A lot can happen in a day - Spoken Word Workshop

The second part of my workshop at Turf Projects was a Spoken Word workshop. Leading on from the Reading Group in the morning session, I gave the group a number of options about the dirrection they wanted the workshop to take. Given that the group would be performing the outcome of the session, they decided that they were most interested in using the text within the publication as a starting point (as opposed to writing their own text), and thinking about how to reinterpret it and deliver it as a spoken word performance.



The text chosen for the performance was called 'As planned', and it was written in two columns, with each column suggesting a different character. It had previously been performed by two people, each of whom read one column of the text.





The group reinterpreted the text and identified there being four characters - a father figure, a mother figure, the subject, the internal thoughts of the subject.



We began by taking each sentence and identifying which character was speaking.





Most of the text remained the same as the original, but we did change the tense used by the internal thoughts of the subject.



Once we had identified the different characters, we tested out assigning different roles to different people in the group.



After some experimentation, we agreed on the line up for the performance. 

The natural interpretation was that the subject was younger than the father and mother figure, so we decided to mix that up and use one of the older members of the group to perform the character of the subject.





We then tested out the positioning of the performers in relation to the audience.



We decided where the audience would sit and set out the seating as it would be for the performance. 

We positioned one of the characters (the internal thoughts of the subject) amongst the audience so as to differentiate it from the other characters.



We filmed ourselves rehearse and re-watched the footage so as to identify any habits that were problematic or ways that the performance could be improved.