Health & Safety

With any performance, health and safety is very important because if everything hasn’t been fully checked and made sure that it is safe to perform, it could lead to a risk of people possible injuring themselves or something more serious. Therefore, many things should be checked with regards to the staging area, costumes, hair and makeup, and other things no matter how small they maybe.

STOMP

STOMP has no words – everyone can understand it. It has little or no melody in the traditional sense, so it doesn’t matter if your taste in music is jazz, classical, dance or pop. STOMP is about rhythm, which is common to all cultures. Everyone knows rhythm, if only from the beating of their own heart – it is the basis of all music.

STOMP is a group of people, with very strong personalities, who work together using simple building blocks to create something complex , something everyone can identify with: everyone has, at some time, to engage in group activity, whether they like or know the people they are working with or not. It’s the little idiosyncrasies, the differences between people, and the games of one-upmanship that ensue, which define the group dynamic.

There are several STOMP companies currently performing around the world: up to three working from the UK and two in North America. Each company has its own style, its own feel: this is because even though the show is very tightly choreographed and orchestrated, there is a lot of room for every performer’s own personality to shine through. The show is as much an expression of eight individuals with very strong personalities as it is a vision of rhythm.

Forum theatre

Forum theatre is a technique you can use while acting out a scene. The group watching is encouraged to stop the action when they think it necessary, to suggest a different action. At other times, the actors themselves can stop the action, and ask for help. Sometimes someone else can step in and take over a role - or even introduce a new one.

Why use forum theatre? What can it add to a drama?

Sometimes it is hard, when devising drama, to imagine what a character might do or say at a particular moment. If you stop the drama when in role, and ask for help from your group, someone will probably give you a good idea of what to do or say next. They might also offer to take over the role to try out their idea - or even join the scene as another character altogether, to take things in a new direction.