LAB 1 - Kicking a Dead Horse

Sunday 21 September 2008

Today was the first LAB session and an opportunity for the creative team and participants to meet for the first time.

We began the day by doing some exercises on group dynamics - this was the first time that many of the participants had worked together, so it was important to encourage a sense of camaraderie and team work.

All participants also took part in a Celebrate the Name exercise. In pairs, participants told each other everything they knew about their own names. They then went away and wrote a poem to celebrate their partner’s name.

We then went on to focus on the idea of gathering yourself up. Participants were asked to invent a scenario where they were leaving something behind. Where were they going? What were they taking? What part of them were they leaving behind? And what part of them were they taking?

Participants were then introduced to the character of Hobart Struther – an American man in his mid-60s, described as an, “Urban Businessman,” who, “suddenly decided to rough it.” He is tired and frustrated. With every new characteristic, participants adapted their physicality accordingly. They were then each given one of his lines to perform.

After lunch, we read and discussed the play. Some of the ideas that interested the participants / questions that arose included:
-The significance of setting – do we change to fit our surroundings or do our surroundings change us?
-What was the significance of the woman? Was she real or part of his imagination? Was it his wife, cleaning up after him?
-The ideal verses reality
-The Quest – the notion that the grass is always greener on the other side
-The impression of time – the heightened, dream world that he inhabited
-The clichés – deader than dirt, sick puppy etc
-The language (this sparked a debate about the use of obscenities in writing)
-The cartoon feel of the piece
-The fact that it is as if Hobart knows he has been written
-Everything that meant anything went into the hole, so it was inevitable that he would end up in it too
-The significance of material objects – do they equal happiness?
-The pursuit of happiness
-Loneliness
-Finding peace in the end.

Next we revisited the earlier characters from the gathering yourself up exercise, and asked a series of questions, ranging from the physical to the emotional; the daily to the psychological, to help gain a deeper insight into the characters that the participants had invented. From this, participants went on to write their own internal duologues for their characters, written at the point at which they were about to leave their old life behind. What dilemmas or pull in opposing directions were you facing? We shared these with one another and spent the remainder of the session discussing the day, and Tanya gave the group a series of questions to consider. These include:

1. What does 'authenticity' mean to you?

2. Are you afraid of death?

3. When and where do you feel most lonely?

4. Who or what is the 'dead horse' in your life?

5. What's your version of 'Kicking a Dead Horse'?

6. Write your own versions of 'Not my cup of meat' - where a well-known phrase is slightly twisted in an unexpected way. It doesn't matter how contemporary the phrase is, and the more phrases the merrier.

7. Write a list of food you might take with you on your journey. This can be from the perspective of the character you were working with on Sunday. E.g. Hobart's beans, jerky, trail-mix, plenty of water, m& m's...

PLEASE, PLEASE SHARE YOUR RESPONSES ON THE BLOG. WE’D LOVE YOU TO POST YOUR NAME POEMS TOO, AS WELL AS MINI BIOGS OF YOUR CHARACTERS… OR ANY OTHER COMMENTS THAT YOU HAVE…