25th November, 2024
The final week before the big trip, a show to finish, workshops to write and origami lotus’ to make, we have a lot of work to do!
The first step, through some brainstorming and research we must come up with some ideas of games and tasks that could be used in the workshops we will be leading. The content of these would vary significantly as we had two different groups of students that would be participating in these workshops; university level students from Alexandru Ioan Cuza University and secondary school level students at Scoala Varlaam Mitropolitul.
We approached the workshops in two groups, I decided to put myself in the group that would lead the workshop with the university students because it would mean I could focus on my artistic vision with the support of the work I had done researching the climate emergency and global warming. As well as this, it would challenge me to push myself out of my comfort zone considering how anxious and nervous I was feeling about meeting the students and making a connection with them.
Reflecting on our performance we have devised ‘Echoes of Here and Now’, which discussed topics of the current climate, global politics and universal experience of the unknown, we created the workshops with the aim of not only building relationships and connections but also creating a space for individuals to talk about what they were passionate about. We did this through a task that began by discussing topics we felt strongly about or things we enjoyed doing, this was steered in the direction of elements we had covered in our performance as a way of encouraging the students to think on a larger scale. This task then developed into small scenes with added text that highlighted the original topics. The workshop plan included time to discuss the work that had been created and reflect on how everyone felt about the topics that had been raised.
Although the ideas came fairly easily, I found writing and organising the workshops a challenge. Considering we had little to no knowledge of what the students were like, we had to plan for every possible scenario; including the possibility of the students needing a smoke break. This was not something I had considered beforehand because A) I am a non-smoker and because B) it is not so common in the UK to have breaks designated specifically for smoking. This made me realize there may be other elements I had not considered due to my unfamiliarity with the Romanian culture. As a result I decided in my spare time to learn some more Romanian words and phrases that might help during the workshop, in the case that any of the students struggled speaking English. Here are some of the phrases I learnt:
Copy me: copiaza-ma
Listen: asculta
Discuss with your group: discutați cu grupul dvs
Thank you: Multsumesc
Be creative: fii creativ
This addition to my research greatly boosted my confidence and meant that I offered to lead many of the tasks during the workshop as I felt it would be a good challenge and experience, both as a personal gain and for my professional development.
28th November, 2024
Our final session before our flight on Sunday, we are all very excited but simultaneously quite nervous. This afternoon we performed ‘Echoes of Here and Now’ for the first time to a small audience in one of the university lecture rooms. Although there were quite a few mistakes and technical issues the performance went well and it was clearly elevated with the presence of an audience.
Once the performance had finished we cleared away all the seating and packed the group suitcase with our props and costume. It was at this moment that the entire project suddenly became very real for me, until then it had at times felt superficial as we were only ever talking about what was going to happen, but now that we were packing a bag with all of our things and discussing the timings to check-in the following morning, it all felt very real. This evening I have felt incredibly giddy, similar to the excitement of a child waiting for Father Christmas to come on Christmas Eve, I couldn’t sit still. I decided to make use of my time and go over all of the notes for the performance and run lines with my housemate. Not long now!
A week in Iași, Romania! 