The lovely Vanessa Bellaar Spruijt helped out with the Manchester workshop yesterday to feed in ideas about technical possibilities. Here are her thoughts on the day:

• Lively, chattering crowd
• 49 people, women and men distributed fairly evenly
• 24 pitched ideas: some of them including performance and loud noises
• 7 ideas developed

 

• No arguments about what the definition of ‘theatre’ is
• Amazing generosity of ideas and thoughts
• Funniest dialogue: “But if you do it like that, then it would just be the same as watching yourself. What is good about that?” Response:“It’s probably better than watching Shakespeare”
• Diverse range of people, wide ideas spectrum.

As perhaps could be expected people got carried away by use of technology and I tried my best to make them think about what they are trying to achieve with their idea, audience reactions and other effects.

I was most impressed with the ideas whose concept was good, regardless of technology.

Seth and Katie did a really good job: the whole day was intense without being rigid. It was hard to get the crowd silent, which was also good. They really went for it.