LAB 2 – Waste

Sunday 12 October 2008

We discovered today that Waste is such a fantastic play for generating debate and discussion. We talked lots – about the following – and more:

- What does it mean to be a man / woman today?
- Abortion – does a woman have the right to choose?
- Politics – what concerns us politically today?

We began the day by celebrating the name, but instead of using our own names, we used the names of the characters that we created in LAB 1. Again – some interesting poems were generated. Please share them with us!

We then had a lengthy discussion about what people like / didn’t like / got out of seeing Waste. There were only 3 people in the group who didn’t manage to see the play and so they took part in an exercise where they were asked to rearrange the plot headlines in chronological order.

We then read selected excerpts from the play – the two scenes between Amy O’Connell and Henry Trebell – and then discussed the scenes before creating a Jerry Springer-style performance entitled, A Woman’s Right to Choose. Using Amy and Henry’s story as a starting point, participants were encouraged to bring on fictional characters to represent opposing view points. Again, this fuelled a powerful debate.

After lunch, we talked briefly about Henry Trebell’s political beliefs. He was an independent politician proposing a radical bill to disestablish the church. But he also passionately believed in educational reform – and giving power to the children. As a group, we talked about what concerned us politically, before dividing into pairs and deciding on a political issue to discuss further. Rather than performing the discussion in a naturalistic way, participants were asked to present their discussion using a power line – taking a step forward if their point was poignant and made an impact, and backwards if not – forcing the actors to actually think about the affect of what they were saying on their partner.

Finally, we worked on a whole group physical/rhythmic exercise called Transformations. Half the group represented a man / woman from the early 1900s and the other half from the present day. They then created 5 frozen images to represent a day in the life of their character – morning, mid-morning, lunch, afternoon and evening. They then transformed from image to image over 10 beats, 5 beats and then 1 beat.

All in all, it was a busy and productive day. Be sure to share your thoughts / opinions with each other on the BLOG…