Home » Visual & Performing Arts » Drama Workshops » Sensitive Characterisation - Part 1.

Sensitive Characterisation - Part 1.

© Marilyn Cameron

In our early workshops with our drama groups, we are often concerned with developing that which already exists within each individual with the emphasis on intuitive discovery. Our efforts, at that stage particularly, are aimed at overcoming self-consciousness and this is partly achieved by allowing the work to take place at an unconscious level.

As we see the members of our drama group gradually develop more confidence and personal mastery, we can begin to introduce workshops for both the individual and the group as a whole, that focus on the develpment of consciousness of self enabling sensitivity to the environment and those around us.

Sensitivity is the basis of human awareness. Developing it, consciously, will eventually provoke unconscious and sensitive responses through personal growth to sound, to imaginative stimuli, and to the existence of other human beings, thus encouraging conscious personal control and humility.

This progressional aspect of our practical work, does not mean that we are in any way moving away from our earlier work, and we must continue with that, only at a more conscious level.

It is useful to begin this type of workshop with a simple and relaxing exercise with involving the whole group, such as the following.

Ask the members of your drama group to form a line, one by one behind each other. Explain to them that they must each focus only on the person directly in front of them and copy exactly what that person does with, to begin with, their arms. The person at the front of the line, without the use of speech, makes any arm movements he/she wants to, the rest mirror the actions by focusing on the person in front of them.

Next, the 'leader' goes to the rear and the second person takes over. This time, when the leader feels like it and without saying anything, the leader moves around the hall or space as he/she wishes, still with full use of the arms, with the rest following and mirroring the moves of the person in front of them.

Once the drama group has been led around the space, split them into smaller groups. Continue as before, and explain to the 'leaders' that they can add in any movements they fell like, and that each person must focus again on the person in front of them so that each group moves as a small unit. They must be aware of the other groups in the room. On a signal from the Drama Worker, the leaders must go to the end of each line to allow shared leadership.