the beginning of development for the main piece that will be presented at the end of May/start of June.   The show will be titled: Cautionary Tales…for children considering ill-behavior! If you’re unfamiliar with them then give it a Google, some very entertaining stories. (Such as Hoffman, Belloc, Grimm and Busch). I’ve really enjoyed my first week, they’re a good bunch and willing to work, […]