What a brilliant day at Stage2!
This previous Saturday (21st June) was such a
fantastic day in the company. I’m Rosie
Nisbet, aged 17 years old and one of Stage2’s Trainee Tutors and wanted to
share with you guys what a great day I had.
First of all, we had a very productive Morning Meeting with
all the Trainee Tutors and staff to make sure we were clear on what was
happening that day (as usual), then went through the Marketplace and did Admin
as we do every week.
We had a really positive General Drama session in the
morning, looking at the idea of Flexibility.
Being one of the General Drama assistants this term, this was one of my
favourite weeks to help run as there were a lot of skills I was confident in
and the group as a whole produced some fantastic work which will definitely be
going into The Sharings on 12th July. We developed the work started on 14th
June on Spontaneous Reactions, getting the group to react in a variety of
different ways to an old LAMDA piece I did with Stage2 for my Grade 6 Exam –
this was lots of fun for the group, very useful as a lesson in how to react
logically and with variety to a scene playing out in front of you. It was also great fun for me to be able to do
that scene again and helped develop my performance skills as I had to respond
and adapt to what they were doing around me.
We also developed the mask work done in previous weeks, using Stage2’s
trestle masks – this was great to see.
Each group got 2 contrasting masks and had to devise a small scene using
them. Everyone in the group had to be
involved, whether wearing the masks or not.
This alone created lots of variety, with some others in the group
playing inanimate objects and others playing different characters in the scene. We then did more work to devising with music
as the group responded very well to a similar task at the start of term. We got them into 4 large groups of around 10
then played them a 30 second snippet of a very frantic instrumental. They first of all listened to the track once
with their eyes shut, then had 5 or 6 replays of the track to devise and
improvise something that reflected the music and went well with it, then we
showed back each group one by one. Some
groups did very naturalistic scenarios and some did more abstract pieces. The same process was repeated for a 30 second
snippet of a calm, slow instrumental.
For this one, all the groups went with quite a naturalistic feel and the
groups almost put a story together of all the different stages of someone’s
life and death, just in a non-chronological order. All the weeks in General Drama have been
great, but this week saw the group produce some really nice work.
After a lunch break, I went into The Teens’ Speech –
Stage2’s skills workshop for this term.
We have been working on polished performances of Kate Tempest’s The
Teens’ Speech (the world premiere performance of it, to be precise) as well as
for two of our own member’s pieces that were written in the Playwrighting and
Poetry Skills Workshop from last term – Tia Forbes’ spoken word piece and Jonni
Dowsett’s poem Cruise Control. On Saturday, we blocked the final section of The Teens’ Speech – it was once again a
great rehearsal process. The group work
extremely well together and Liz has been amazing at directing us and creating a
fantastic piece. I’m really really
excited for people to see this piece – the writing is so honest and such a true
representation of the younger generation.
After that, we blocked the second third of Jonni’s piece Cruise Control. Mark James, one of the workshop assistants is
directing this piece and it’s been great to be a part of his directorial debut
and I’m really proud of him as my friend for doing such a great job. I can’t wait for everyone to see all these
pieces in The Sharings.
In the evening at Stage2, we had The Questions and Queries
Session and Photosale for last term’s production of Why is John Lennon Wearing
a Skirt?. The Questions and Queries is
always a great way for members and parents to find out literally anything they
want to about Stage2 and look over past portfolios of shows. The Photo Sale is always great but I
particularly enjoyed this one as WIJLWAS was my favourite production I’ve been
in so far and I’m really proud of the show and my performance in it so it was
actually quite emotional looking at the photos because they provided such great
memories. I can’t wait for my photo
order and CD (of the band that played in the show) to arrive so it can go in my
ever growing and very diverse portfolio that I’ve built up in my 5 years at
Stage2.
After this, there was a Question and Answer session with
Jess Soutwood, ex-member who has gone on to run training conference events for
businesses. She did the most amazing and
useful session on how to use all the skills we have learnt in Stage2 and apply
them to the world of business. It was an
incredible session and it taught us all so much. Even though I want to be an actor, it gave me
loads of useful hints and tips for how to get similar work for periods when I’m
not working as an actor. It also taught
me lots about the qualities people want in an employee and what to write on my
CV. It was just an hour, but it’s made
me very excited for the Offstage Option starting in the Autumn Term as part of
the relaunch – I can’t wait to learn more about Arts in Business!
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my little snippet as to what
happened on Saturday 21st June!
Rosie Nisbet J
