I was lucky enough to be invited to Scribe for the Kent County Youth Theatre Festival at the Marlowe Academy in Ramsgate on Sunday the 22nd of March. Young people from county-wide theatre groups were exposed to a broad range of theatre-based workshops and activities delivered by professionals. As a Scribe, I positioned myself and boards in the atrium of the Academy and I spent my time between the various workshops capturing the proceedings in my sketchbook and then transfering my lap capture to the boards to make a visual synthesis of the day.

The portion of the Scribing below captures the essence of the workshop phase of the day. The young people took part in workshops on Physical Theatre, Musical Theatre, Masks, Make-Up and Film. I was greatly impressed with it all. My favourite workshop was delivered by the Strangeface Mask Company. I was transfixed as the young volunteers from the audience donned masks and changed their whole physicalities. Their awkwardness of being in front of a group was transformed behind these amazing masks. It was interesting to “read” the conflicting languages being delivered between the mask’s expression and the young person’s gait. The dichotomy produced quite unexpected results.

I also captured the youth theatre leaders discussion. The leaders aired their views and shared best practice and discussed a whole range of topics, it was a real pleasure to capture this conversation. It flowed really nicely and was facilitated well by the KCC arts team.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at 4:32 pm and is filed under Practice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.