Aurelian Workshop: Extracting the Sweetness
INTRODUCTION: (5 minutes)
Aurelian Creative Artist Genevieve Trace has mastered the art of extracting stories from the locals of her sugarcane farming home town in the Burdekin district to create a contemporary performance piece that is bittersweet & evocative. This workshop aims to equip teachers with a range of approaches to assist their students to engage with the styles of Community & Verbatim Theatre, while incorporating Contemporary & Post Modern conventions & dramatic techniques.
WARM UP: (5 minutes)
Shelter, Survivor, Cyclone
- There needs to be groups of 3 with one person spare (workshop leader may need to participate)
- 2 people create a 'shelter' around one person by joining hands in a circle around them. They are the 'shelter'
- 1 person stands in the middle. They are the 'survivor'
- When 'shelter' is called the 2 people need to raise their arms but remain connected & move throughout the space to find a new 'survivor' to protect (they bring their arms over the person & create a new circle with an individual in the middle)
- When 'survivor' is called that person must duck from the cover of their 'shelter' & find a new one
- When 'cyclone' is called all previous roles are cancelled & participants must form new groups of 3. They can fulfil either of the 2 roles, regardless of the role they previously fulfilled
- The aim is to not be the extra person who is NOT a survivor or a shelter. It is this person who gives the verbal cues for the participants
PHASE 1: (20 minutes)
Pictures of You - Entry points to Stories
- Explain that a Q&A approach is not always the best way to gain access to someone's most intriguing stories; pictures can tell a thousand words.
- Show an extract of the TV Show 'Pictures of You' where Anh Do (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNI6aRwXFwY) is interviewed using selected pictures from his past. Explain that subjects for verbatim interviews can always be asked to bring photos from their past as a stimulus for the interview
-Engaging images - participants are to work in small groups using the large black & white images created to create possibilities for what stories may emerge from some seemingly mundane or pedestrian photos. Select one & share with the group. The focus here is on the beauty & dramatic potential on the often seemingly 'small' stories.
PHASE 2: (20 minutes)
Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies - The Art of Storytelling
- Participants are to pair up & select one true story from their past (it can be funny or light-hearted!) & to share it with their partner. Their partner is then to retell the story back to them. Repeat for the other person.
- Pairs are then to select their own OR their partner's story to retell. Both then retell the SAME story without telling other participants. The group are to guess whose story it is.
- This is used to identify key acting techniques required when delivering another's story authentically: eye contact, audience engagement, sincerity of vocal & facial expression, genuine emotional attachment, reflective in style & eyesight lines.
PHASE 3: (20 minutes)
The words, the rituals
- Using an audio extract of an interview about the Brisbane 2011 Floods, participants will reflect on key interviewing techniques utilised by the ABC Radio Journalist: open ended questions, pursuing a lead in a story, capitalising on opportunities for detail & when to change tactic or path
- Participants are to work in small groups & to take one audio grab they relates to a ritual that could be workshopped in the space to bring the story to life. The focus is on using both abstract & literal representations of the ritual as well as aspects of ritual drama (eg. chorus, canon, symbol, repetition, motif, call & response) to contextualise the story & recreate the moment & the mood of the story. -Participants are to select key phrases or extracts from the interview (the transcript will be provided) to include for vocal delivery throughout this ritual as well as one audio grab to be included during this - this really allows the audience to connect with the truth of the story & the reality of the 'character'
OTHER ENTRY POINTS: (5 minutes)
Other ways to gain access to an interviewee’s personal memories & stories without using the traditional Q&A approach include:
Objects - ask the interviewee to bring an object of significance to them to talk about
Senses - walk the interviewee through favourite or memorable sensory moments in their past to unlock a wider range of experiences
Key phrases - provide a series of leading statements to guide their sharing & avoid cloze responses, eg. My most embarrassing moment was when...
Idiosyncrasies - do they have a habit? Get them to demonstrate & to share where, when & why it developed.
RESOURCES TO USE IN CLASS: (5 minutes)
‘Verbatim: Staging Memory and Community’ (Currency Press), Pictures of You (Channel 7, any episodes, many available on youtube), any interviews by Michael Parkinson or Andrew Denton, Playscripts: ‘Embers’, ‘Aftershocks’, ‘April's Fool’, ‘Snapshots from Home’, ‘Minefields & Miniskirts’, ‘Parramatta Girls’, ‘The Modern International Dead’ & ‘Cribbie’, ‘The Laramie Project’, Roslyn Oades & her work on Headphone Verbatim, namely 'I'm Your Man' & 'Stories of Love & Hate' with Belvoir Theatre, 'Aurelian' Resource
CONCLUSION: (10 minutes)
How to apply the 'Aurelian' Resource in class or a unit of work:
- View as an example of Verbatim, Community, Post-Modern, Contemporary Theatre or the one-person show style for Responding work or as an example of the Presenting or Forming skills involved
- Use the interviews or show 'script' with the creatives in a Forming task to analyse the dramatic choices made in the devising process
- Use extracts of the interview transcripts to play with creating or performing Verbatim scripts
- Use as a model for the Presenting skills required in this style of theatre
- Time for Questions
Transcript of Radio Interview:
RF: Well, surreal is the word we’ve heard used to describe the situation in Brisbane today. It’s a sunny day, but locals have had to prepare & then watch & wait as that first flood peak hit. We have just heard that uh, the first peak has come through & I understand from ABC News 24 they’re expecting a second peak around 4am tomorrow. Annette Head is a Brisbane High School Drama Teacher who lives in the inner city. G’day there Annette.
AH: Hi Rachel.
RF: Look I know that you don’t live on the ground floor, but just how close to the river are you?
AH: Oh, we’re probably only 100 meters away from the Brisbane River & um, we’re already starting to see it creeping up our street.
RF: What’s it been like today?
AH: Um I think you used the perfect word earlier, it’s been surreal. It’s the first sunny, rain free day we’ve had in a long time so it’s hard to believe that we’re about to be inundated by the floods when we’re sitting here feeling like we should be out at the beach so it really is like that saying, ‘the calm before the storm’. We’ve had to make preparations & in the sunshine be putting sandbags out & um, preparing for what we can only really believe because of I guess ah, the photos & what, what we’re being told.
RF: Hmm…what is the mood like?
AH: It’s, it’s really mixed, um, there’s been so many people getting out to come & help so there’s a real sense of community. SES have apparently had to turn away volunteers which is great. Um, but there’s also been that sense of um, it being a tourist spectacle. We’ve seen people walking up & down our street with their phones filming the sandbags, um a lot of people on social networking sites are ah, uploading pictures of the flood sights so it’s, it’s that mix of that, um, as I said that tourist spectacle, with that community getting in um & getting to help which is really nice.
RF: Annette Head’s on the line she’s in a riverside suburb in Brisbane. Annette, you’re a teacher, the school year I don’t think has started for you yet but I understand your husband Kerrard can’t get to work in the city. Is there a sense of feeling a bit impotent as, as you wait &, & can’t really do anything about what’s coming?
AH: Oh absolutely, I mean, um, as you said people who can’t go into work they can’t be in there helping out, we’re being told to stay in our homes where possible. Um, some local police & SES people are going around & knocking doors as you said on ground level apartments, but other than that um, we’ve had so many offers from friends & family to help, but we feel really quite helpless ourselves, we really are just playing the waiting game to, to see what happens & ensuring that people in worse off areas know that we’ll do what we can, but, um again, from, from afar it’s very little. Um, as long as we’re off the roads, um. & we have no power now so we’re, we’re limited in that way too.
RF: & I guess that means phone batteries & all the rest of it will start to run out?
AH: Absolutely, this’ll probably be um, my last phone conversation for the day, so, ha, ha, you’re very lucky. But, we just um, are, trying to keep you know, one of the phone batteries, ah, one of the phones in the house available should we need to, to contact somebody, but I believe that local phone lines have been down since this time yesterday anyway.
RF: & where have you put all the stuff from your fridge & all your supplies?
AH: Uh, we did make a, a quick trip out this morning & got some eskies so the laundry tub, um, sorry some ice, so the laundry tub & the esky are full & um obviously we’ve just had to, to sacrifice some things &, & hold on to those staples. It’s not really something we’ve had to think about before, so it’s all a learning curve for us. Um, we weren’t around when the um ’74 floods were on so it’s all new & um a big unknown quantity.
RF: Less camembert & more tins of baked beans.
AH: That’s it, we definitely have the baked beans, sadly, the camembert has gone. Ha, ha, ha.
RF: Ha, ha, ha, well look, ah, we are thinking of you & we wish you the best. Thanks so much for taking the time & the phone battery to update us here in the West.
AH: Ha ha, not a problem Rachel.
RF: Take care.
AH: Thank you.
RF: Annette Head there from uh, ground zero, I guess, where the floods are all happening.