training 2

April 21, 2009 / Training 2
Funny how fast time goes. By the time we had done warmups and had talked through the text and were ready to begin forum theater, we had already been at it for more than 90 minutes, which meant it was already getting kinda late.

I was one of the few who did not end up getting up and replacing either character in the scene because I had no idea how to make the situation better for them.

I liked that the conflict we chose to represent in the scene was not related so much to the text as it was related to the subtext within the text. We read the excerpt once again, but went behind it this time. I think a big difference from what we did in the first session. What's interesting to me is that in the first session, we were very much about reinterpreting what we could find on the "surface" of the reading - but in the second session, we were all about getting behind the reading, looking at it from the other side, and relating that to our lives.

I think both sessions encouraged us to think very deeply about what we had read, but from different directions. It's crazy that we've squeezed so much material out of 3 pages.

I think what's going to be ill about the trainings is that those of us who are leading these sessions are going to make an effort to bring everyone along with us. Does that make sense? I know as I've been writing lesson plans, I've done it differently than in the past. I don't just want everyone to do exercises and end up with "poems" - but I want to get through the exercises and have people feeling like it was really enjoyable to do that, to key into the energy inside me that can write poetry. Who knows how that will go.