@The Arts Unit Creative Classes

Picturing a paragraph – the craft of Complicité

Support in undertaking experiential paragraph writing for HSC students

Student drama resource developed by The Arts Unit

Year 12 drama

What will I learn?

You will:

  • watch the three workshop clips and record notes

  • critically analyse how these movement-based and highly visual practices and approaches can be used to devise a performance

  • imagine yourself exploring one or more of these workshop activities

  • synthesise and organise your knowledge and imagined experience into an experiential paragraph.

Before you begin

I hope you are ready to critically analyse some of the ways in which Theatre Complicité approach the devising process.

Make sure you have a pen and paper on hand to make notes as you watch the practical workshops.

You will need to open a Word document for drafting experiential paragraphs.

You may like to review the rubric for your topic for Studies in Drama and Theatre.

  1. Practices and approaches

Watch Complicité – Warm-up games.

Record brief notes about all the practices and approaches of your chosen practitioner you may notice as you are watching these warm-up games.

Critically analyse this workshop by answering the following questions:

  • What was the importance of openness and repetition in 'Stop Go'?

  • How did 'Cat & Mouse' encourage the group to play and become more open or connected?

  • Why were shifts in rhythm and patterns so important in 'Cat & Mouse' and the 'Ball Game'?

Imagine you were a participant in this workshop.

Write a paragraph describing your experience of one or more of the warm-up games.

Begin your sentence with ‘In a Theatre Complicité workshop with Eric Mallett, I experienced…’

2. Philosophy in practice

Watch Complicité – Introducing fixed point.

Record brief notes about all the philosophies of your chosen practitioner you notice as you are watching this workshop.

Critically analyse this workshop by answering the following questions:

  • How are space and shape used to tell a story in these exercises?

  • How can fixed point (stillness) help to create meaning from movement and choreography?

  • How would you describe the energy and dynamic created by the ensemble in these exercises?

  • Explain how these exercises demonstrate either ‘charging the space’ (Lecoq) or ‘fluidity of time and place’ (McBurney).

Imagine you were a participant in this workshop.

Write a short paragraph describing how your experience of the fixed point exercise strengthened your understanding of your chosen practitioner’s performance philosophy.

Begin your sentence with ‘In a Complicité workshop, my ensemble was introduced to fixed point work. This practical experience led me to understand the importance of…’

3. Imaging performance

Watch Complicité – Transitional tools to explore narrative space.

Record notes about any characteristics of the practitioner’s performance aesthetic or expression you may notice in these exercises.

Critically analyse how the approaches and practices explored in this workshop could be used to devise performance work which is highly visual and innovative.

Imagine you are a theatre maker who has used Complicité’s practices/approaches to devise a piece of original image-based or multi-discipline theatre.

Write a short paragraph describing how you used one or more of these 'transitional tools' to create a powerful moment of dramatic meaning in your imagined production.

4. Making connections

Watch the Complicité Showreel.

Connect this clip to today’s experiential learning by using it as practical evidence in your response to the following prompts:

  • Summarise the philosophy of your chosen practitioner in no more than 2 sentences.

  • List the 4 most important characteristics of this practitioner’s practice and approach.

  • Describe the key features of a performance devised from this approach and process.

Complicité Showreel

Duration: 04:29

Synthesise and organise your ideas by using your short written responses from this lesson to draft a longer experiential paragraph response to one of the following questions.

  • How do the processes and practices of Simon McBurney & Theatre Complicité shape technologically innovative and highly visual performance work? Refer to your own experience as an actor, director and audience member.

OR

  • How have the philosophies and approaches of Jacques Lecoq inspired highly visual contemporary theatre works? Refer to your own experience as an actor, director and audience member.

Refine your written response/s by sharing with your teacher and redrafting your paragraph/s based on teacher feedback.

Well done!

You have completed this @The Arts Unit Creative Class.

Good luck with your HSC exam!

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