Third day of rehearsals for From Scraps and today we have had a “mountainous” day, lots of ups and downs and sometimes a little unstable. We started with treading on each other’s feet, and other nonsensical warm up games. After this we really started to develop the specific movement language of Grandpa. Yesterday we touched on this, however today we really focused in on detail and separating the puppeteers body from the puppet.
After making headway with this and getting very tried arms we started to improvise around some concepts of scenes we had ideas for. At this point the some rocks started to give way and we fell into a shallow pothole.
Wielding the axe of storyboarding we climbed out of this and started the slightly scary but important activity of looking at plot and story. Storyboarding allowed us to make sense of the material and find gaps for material to fill. After multiple coloured pens, many sheets of paper we settled on a rough outline that we were all happy with or so we thought… At this point the landslide happened, we crashed into a deep pit unproductiveness. We tried hauling ourselves out with improvisation games and various conversations about all kinds of elements of the show. Things were not running smoothly…
But then a little light appeared at the top of the pit, and a mysterious glowing rope lowered itself down in the form of a free writing exercise. After 10mins of all of us free writing and metaphorically climbing we burst into the crisp clear air on a peak of the mountainous range. We found a structure that worked, introduced 2 clowning puppeteers that shared a consciousness with our protagonist Maggie. Improvisation flowed as we played with this relationship, creating images and an opening that worked and lent itself to lots of possibility.
Still a long way to go to complete our journey, but positive feelings in the camp right now!
Unexpected Places 