The Perfect Workshop
Our lovely Aylmer sector of Gatineau was graced this
past weekend with a thoroughly enjoyable theatre workshop at which 15
community-minded, theatre-minded students attended. It was held at Tea and Tole
on Aylmer Road, a cosy cottage restaurant/events space with, I must add,
fabulous lunches. Ten-year olds to decades-old retirees and people aged
in-between (that's where I come in), from all walks of life, congregated for a
kind of a "theatre camp" which took place on Friday evening and all day Saturday
and Sunday (March 17th to 19th).
We got to know each other very quickly after our wonderfully calm and
knowledgeable instructor, Maureen Martineau, asked us to walk in a circle while
emphasizing the use of one body part, such as shoulders, or knees, or hips.
Imagine for a moment, a run-way model's walk where the hips lead the body. Now
imagine the 50ish-year old man (Jack Croft) walking like this. We learned
from Maureen that this is one method of finding and embellishing the personality
of a character in a script...lifting the words off a page of a script, adding
body language and creating a real, believable person. We did various
other exercises like emphasizing just the mouth and trying to converse with it
in a position we don't normally wear. We imitated walks that are of people we
know and suddenly the quiet teen Alexandra Nash transforms
into a loser-dude male from high school who wears his jeans way too low. Suddenly, we
were not ourselves anymore and enjoyably so, with just the simple twist of the
mouth while speaking, or fidgeting like a child while sitting, or walking slowly
and casually with the strut of a cool-dude. We wore wigs that brought out the
"biker" in us, like one of the older ladies named Mary Tessier did. She bore a
leather headband with attached wig and suddenly behaved like she was going on a
cross-country motorcycle trip.
Maureen's methods of relaxing her students and making them feel at ease with one
another was immediately effective. From the outset, this group of complete
strangers was engulfed in laughter and became friendly with each other within
minutes. We learned how to manipulate our voices to speak with more, or less,
confidence, depending on if the voice comes from the belly, the chest or through
the nose.
We improvised skits almost non-stop with constant critique from Maureen about
the good and the not-so-good moments. We would re-improvise with the necessary
adjustments and really felt the creative process of building a character and,
most importantly, building our own self-esteem. Not all of us have aspirations
of becoming an actor but the workshop provided us with much, much more...the
ability to relax and feel more confident about ourselves.
This free workshop was sponsored by The Regional Association of West Quebecers
and its mandate with this funding is to encourage and support the birth of our
very own Aylmer English Community Theatre. After just two meetings, the
committee has already selected its first play entitled “Perfect Wedding" which
we are now preparing for performances on June 9th and 10th at Darcy/Symmes.
It is a farcical bedroom comedy and, believe me, it is really funny! The
students from the workshop this past weekend are encouraged to continue with
their new knowledge and to help however they would like to in order to present
plays to our community. Being community theatre, the committee is
looking to the rest of the Aylmer community to find more interested
participants, from poster-hangers to set-builders. We all have been enjoying
the whole theatre process with both the workshop and the committee meetings, and
most of us have had no experience. Those of you who may be interested, please
call the RAWQ offices at 682-9602.
We had such a memorable experience at this theatre workshop. I can only add a
huge thank you to The Regional Association of West Quebecers. I encourage you
to come and join us in helping to build a large core of people to help
and/or watch our community plays. I cannot imagine a better way for so many
people of all ages to work together on a community project where the outcome is
so positive for all.
Joanne Anka
Return to Home
Stagecraft Workshops Outline