Day Two

We started class with some BrainGym exercises to awaken both sides of our brain after lunch. There were some stretching, balancing, clapping, rhythm and contagion exercises that reminded us we are social and like to be 'together'. David demonstrated his catalogue of voiceless sounds of disgust and we contributed our own sounds of emotions, voice/less plosives plus continuant/extended sounds. The box/triangle 12-count exercise also challenged our mind/body connection. With Shakespearean examples we realized emotions are carried in vowels and data is delivered with consonants. We tried word games to give us the basis for a story and we added the five senses. Fynn demonstrated the different points of view that make storytelling more interesting/inviting. Discussing involvement strategies we explored 'set up expectations' and then 'broken expectations'. The syntax of surprise also connects, or hooks, the audience. Adding jokes, or surprise, will give our audience the 'light of recognition'. HA! A yardstick was introduced as a prop and we rotated creating roles for Mr. Stick. Then, we all (several times) introduced Mr. Stick into Patrick's story. As we prepare for Friday's assignment, we were challenged to practice telling the story with only dialogue. What characters or props do we need to 'get' all the information into the story without having Mr. Narrator be present? If we think of our story as the hub of the wheel, then add all the similar versions of our story as the spokes on the wheel, and again add our personal experiences into this diagram, we provide infrastructure that allows story to reveal what drew us into the story. Ahhhhhh.