Mr and Mrs Clark

Over the course of yesterday and today, we have been fortunate enough to attend two workshops given by South Wales based theatre company, Mr and Mrs Clark. On Saturday evening, they performed their current show 'SMASH IT UP' at the Performance Centre at Falmouth University and we were all invited to attend. The show was absolutely brilliant! It focused on the demolition of a mural in Newport and covered themes of destruction, politics, art and was a really thought-provoking, honest piece of theatre that I thoroughly enjoyed. At the end of the show, there was a Q&A where they discussed their devising process, how they worked as a company, their reasons behind the show, their experiences at Edinburgh Fringe, their feelings about being shortlisted for the Amnesty Freedom of Speech Award and much, much more.

Photo Credit: Caitlin Parry

At 10am on Sunday morning, myself and TinCan member Niamh rocked up to the first of their workshop. It began with a long and thorough physical warm up - a bit of a shock to the system so early on a Sunday morning! But it was good to get energised and ready for the day ahead. And what a day it was. The day mostly consisted of movement exercises, both solo and group work, that was stimulated with sound and touch. We worked all the way through until 4:30, working on movement and the body, and it was safe to say we had a good nights sleep! It was an intense day, but not once was there a moment of boredom or wanting to stop. The workshops were so engaging and Gareth and Marega are so inspiring and great to work with, that we couldn't wait for the next part of the workshop! There were so many great techniques that we can take with us into both rehearsals for our current show and anywhere else we may be in the future.

Day two and unfortunately I was the only one able to attend today's workshop. Again, we began with an intensive warm up, very similar to the previous day. But today we were asked to bring with us a five minute speech about something that was important to us. We weren't allowed to have it written down, just speaking from the heart. One by one, each member of the group stood up and delivered their speech to everyone in the room. As one of the first ones, I was extremely nervous. I gave my speech about animal testing, but as the exercise went on, I realised that's not what they were asking for. They wanted us to reveal ourselves, completely from the heart. Open ourselves up and make ourselves vulnerable so we can show our real truth. Although animal testing is something I follow and resist against, it's something on the surface. I could have gone much deeper into myself and spoke about things that were truly important. It is an exercise I will never forget though. Seeing people that I thought I knew, people I've shared my education with over the past three years, talk about themselves and what they love, hate, admire, aspire too and the people they've loved, lost, hurt, been hurt by affected me in a way I didn't think possible. There were tears shed in both sadness and love and you could physically feel the whole group coming together and bonding in a way I have never felt before. The room truly opened up and the work became so much richer from there onwards. After a break - the emotion had taken it's toll - we went back to it. This time we looked at the occurring themes throughout everyone's speeches. What was brought up more than once? There were loads: love, relationship, loss, acceptance, dependency, pressure,femininity, home and so much more. But the four that we felt were the most important, the most talked about were:

- fear

- depression

- family

- identity

Once we had decided on those four, we were tasked with choosing a theme that we wanted to explore further. Once we got into those groups, we then had to discuss that theme further. What it meant to us. What is was. Our experiences of it. What else it linked too. And all those types of things. Once we'd discussed this in our groups for some time, we did another exercise. As a group, we faced away from the 'audience', stood side-by-side. When a thought (about our topic) came to mind, we would turn around and begin to speak. We could not stop speaking until someone had turned around and begun to talk. If someone else was talking and that sparked a thought, then we could interrupt them straight away and they would have to turn back around immediately, whether they were mid-word, mid-sentence or not. This exercise was really interesting for the reason that it stopped you thinking. You didn't have to speak until you wanted too and what you were talking about was just generating more and more material. It was a great exercise that I will 100% be passing on to the rest of TinCan next week. We want to explore the speech of the Lorry drivers more, so this would be a great exercise for us to just free flow our thoughts about it and see what we come up with.

Overall, the whole experience was truly a special one that I really did not want to end. Gareth and Marega filled us all with wisdom, inspiration and most importantly of all, confidence. They helped us to realise our capabilities as artists and brought us together as a group. Although initially intended to be a workshop that gave us an introduction to Physical Theatre, I came away with much, much more.

For that, I am truly grateful.

TinCan X