Red Riding Hood etc

Day two of the workshop.  Yesterday had been a lot of fun, but today the pressure was on, as I had offered to provide a performance.  In a Berkoffian style.  Berkoff lite, really, as we had barely scratched the surface, just worked our way through a series of techniques, but leaving out the more difficult stuff – the extreme characterisation (we had touched on it, but they had pretty much forgotten all of that by now); the precise mime. Let alone the extreme, not to say filthy, language.

At one time, I had thought I might be able to leave it to them to devise a piece of work for themselves, but it had quickly become obvious that that would be beyond them right now.  I don’t know how much improvising/devising they have done in the past, but I am guessing not that much.  This is just a Drama club – Drama/Theatre is not studied as such at the university – and I don’t suppose they get even as much as TYT used to provide.  They do focus on productions, as we did, and this is very much a good thing, but we always had the skills side of thing reinforced by those who studied Drama to GCSE or A level.

Anyway, I needed a story to base our performance on, so hit on an idea I have often pitched to groups in the past, the story of Little Red Riding Hood.  I have always thought there is a lot of potential for a pretty savage piece of theatre, and Berkoff goes right along with that.  A dysfunctional family – ours is, anyway – over the top villain (Wolf getting a showing in both this and Aesop), a physical theatre granny’s cottage, and all taking place within a familiar story much adapted and modernised.

I was also able to utilise an ideas I had certainly never considered before: our forest was the mad, chaotic streets of Lucknow, through which RRH had to find her way.  I decided to use four RRHs, the better to make sure the entire group had something to do, as that meant four families, four wolves, or sets of wolves.  And four innocent waifs to  brave one swirling mass of traffic.

There was also a group of schoolchildren there – Vikash had brought his class with him, and I used/wasted some time incorporating them into a couple of games onstage.  Rohit had given us extra time for rehearsal, and this made me a little cavalier about time; something I very nearly came to regret.  When they had been sent into the auditorium, we started to work our way through the story.  I had broken the story down into eight scenes, but time got away from me, and with about forty minutes to go, we had only sorted out four.  Let alone rehearse them properly.  Or even at all.  Still, last minute panic has always been a great motivator, and we raced through the final scenes, finishing them with ten minutes to spare.  Enough time for a run through.

But now it was the formal part of the proceedings, so without much in the way of time for transformation, beyond putting my jacket back on, I was introduced to the pro-Vice Chancellor, who was substituting for the real Vice Chancellor, who was supposed to be there, but now had an online meeting to attend.  Apparently.  But his replacement, an engineer and ex-Wing Commander or something, was perfectly pleasant and polite.  There were some photos, of course, and some welcoming speeches, likewise, and then it was time for my own speech.  I was defending the place of the arts in general, and Drama in particular, in Education.  Pretty necessary here, as their system is very binary.  Not only biased towards the fact-based subjects, but also towards exams; every school here proclaims the score of their “toppers” (students scoring in the high 90s, percentage-wise) on billboards outside, accompanied by rather boring photos of them in school uniform.

It went down pretty well, but then I was largely preaching to an audience of the converted (though to be fair, Wing-Commander X did stay for longer than I thought he would.)  I even introduced, without too much loss of clarity, some binary/non-binary theory, and there were some nods (though that could have been politeness) and laughs in the right places (unexpected.)

Then it was our performance, with me acting as narrator, and having the platform to intervene if necessary.  And did have to once, when all the lights went out, to tell them to STOP – not much point carrying on in the dark.  But it was actually charming, as I suggested people might use their phones.  Which they did!  It was actually a bit of a shame when the main lights returned after a minute or two; it added to the atmosphere.

The performance itself went splendidly, and was (again) well received.  Considering we finished devising it with ten minutes to spare, it was remarkably slick.  It has been a total joy working with the students, taking me right back to the heyday of the Youth Theatre.  In some ways, these guys were even quicker… though comparisons are odorous.

There was a question and answer session, with some searching questions about Stanislavski etc – luckily I know that stuff from A level teaching.  One girl from the school group had the courage to stand up to ask how one could counter the debilitating nervousness (my words) she experienced.  I pointed out that she was doing this right now; at first, it was a matter of courage, but would improve with practice, especially within the safe environment of a Drama studio.

I took a while to wind down, with photos etc, but I had had a magnificent time.  I was astonished when Rohit referred to me as his mentor; I always feel younger than the people I talk to.  But it does seem likely that this relationship too, as well as the one with CMS, has the potential to grow.  Fingers crossed.