Workshop 6 - The Whole Year Piece

For this section we created a piece, that was later cut, that saw all seventy five of us simultaneously reacting to one stimulus. The idea was that we would instinctively, as a whole, react to an unknown stimulus question. However this was later adapt to asking one person and the rest of us instinctively following them. 

To work instinctively we were asked not to think about what we were doing and just do which often resulted in physical movement that bridged on being unsafe, suggesting that although needing to not think there does need to be an awareness of your surroundings and the people around. I felt that with this element of danger and the hard extremes people were pushing themselves, it mirrored Artaud's ideas of "cost of the actor". I personally found myself getting incredibly tired afterwards and found that the more tired I became, the more instinctively I started to work as I couldn't be bothered to use my brain. It made my movements and reactions almost animalistic which I feel for an audience is much more appealing to watch as it appears natural.

I found that to begin I struggled to fully commit and work instinctively, but as soon as I began to relax responding to what the others were doing I stopped thinking and didn't fully remember what I did whilst we attempted it. I then really enjoyed it, feeling that I could truly express myself because I didn't have any worries about being self conscious and that I wasn't thinking. I also felt that some people tried to force an idea or movement on the rest of us, suggesting that we weren't all working as a team and not doing it for the audiences but for themselves because it didn't appear naturally. 

At the beginning I found it was interesting as we all reacted as one to the different questions as it challenged us to become in-tuned with everyone else, which is incredibly useful within theatre. I also noticed how everyone, including myself, struggled not to be selfish and react how we please, as it progressed learning that we needed to react as a whole, almost waiting for the whole group's decision.