Each week, our entertainments reporter tries out a new activity. See the latest How to.. or View the archive.
This page last updated:
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
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How to.. be an actor
Pictured below: Duncan gets into the part of Hamlet with Twisted Elbow theatre group members Nikki Gaches, Ben Curtis-Bridges, Nathan Wilson and Leanne Dobrowolski, at Eye Library. (5DL0523684) Picture: David Lowndes
LAST time I tried my hand at acting was when I joined the Key Youth Theatre on one of its musical summer schools.
The experience was great fun, joining the casts of Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat and Mamma Mia as they practiced and rehearsed for a show at the end of the week.
Twisted Elbow’s acting classes were quite different from that experience.
For starters, they are aged at a specific age group of 14 years and upwards rather than across the board from primary school children to young adults.
And unlike the Youth Theatre summer school, which basically taught acting skills as you worked towards an end product, Twisted Elbow’s artistic director, Nathan Wilson, works on developing skills and techniques through activities that the layman would not always associate with acting – making it a good social activity.
When I joined the small group of young actors we started the session with a basic relaxing chat about our day, partly to break the ice between regular visitors and myself as a newcomer.
Under Nathan’s instruction we continued with concentration exercises to help the mind focus.
These included reciting the alphabet and counting from one to three at speed taking it in turns to say the next number or letter in the sequence – something which is harder than it sounds.
It is through exercises like these that concentration and focus is built up, which helps with learning lines and directions.
From there, we were given further team-building style exercises, from the old favourite crossing the room without touching the floor, to a relaxation session to calm everyone down before the group turned to the main theme of the session, characterisation.
We were all encouraged to create a character and express their characteristics through a name and the way they sat.
My little creation, christened Albert, was a quiet and shy creature lost in his own thoughts who stared at the floor rather than look people in the eye.
We were all encouraged to describe what we thought they would be like just by looking at their stance and the way they reacted when they asked their name.
From there we developed an improvised scene in a laundrette using the way the characters would interact with each other.
The whole feeling of the session was very informal, with Nathan chatting quite comfortably with all the members of the group on their level, despite being more than 10 years older than the oldest, and encouraging them to put forward their opinions.
Speaking after the session, he said how proud he was of the progress the group had made and the amount of confidence each member displayed.
I was pleasantly surprised, too, at what a friendly and welcoming group it was – all of the members were very articulate and confident, but were not all trying to grab the limelight as you might imagine in an amateur dramatic group.
Before I arrived I had visions of very arrogant and precocious youngsters practicing monologues – but this wasn’t the case at all.
Nathan explained that the group was working towards a future film project, similar to the horror story Canvas the group filmed at Flag Fen last summer, and these sessions were designed to build up their confidence and basic skills before they starting thinking about a script.
One member of the group,16-year-old Ben Curtis-Bridges, from Whittlesey, is already set to use his skills in the Twisted Elbow version of Hamlet, being performed in the open air at Flag Fen this summer.