Play Review: Playing grandma's footsteps at Creative Mornings London
- marieajames
- 26 avr. 2015
- 3 min de lecture
“Play is where community starts”
– Victoria Stoyanova, Creative Mornings London host
Last Friday we had the chance to start the day in a pretty awesome, yet unsual way thanks to Creative Mornings London: right after our first morning coffee, we played a series of improvisation games with a lovely bunch of strangers including the famous Grandma’s footsteps.
The games were facilitated by Eva Liparova and Sam Bailey of the London-based theatre collective Parrot {in the} Tank. Eva and Sam use a lot of play and improvisation techniques in their creative process as well as ways to engage the audience in their shows. We were very lucky they shared and demonstrated some of these techniques with us.
Eva Liparova and Sam Bailey from Parrot {in the} Tank
Game 1: The empty chair
We were all siting on chairs except one participant who had to stand at one end of the room, whilst one chair remained empty at the other end. The person standing had to make his/her way through to the empty chair, and the participants had to prevent him or her to sit on the empty chair by sitting on it before he or she did. This created a nice dynamic through the whole room as people were jumping from chair to chair. The game required participants to switch their mind to intuitive mode, just following their body commands. That was pretty refreshing!
Game 2: The imaginary object
As we were all forming a large circle, we had to imagine that we were holding an imaginary object, mime it and throw it at another person in the room. Participants mimed all sorts of objects that came to their mind, from common ones (a teeth brush) to very bizarre ones (a flying trumpet?). Throughout the game we could observe nice interactions between participants who were building on each-others' mimes. The aim was to get the participants follow their intuition without thinking too much about how good their impro would be, as well as to listen to and cooperate with other participants. But apparently this is a pretty hard thing to do as everyone (me included!) confessed that they got to think a lot about a cool and funny impro to do instead of following the first idea that came to their mind.
Game 3: Grandma’s footsteps
This one is a very famous game most of us had played as kids. But Eva and Sam put a bit of spice in it by adding new rules like having to sit on a chair or lie on the floor or hold hands with another participant before tapping grandma. This created some really nice interactions between the participants, and some really funny scenes a you can see!
If at the beginning everyone seemed quite fearful about having to improvise in front of strangers, thanks to Sam and Eva's good energy the participants jumped rather quickly into the tasks assigned. And as fun and pleasure took over fear and conventions, we could observe the transformational and positive power of play in full effect.
Some words of play shared with us by Sam: by playing, we create a space outside of the usual norms where we can experiment and fail freely, without fear. Whilst playing we are all equal; play breaks down hierarchies and status.
And the final words from CM London host Victoria that sum-up just perfectly the way we think about play: “Play is where community starts”.
A big thank you to Eva, Sam Victoria and the awesome CM London team for infusing our Friday with playfulness and freedom. We look forward to playing with you again soon!
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