We were very excited this week to be going on our first ever Anthos outing with our talented AYC members! After playing a quick name game we set off from the community centre and ventured up the road to the RAMM museum. Inside we found the exhibit on World War 2, which featured a colourful range of information about the war and even an actual Anderson shelter! The cast found it interesting to actually glimpse what it would have been like inside one while the air raid siren blared and the bombs fell. We also learned about St Anne's church and how it was bombed during one particularly destructive raid, as well as some of the fashion at the time.
Once we returned to the community centre we wasted no time in getting stuck into the week's activities. As usual, the week featured Ben's obligatory 'make a shape' game. This week we saw pentagons, a pair of shoes and even an iwatch. Next we moved on to some more improv games. This week the cast (and Jake) were given different stimuli which they had to use as the basis for creating a scene. They were split into two groups; one group was given the word 'freedom' as their stimuli and the other was given 'struggle.'
Both groups worked hard and produced remarkable scenes that respectfully engaged with the stimuli they had been given. The first group focused on the 'freedom of creativity' and featured two office employees who try to convince their boss that their business ideas are worth his investment, while the second dealt with the 'struggle of addiction' and looked in at a local therapy group as they expressed their addictions and their struggles.
Finally we dived into the war. Using the ideas and suggestions we came up with last week we mapped out some characters with our cast, who then adopted them for the following task. That task was an extended improvisation in which these characters would go about their daily lives in the war. The characters included:
An evacuee from London.
A Devon local, who wasn't too fond of the evacuees and people who were not local.
Two brothers, one old enough to join the army and the others much younger and slowly coming to terms with life in war-time Britain.
A girl who went to work with her mother in a factory.
With prompts from Jake and Ben, the cast searched through piles of rubble for scrap to sell for food, explored their relationships to one another and took cover in an air raid shelter as the siren went and the bombs began to fall. In total the improvisation lasted nearly half an hour and afterwards the cast discussed the details about their characters which had emerged during exercise. It was incredible to see how well thought out they all were and how grounded they were in the facts we had discussed around the topic.
The final exercise of the day was to split the group up. One of the brothers was placed in one group, who had found their way into an air raid shelter, but without the other brother, who had wound up taking shelter in a church with the girl from London.
This improvisation played on the strengths of what the cast had created the first time, using the relationships they had established to form new stories, scenarios and challenges for those characters. The results were two very heart wrenching scenes the brought new levels and depth to the characters which would blow an audience away if placed on a stage next week.
The cast undoubtedly produced some incredible work this week and we're very excited to see where they can go from here!
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