Our drama task involved using forum theatre - exploring the scene of Michael and Skellig in the garage. Forum theatre is a technique you can use while acting out a scene. The group watching is encouraged to stop the action when they think it necessary, to suggest a different action. At other times, the actors themselves can stop the action, and ask for help. Sometimes someone else can step in and take over a role - or even introduce a new one. The drama techniques we brought into the workshop were role play, facial expression, body language, staging, narration and vocal expression.
Role play is the most important technique because it’s what you do when you're pretending to be another person and using your imagination to speak, think and even feel like that character. If you don't pretend to be someone else while acting in a drama, then the audience will see only 'you' and not the character you are meant to be portraying. They will only see 'you' in the situations that are described. If you make the role-play realistic and believable, then the audience will be more likely to 'suspend their disbelief' (forget that they're watching a drama, and feel personally involved). Staging seconds because the way you place yourself on stage lets the audience know what you’re doing. Facial expression is also as important because this lets us know how the actor is feeling with sudden movement around the stage. Narrating is what you do when you're giving a spoken commentary on the action taking place during a drama. It's a useful technique when you want to inform the audience of what is happening. Body language can be useful in a scene but it’s not the case that you’ll also be moving. You may have to act out a scene and your position is stationary, in the case vocal expression plays a big part. A vocal expression allows the audience to still engage with the performance, only verbally.
If I had not been taught about forum theatre I would have explored the scene by having Skellig and Michael approaching each other from opposite ends of the stage whilst reading the script. However forum theatre is more effective because it allows you to develop as an actor, you see from someone else, your error and the way things come across to the audience.
During this exercise not many of our ‘spec-actors’ was participating. This made it hard for it to actually work but when I was sitting down I was able to give a lot of contribution to the other actors.
This exercise was okay but it wasn’t completed to the best because nobody wanted to switch actors therefore not many people were actually ‘spec-actors’. I took part in this so it was healthy for me.
