Drama Cousework – Improvisation

In the double period on Monday 1st of October. Our Class had an improvisation workshop of written text. The text was a poem from Norman Maccaig called Old Highland Woman. We were to do different tasks in the workshop, which were the following:

As a single person we had to pretend that we were an old lady in a room,
In threes, we were told to make two neighbours call and check on the old lady,
A scene which was set 20 years before,
A scene that was set when the old lady was 20, we were to do this in fours.

Old lady in a room

There was several part to this excersise,

Pretend to be an old women,
What I could see out of the window,
What is around me,
What I am sitting on.
Where the house is situated.

I thought that I was good at pretending to be an old women, I thought that it was comfortable sitting by the fire, it was nice and warm. The big chair that I was sitting on was very conforatable, I had bought it a few weeks ago in an atigue shop becuase it was so comfortable.

The Neighbours

This is a preview of the whole essay

The Neighbours

There were to be 2 neighbours that were to come and visit my, The old Woman. We decide that the neighbours should be new neighbours that have come round to say hi to me, their new neighbour. I thought that this was a good idea, but what actually happened I thought was bad. In the end the two new neighbours ended up being thugs that were to eventually take all of my work, I thought that this was a bad idea because this is happening on TV all the time. I thought that we were just copying the TV.

The old woman 20 years before

Our group decide to do a funeral of the old woman husband. This was a good idea; I thought that this was the only good idea that our groups of three had thought off. I was a bit appointment when one of the people in our group started to muck about when we were doing a real rehearsal. What we did was the following:

Decide who was who, I was the old woman. I liked being the old woman
Assign ourselves position on stage, I was next to my son in from of the grave. This idea was not unique but I like it, this was because it was original. It was a quality moment between the son and the old woman.
The priest said the final words and then the old woman and here son said a pray. I thought that this was a bit to much this was copying the movie and the programs on TV too much. I don’t this that because we were has a funeral we were copying the TV, this is because funerals happen all of the time.

The old lady when she was 20

We were asked to make a piece when the old lady was 20. Back in the old day’s people got married a lot early then nowadays so our new group of 4 decide to do the following:

Make the young lady fall in love
The young lady took here boyfriend to here parents house
Show the audience that the parents did not like the boyfriend
The young lady decide to move away the countryside with here boyfriend

This was the section of the improvisation workshop that I found most enjoyable. I think that the reason for this is that we were not told what to do; we made up our own storyline. None of the point that are above I thought were bad, I liked all of them, they all make sense. Young women fall in love all of the time, this is not unusual for our piece. Before anybody get marry the usually see their partners.

Overall View

I think that the improvisation workshop did nothing good for me. I did like it, I was actually very boring apart from the last exercise. I learnt nothing from the exercise so therefore I think that the whole double period was a waste of time.