I just felt that i should blog for the sake of blogging... I am having a tough week at the mo and the thought of going to ham house tomo and being in that environment is starting to cheer me up.
I feel sometimes one needs a bad week/phase inorder to realise how lucky you are.
My ideas at the moment are few and far between and i feel like i'm juggling many balls in the air and at any moment they are about to drop! =(
Let's hope i can pull through this bad phase and get on with it all with a smile on my face =)
x x x x
Thursday 15 October 2009
Tuesday 13 October 2009
Session 3...Tour of the House =)
Within today’s session we were given a tour of Ham House! I was extremely excited for this and enjoyed it very much; however as ignorant as this may sound I wasn’t as impressed by the house as I thought I would be.
Since I was a child I have grown up visiting various National Trust Houses all over England and Wales, for some reason I felt that Ham House considering its history, it would have been bigger and grander. I felt I should have been more in awe of it, except I wasn’t. If I am honest the House scared me slightly, I found it to be very eerie, quiet, dark and cold. I didn’t feel very comfortable and didn’t want to stay too long in one place there.
The main room that made me feel uneasy the most was the long room used for “exercise” it was covered in dark wooden panelling and even though the light had been shut out the room seemed like it would be very dark and cold in there in general. The paintings on the wall were slightly odd too. There were various paintings of both the children of the house and of people that the family knew. To me it felt like I was looking at their modern day version of “facebook” and of who they know and who their acquaintances are.
When we saw the servants’ quarters I was taken aback by how small the area was that these people had to live in. It felt slightly sad that these people lived a life like that. The area we were shown where we could perform in were used by the servants themselves, so again these rooms were not grand at all, and slightly small.
The kitchen is one of the performance spaces we have been given, and this space I feel will provide countless ideas and starting points. We could either use this space for a periodic story or a story just based in a kitchen.
One of the other performance spaces we have been given used to be a bathroom. This space in particular I feel would be brilliant for different uses. The room reminded me of the bookshop in the film “you’ve got mail” and that instantly made me think of magical things and costumes and most importantly CHRISTMAS!!!!!
After the tour, Mark gave us a pack of proposals that we have received so far for upcoming projects. One that did interest me was the idea of Reminiscence Theatre, and working in private residential homes for the elderly, this would involve taking their story and making it into a performance and playing it back to them to see their response.
A project which I would really, really love to do would be to work in a prison, as I have mentioned before, or to work with young offenders, I have discussed this with Mark and hopefully, the idea will progress somewhere…which again would be extremely exciting!!
Since I was a child I have grown up visiting various National Trust Houses all over England and Wales, for some reason I felt that Ham House considering its history, it would have been bigger and grander. I felt I should have been more in awe of it, except I wasn’t. If I am honest the House scared me slightly, I found it to be very eerie, quiet, dark and cold. I didn’t feel very comfortable and didn’t want to stay too long in one place there.
The main room that made me feel uneasy the most was the long room used for “exercise” it was covered in dark wooden panelling and even though the light had been shut out the room seemed like it would be very dark and cold in there in general. The paintings on the wall were slightly odd too. There were various paintings of both the children of the house and of people that the family knew. To me it felt like I was looking at their modern day version of “facebook” and of who they know and who their acquaintances are.
When we saw the servants’ quarters I was taken aback by how small the area was that these people had to live in. It felt slightly sad that these people lived a life like that. The area we were shown where we could perform in were used by the servants themselves, so again these rooms were not grand at all, and slightly small.
The kitchen is one of the performance spaces we have been given, and this space I feel will provide countless ideas and starting points. We could either use this space for a periodic story or a story just based in a kitchen.
One of the other performance spaces we have been given used to be a bathroom. This space in particular I feel would be brilliant for different uses. The room reminded me of the bookshop in the film “you’ve got mail” and that instantly made me think of magical things and costumes and most importantly CHRISTMAS!!!!!
After the tour, Mark gave us a pack of proposals that we have received so far for upcoming projects. One that did interest me was the idea of Reminiscence Theatre, and working in private residential homes for the elderly, this would involve taking their story and making it into a performance and playing it back to them to see their response.
A project which I would really, really love to do would be to work in a prison, as I have mentioned before, or to work with young offenders, I have discussed this with Mark and hopefully, the idea will progress somewhere…which again would be extremely exciting!!
Thursday 8 October 2009
Session 2....At the House....
I really really really enjoyed today's session!!
We had our lecture at Ham House, and discussed what we will be doing in the upcoming months leading to Christmas.
We have been told that we will be running a storytelling project and face painting at the “family fun” events held over three weekends in December. We have been told that we will have (hopefully) three different performance spaces, meaning that we can tell shorter stories and keep the event and the audience moving.
How do we deliver this and how do we make it work effectively?
We need to deliver and event that is fragmented – happens for only 2-5 minutes, possibility of stories or long jokes. It is vital there is fluidity and that the whole thing can dissolve and start again.
I think costumes will be essential, I feel that, as it is over the Christmas period, we should have the theme of magic and fairies to keep the children captured and to make them feel like they are really in a magical place and make them want to come back again, to the house.
There is the possibility of maybe creating things for different age groups maybe each room is for a different age group.
Maybe other “family fun” events that we could consider could be making things, creating costumes out of household “rubbish”.
Within the lecture we all split into groups and went off to find a spot and then had to tell a story about the spot we found.
Our group found a garden with boxes and chairs, and we came up with the idea of being each season and telling a poem about how all the seasons come together to meet. I pitched to the rest of the company that maybe this could be one of our stories for the Christmas event, however the group felt it would be put to better use if we were to save the idea and use it in the summer period. As due to the fact that it was based outdoors, it meant that if the weather was rubbish, our story and ideas would go to waste. I felt that this was a good idea to save it for the summer.
We had our lecture at Ham House, and discussed what we will be doing in the upcoming months leading to Christmas.
We have been told that we will be running a storytelling project and face painting at the “family fun” events held over three weekends in December. We have been told that we will have (hopefully) three different performance spaces, meaning that we can tell shorter stories and keep the event and the audience moving.
How do we deliver this and how do we make it work effectively?
We need to deliver and event that is fragmented – happens for only 2-5 minutes, possibility of stories or long jokes. It is vital there is fluidity and that the whole thing can dissolve and start again.
I think costumes will be essential, I feel that, as it is over the Christmas period, we should have the theme of magic and fairies to keep the children captured and to make them feel like they are really in a magical place and make them want to come back again, to the house.
There is the possibility of maybe creating things for different age groups maybe each room is for a different age group.
Maybe other “family fun” events that we could consider could be making things, creating costumes out of household “rubbish”.
Within the lecture we all split into groups and went off to find a spot and then had to tell a story about the spot we found.
Our group found a garden with boxes and chairs, and we came up with the idea of being each season and telling a poem about how all the seasons come together to meet. I pitched to the rest of the company that maybe this could be one of our stories for the Christmas event, however the group felt it would be put to better use if we were to save the idea and use it in the summer period. As due to the fact that it was based outdoors, it meant that if the weather was rubbish, our story and ideas would go to waste. I felt that this was a good idea to save it for the summer.
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