Playfulness - modelling sculptures that you breathe life into (BLICK-03-EN)

Playfulness - modelling sculptures that you breathe life into

Group work

No material needed

Nothing

The exercise can be started immediately.

It is important to convey seriousness in the game. And that is not a contradiction: play and seriousness! Children do not need this input. What is meant by seriousness? Seriousness is the intensity of how much you can get involved in the game. Seriousness means not thinking about how I look now.

Adults are already so conditioned to avoid anything that could be embarrassing or inappropriate that they totally withdraw: For adults, tipping into the game is a real challenge.

When it comes to seriousness in play, then it gets awkward, then giggles come as an expression of being uncomfortable.

In groups where members know each other well, comments are often made to cover up uncomfortable feelings.

If group leaders notice that adults are not able to get involved in the game, they can ask them to "help the others now, let's help each other by not making comments now, but by getting fully involved in the game!

Making others laugh is the king of theatre. The clown is the most serious. He is seriousness himself. He is in his concentration and seriousness, while the audience is laughing, he remains in concentration.

In this exercise, there is deliberately no reflection at the end. To ask, what was actually my first impulse, for example, would trigger a cognitive reflection process. But that is exactly what this exercise is not about! The aim of this exercise is - as the artist so aptly put it - to get out of one's head and use the immediate power and insight of spontaneity!

Not asking oneself such questions brings one totally into the scene, into the play during the performance and afterwards prevents the insights that have arisen on the physical and emotional level from being categorised by the mind and thus robbed of their originality.

The desire to play is the essence in which we meet as human beings, because the desire to play is independent of age, religious imprints and origin.

We learn through play. We play from an early age and give ourselves over to the desire to play, and through this we learn.

When we meet each other on the level of playfulness, we feel how children from 6 months to great-grandma, who is then fully present, how their eyes begin to light up. The gate that I open, where I invite people into my story, this invitation comes through playfulness - being in playfulness means having a similar energy level. And that is the basis of playing together: to reach a similar energy level together.

Why similar energy levels? When people tip into joy together, it means: your joy is my joy, because it is contagious to feel joy when playing.

A very essential part of playfulness is curiosity.

Teachers often ask about specific situations: “How do you deal with it when it gets too loud in the audience?”

My answer is that I arouse the curiosity of the audience. If the audience senses that I am discovering something, then they want to discover it together with me.

I don't know any children who are not curious.

Made many projects with people with impairments. Meeting people who have a great physical limitation want to communicate through playfulness: suddenly all limitations fall away and the physical limitation is no longer relevant.

Through this method/action, these benefits are achieved:

• People consciously take a step out of being mentally blocked.
• People train to be in the present. They train to be present.
• People increase their powers of observation: What do I perceive in others? What do I perceive in myself?
• People playfully try out new ways of behaving that are not readily accessible to them through reflection.

Step 1

Working with facial expressions - Silent mail with facial expressions

The participants stand in a circle. The trainer freezes a facial expression on his/her face (holds the facial expression for 2 seconds) and passes it on to the first person to his/her left in the circle. The person to the left of the trainer looks into the trainer's face and takes over this face as if looking into a mirror.

Now this person turns to his/her neighbour on the left and passes on the facial expression to the person on his/her left.

For all group participants to observe: The facial expression changes like a word that is passed on.

I always adopt what I see, not what is sent out.

In observing, one sees individuality.

Step 2

Working with gestures - mirroring gestures

Similar to the first step, gestures are now used.

In contrast to before, however, each person now passes on a new gesture after first adopting the gesture of the previous person. This means that not one and the same gesture is passed around the circle, but the participants are asked to spontaneously develop a new gesture after they have first mirrored the gesture of the previous person and to pass it on to the person to their left.

Step 3

Figures in relation to each other

Now the participants go together in pairs and pose as figures for each other by reacting spontaneously to the figure of their counterpart. This is a dialogue without words, led by facial expressions and gestures in interplay.

The two partners proceed as follows:

Player A takes up a position and remains in Freeze. Player B now moves away a little and observes what he/she observes:

• How are the fingers held?
• How is the head posture?
• Where is the weight of the figure shifted?

Now Player A gives her/his counterpart a sign - for example, by clicking her/his tongue - and Player B assumes a posture by spontaneously positioning herself/himself to Player A and standing still in the Freeze. Player A now moves away a little and observes what he/she observes:

• How are the fingers held?
• How is the head posture?
• Where is the weight of the figure shifted?

Now Player B gives her/his counterpart a sign - for example, by clicking her/his tongue - and Player A assumes a posture by spontaneously and out of feeling positioning herself/himself to Player B and stopping in the freeze.

In this way, the two partners repeat the exercise until each of them has done it 5 or 6 times.

The trainer gives the following input:

"Imagine you are walking through a park in a foreign city and an artist has put different statues there. Each statue wants to express something. But the artist also wants to express the relationship between the statues."

Now the trainer takes a position and says:

"Theatre has a lot to do with observing well. You look at where the weight is shifted in the body.

Where is the gaze directed?

The point is: I take up a position that expresses something, I am the statue in the park.

My counterpart now follows the FIRST IMPULSE - because that is where the playfulness lies!

The important thing is to leave thinking behind and surrender to the game:

Your play simply follows curiosity.

Something is coming towards me and I react to it: action - reaction.

Feel: What kind of energy is coming for me? And then you react to it spontaneously!

So avoid considerations such as: What do I want to put there? Just react spontaneously out of the feeling. Then you come to observe and to the first impulse and the desire to play!”

Step 4

Working with the subtext

A subtext is thoughts that arise spontaneously in the mind but are not spoken. It is a kind of inner monologue in this scene, in this play. The subtext comes from the emotion that suddenly arises in the play. They are phrases that arise spontaneously from impulsive action in the head.

Thus the subtext expresses a great deal of what my inner attitude is in this action. Such a subtext could, for example, be: "Not with me!" A sentence that suddenly comes out of you.

This extension of the exercise is about making subtexts conscious and audible for all participants.

The trainer therefore sometimes stops in the middle of the exercise and taps one of the players and asks her or him to say the subtext out loud.

Let them play once without thinking - 5 to 6 repetitions per participant.

And then have them play with subtext.

Step 5

Transition to puppetry

Elfi Scharf

http://www.kuddelmuddel.co.at/

http://www.diepuppenspielerin.at/

My artistic expression in this genre began with my encounter with puppetry in 1994. The magical world of puppetry, the craft that underlies this magic, this fascination has never left me. This was followed by a series of further training courses in acting, clowning and finally a 3-year training course in puppet theatre at the independent training centre IMAGO Wels.

Since then I have been working as a freelancer. In 2003 I founded the "Kuddel Muddel Theater", which currently has 11 productions for young audiences. I give guest performances in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. I also work as an author of scripts and audio books and am a founding member of ARGE Libelle Hörspiel Verlag. Initiator and curator of the int. puppet theatre festival "puppille Gleisdorf" with 4 festivals so far and initiated the summer theatre festival "TeichFestSpiele" in 2020. Since 2015, my repertoire has expanded to include puppet theatre productions for adults and individual performances at conferences, vernissages and the like. I also run workshops in puppetry and puppet making for children and adults.

My offer:

• Theatre productions for children kuddelmuddel.co.at and for adults www.diepuppenspielerin.at
• I offer puppet theatre performances individually for your event. Conference, anniversary or festive event for companies or public institutions. Individual examination and artistic, cabaret-like realisation of your company and work field at the festive event.
• Seminars and workshops in figure play, figure construction and performing play.
• Workshops in body expression and stage presence.

Performing Arts

German