It was a real joy to be able to conduct a workshop on a theatre that has over 2300 years of history seeping up though the ground. The “felt” experience is a part of the excitement of the archaeological dig and the opportunity to explore performance techniques, and the acoustics of such a beautiful theatre, was too good to pass up.
The workshop was structured to cover the following areas:
* Introduction
* Warm Up – Active Listening
* Awareness & Attention
[Being aware kinaesthetic presence in the space]
* Vocal Energising
[Professional warm up exercises]
* Playing with language
[Shapes and textures of sounds (using Oedipus / Antigone / Medea)]
* Heightened Story Telling
[Cue scripting the Messenger speech from Oedipus]
There may have been a few nerves at the beginning but by the end we were relishing sharing the story of Oedipus with each other. With such a large team it was great to have the opportunity to divide into two groups so that each person got the opportunity to perform using the heightened language of the play, and also got to sit in the cavea and experience listening to the story as audiences may have long ago.
In the dig house we wake up every morning to see the sun rise over the Archaeological Park by the Ocean, hmm… maybe next time Othello in the Odeon…?