#big loop

It might be baking outside but it's baking inside too!  It's Big Loop's "Flours" at Chapter

The growing struggle

Video Essay on my Big Loop Experience

Duncan and the company encouraged us to be creative and crazy with our ideas and nothing was ever too weird for the sessions. During the last 5 weeks I feel like through exploring and learning through play I have become a better performer. Not only has it boosted my confidence in myself and my ability to perform and create work, but also it’s helped me fall back in love with the practical aspects of drama, which is something I felt like I’d lost through doing theory work. Overall the experience was really eye-opening and enjoyable and Big Loop’s way of working will definitely influence the way I think about working in the future. Hello, my name is Millie Chambers and I am just about to finish my first year at USW studying theatre and drama. In this video I’ll be talking about my experience in the workshops held by Big Loop over the last five weeks of term, about the different things we did and how I felt about them but my main focus will be on the forms of play and playfulness that we explored in the sessions and how these have shaped me as a performer for the future.Before I go any further I should probably talk a little bit about Big Loop as a theatre company and the type of work that they do. Big Loop Theatre Company is a Cardiff based company featuring graduates from USW’s theatre and drama programme, its members include Duncan, Alice, Kitty, George and Cory. They describe their work as “new, exciting and accessible” and their previous productions include; “Morai” and “The Memo” while their newest play “Flowers” is debuting next month. (Big Loop Theatre Company, 2015). The reason that we have been attending workshops for the past five weeks with the company was so that we could have an insight into how they create their work and throughout they have emphasised how important and effective it is to use different forms of play in order to explore theatre and devise pieces.From the first session the importance of play was very clear, in the warm ups throughout the sessions we would take part in different games and exercises in order to get us ready for the lesson ahead. Some of the things we would do would be to move around the room to music, changing our pace of walking, stopping and touching the floor, jumping around and interacting with our classmates while we fill the space. One of my favourite moments was during the third session where we came in at 9am and the first thing we did was to dance around the room to the music. It felt really surreal to be all out dancing so early in the morning. Another game we would play during the warm-ups would be ‘Fruitbowl’, this game would involve the class sitting on chairs in a circle, with one person always standing in the middle, it would then be that person who would make a statement (be it a simple one or something more personal) and then everyone who agreed with it would then get up and move to another empty chair if one was available. All of the warm ups were light-hearted and fun and would prepare us for the session ahead, getting us in the mind-set of being playful and open so that we would incorporate this into the work we would create. As well as this they are helpful in order to get to know the rest of your ensemble better and become closer as a group.Something that we discussed early on relating to the ideas of play that is explored within Big Loop, is how the body is a language that everyone can understand. Duncan explained to us how children’s perceptions of the world grows beyond their linguistic abilities to explain it and how they explore the world through play (which is what we did within the first session), which is similar to the way that theatre is used to express feelings and big moments in life that can’t be put into words. It’s in theatre that as performers and actors we can go back to our days as children and learn and experiment through the use of play. This was something that beforehand I didn’t really consider when it came to creating work because as I’ve grown up I’ve felt like I’ve had to suppress my imagination and some of my ideas that seemed a bit out there, but after attending these sessions I’ve decided that I’m definitely going to trust in myself more and express myself without fearing any judgement. One of the things I really enjoyed and also will be using when devising pieces in the future was the improv exercises. We did different versions of this throughout the workshops, for example in one session we would take turns going into the middle of the room with a partner, picking a piece of paper at random with a statement or question on it and then we would improvise a dialogue between us and see how far we can take it. Another exercise we did was that we all stood in a circle and one person would begin telling a story in the centre and then we would all take turns to jump in to continue the story and see where it goes (and it often ended up being totally crazy!) Essentially all of this was building up to the last session where we all took part in a 40 minute improv scene, where we were all a different character that was attending a dinner party. The different characters either had conflicting personalities or traits that would allow them to mingle well with other characters in the party. It was a really surreal experience overall and I did find it quite hard at times, I was playing the part of an alcoholic horse whisperer and so I did find it quite challenging to balance the two aspects of her personality without depending on one of them (the alcoholic part) and just portraying that aspect. Despite it being quite challenging I really enjoyed this exercise, mostly because of how fun and crazy the whole thing got by the end (talk about Rhian on the table, me throwing water at Tian at the end etc) Duncan and the company encouraged us to be creative and crazy with our ideas and nothing was ever too weird for the sessions. During the last 5 weeks I feel like through exploring and learning through play I have become a better performer. Not only has it boosted my confidence in myself and my ability to perform and create work, but also it’s helped me fall back in love with the practical aspects of drama, which is something I felt like I’d lost through doing theory work. Overall the experience was really eye-opening and enjoyable and Big Loop’s way of working will definitely influence the way I think about working in the future.

Myself and Shanéa Cole discuss our experience with the Big Loop theatre company.