A level Drama Workshop with Gecko Theatre Company

Earlier this week in School, our Year 12 and 13 A level Drama students took part in a theatre workshop, delivered by GECKO Theatre Company.  Year 12’s Finlay shares his thoughts below.

Finlay, Year 12
On Tuesday night I came home feeling truly inspired both by Helen, who facilitated the workshop, and by my peers who took part.

Whilst sometimes as theatre-makers devising drama can be like a solo game of stuck in the mud, so often hitting stalemate, Helen’s fearlessness and boundless positivity carved out some key (often neglected) pillars of theatre-making in us all.  Together with Helen’s freedom in her own body, her encouragement of non-pedestrian movements and the extraordinary, she managed to take us on a three-hour deep dive into the almost uncanny work of Gecko. 

The workshop was interspersed with brief circle moments of grounding, allowing us to consider more closely Gecko’s core values, this calm something so easy to brush over in such an active workshop.  Teaching us about rehearsal processes ‘in the room’ and the evolution of simplistic boundless movement in a sequence into a more complex one, was a lesson of value. 

We were all encouraged to create a motif of choreography, then a snapshot selected from each of us – thus culminating in an interesting and varied movement sequence (individuality to unity – something which we can take with us as A level students into our devising armoury).  The exploration of this sequence was exciting; allowing us to exploit that movement sequence deeply and not be concerned with formulating completely new choreography.

Personally, having chosen Gecko as my practitioner of influence for my devised exam, I was particularly enlightened by Gecko’s idea of instinctual movement.  This idea of using part unison with the use of uncanny movement to create something more deeply and distinctly human is something which can be transposed in our work; these raw, human emotions things which buzz furiously at Gecko’s core.