The Makers of Theatre in time of political change

It's being really great to be part of this great learning process that is the StoneCrabs Young Directors programme (or should I call it The Makers of Theatre programme?).

It's proven to support my development immensely. All the sessions have been really practical and I could get many things from each of them. From the Boal Techniques with Teresa, Text analysis with Franko and Kwong and physical theatre with Jorge, I feel that I am starting to use most of these techniques and am having ideas on how to adapt to my own benefit.

I feel quite a long way away from being able to use physical theatre but I feel that there are simple ways of using it now. In the last session I saw a great result in making something abstract into something physical, such as a tennis ball that represents power and helps actors understand the power struggle within the scene. I, like Luce, also took notes of all the good ideas the others had when directing.

It's been really great to meet all of the other directors, actress and technician too. We get on really well and have been thinking of making The Makers of Theatre a fairly regular event in the future, discuss...

Now my big challenge is to cut a lot of the play that I'm directing and use all of these tools we've learned so far to make the best job I can. Never mind the cold weather, Obama's won and I feel empowered!

Victor x

The Makers Of Theatre's road trip to Soho Theatre

... And no, we haven't been commisioned to produce there ... yet!

But we had forgotten to mention that we will be attending a playreading today. We're hoping to learn from the performance in advance of our own readings this December.

StoneCrabs' Joint Artistic Director Kwong Loke will be directing wAve, by Sung Rno. It's part of Typhoon 5, the International East Asian Playreading Festival taking place at Soho Theatre until Saturday 8th November.

Kwong has been leading our text analysis workshops within the Theatre Training Programme. It will be interesting to see how he applies what he has taught us to enhance the performance. We are specifically interested in learning what to expect from a playreading with a similar rehearsal and running time to ours. Although we know Kwong has to deal with many more actors!

We are sure to have lots of questions about the rehearsal process by the time Saturday's workshop comes around. As a group we hope to see as many performances as possible, to learn from them and to encourage debate. So look out for comments on how what we see over the next five weeks might impact our own play-readings.

From all of the Makers Of Theatre x x x x x x x x x x x

Reflecting on Saturday's session

Hey All,

I agree with Luce that Saturday's session was very productive! It feels like such a long time ago but it has given me so much to think about before I go into rehearsals in about five weeks ... eek! Expect lots of calls for casting as we all try to find our actors for the festival : )

Working with Helen & Tyrone gave me a chance to re-test how I run rehearsals. I realised I spend a lot of time getting everyone to work as a team and making sure we all understand the text. I still believe this is hugely important but I hope to make the most of the casting sessions as well. The loveliest thing about the day was that everyone's approach was completly different. So I know each of our play-readings in December will be too.

On Wednesday we are meeting with a designer so I will let you all know how that goes! I'm sure our next venture will include a collaboration between director and designer. It will be interesting to find out how this works in practice.

I will also upload more images to the blog, so you all know who we are and can put a face/s to the name/s!

Em x