Enduring gazes (BLICK-04-EN)

Enduring gazes

Group work

No material needed

Nothing

The exercise can be started immediately.

No commenting on the exercise: Not while someone is doing the exercise and not afterwards when someone has just done the exercise.

It is also not allowed to comment with looks or other body expressions.

This exercise, like the exercise "Playfulness - modelling sculptures that you breathe life into", is also about seriousness. Seriousness is described quite extensively in this exercise. Here is just this: seriousness means the intensity of how much you can get involved in the game. Seriousness means not thinking about how I am going to appear now but staying fully in the here and now.

It is important that the trainer takes his or her time when guiding. This also applies when a participant has come to the end of his/her exercise.

Again, it is important to wait 2 seconds before thanking and choosing someone else to do the exercise: It's all about taking your time.

Important! Someone is always chosen, i.e. the participants who enter the stage, the centre of the circle, are not chosen in turn, but randomly. Nevertheless, the trainer should make sure that all participants have their turn in this exercise.

There is an analogy here with horses: Those who avert their gaze are lower in the hierarchy because they are less present.

This exercise is about facing one's own wildness and allowing it: Maurice Sendac wrote the book "Where the Wild Things Live". In this book, Max tames his own wildness with his gaze.

To stand on a stage - whereby stage is meant very broadly in this context: because standing in front of 3 people also means entering a stage - means being able to endure gazes with full presence.

Practising presence therefore means that I can well endure these looks from others. By looking into the eyes of our counterpart, we look very deeply into the soul life of our counterpart. We see much more than the façade, it reveals a lot about our counterpart.

The fact that someone looks at me for a long time, observing me, that I can stand it well, means that I am in the attitude: "I am here as I am, with all my strengths and weaknesses!" - it means opening up a lot. Presence is being open with all my strengths and weaknesses, being authentic.

If I allow that, people perceive me as very present.

It's a move away from putting on a mask towards more authenticity.

Through this method/action, these benefits are achieved:

• People learn to enter a stage and be able to withstand stares.
• People learn to face their own wildness and to allow it.
• People learn to be present, in the sense that they are open to the moment with all their strengths and weaknesses.

Step 1

The participants form a circle with enough space between them so that each participant stands individually. Not a single word should be spoken during the whole exercise.

Step 2

The trainer selects one person from the circle and gives the following instruction to the group:

"All of us who remain standing in the circle have the assignment to pattern and observe the person I have just chosen very intensively. To look into the eyes, to pattern the body, what just happens on a stage."

To the person the trainer has just chosen, the trainer says:

“And you have the task to endure this patterning and being observed: The patterning of others is basically benevolent. If you are about to enter the circle, please exhale. It is better if you enter the stage as an empty vessel. When you are excited, you have a lot of air and are therefore tense.

Presence, however, has to do with devotion. Therefore, it is better if you relax. The best way to do this is to simply exhale before you make your way to the centre of the circle.

Please walk slowly and consciously into the centre of the circle.

As you walk, stand up to the gaze of the others.

All participants have the task of observing you very intensively.

When you are in the centre of the stage, stand up to these looks without your body making any distractions: no tugging and no other embarrassing gestures!

Stay consciously in the centre of the circle for 2 seconds.

Then make a very small movement: a sniffle, for example, or a twitch with the cheek. In the middle of the circle, just spontaneously think of something and do it for another 2 seconds. After this small movement, please pause again for 2 seconds and consciously withstand the observing gaze of the others.

Then please go back to your seat in reverse. While you walk backwards to your place, stay present the whole time and consciously avoid the observing glances of the others.”

Step 3

The selected participant follows the trainer's instructions and walks slowly and deliberately to the centre of the circle, remains there for 2 seconds without making any further movement. Then the participant makes a small movement in the centre and then remains motionless in the centre of the circle again before walking backwards and returning to his/her place.

Step 4

The trainer selects the next participant. He/she makes sure that the next participants are not selected in turn

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