Dynamic Heart Project: Chittagong Workshop

And your heart says...

I'm your heart, I'm trying to get your attention, Hello

As part of our warm up to deeper work we have people work in pairs, one person is active whilst the other just listens. The active, doing person represents and improvises the "heart" of the person who is seated. It's always interesting to hear and see how our heart relates to us and if we take notice of what it has to say, maybe it has to act in strong ways to get us to take notice and make changes in our lives.

This warm up exercise was one of the very first ones we created with Dynamic Theatre, it continues to amaze us, but then again it is the wisdom of the heart.

Sometimes we need a reminder

And at other times the connection is just there

We had four days to work and share Dynamic Theatre with people who were going to be coming with us to do field-work in Mirasorai. Thankfully everyone present was familiar with some form of action-methods so it made our teaching that much easier.

Dynamic Theatre works mainly with the collective unconscious, the first part of our work was to encourage people to be even more spontaneous than they were already. To enable them to think beyond a role and to learn trust what their body and intuition is telling them to do and say we reminded them of childhood and how it was to imagine that a chair could transform into a castle or a spaceship.

Filipe took everyone through exercises from being Super-Heroes to wild animals running or flying free in nature. Why? Because even in the most creative of arts we sometimes forget how to be spontaneous and our spontaneous becomes rehearsed and we lose touch with who we are and what we are meant to be doing.

What better way to re-connect with inspired action than to reenact a classic fairy tale, Cinderella was chosen as the favoured one to perform, but to add another dimension to the story we asked people to enhance different emotions in the play.

Prince Charming and his aides, all so joyful...

Cinderella and her Prince "enjoying" the ball

Yes this Cinderella story was told in the style of "sadness" and by literally over emphasizing the sadness so that everything became sad the only tears shed were by the audience crying with laughter as Prince Charming let out deep deep sobs as Cinderella's foot fitted the glass slipper.

By encouraging people to become spontaneous and laugh until they are crying we free up a space in them which then allows that person to become a strong container and a good channel for more painful emotions. Plato said that you could know more about a person by watching them play for an hour than you could after years of just conversation.

The more creative we become the more we learn to think outside of the box, the more we think outside of the box the more chance we have of imagining how it might feel to walk in someone else's shoes and see the world through another person's eyes. Neurobiological research shows that when we empathize or imagine how it is to be in the role of another, both sides of the brain become engaged and stimulated enabling us to feel connected to the whole. I am You, You are Me and together we are One.