Saturday 22 February 2014

Rediscovering Inspiration

I rediscovered this recently: It was a post that I wrote back in late June of last year. It was shortly after attending an Open Day at the University Of Leeds, looking at Theatre & Performance. I can't think why I didn't properly finish it and publish it at the time, but here it is:


Something happened to me this week that hasn't happened in a little while.

I was inspired.

Much to my terror, I am fast-approaching the age where I shall be off to university. Although I have arguably been an old man in a boy's body since a young age (in terms of my maturity), the actual prospect of growing up is very scary, not least because prospect of fending for myself for three years isn't particularly appealing (I'm not exactly the world's greatest cook, for starters...)

My mum and I are currently looking around various universities, at what they have to offer in the way of Drama degrees. So far we've looked at Exeter, Birmingham, and Leeds.
(EDIT: Since then, I have also looked at, and had offers from, Kent and Royal Holloway.)

While I was at Leeds, I was struck by this inspiration. We had a couple of 'taster lectures' while we were there, to get an idea of some of the areas of study. There was looking at how YouTube relates to the teaching of Russian acting techniques, and a little session on theatre in a less traditional sense - applied theatre.
The subject of Invisible Theatre came up. No-one else in the room seemed to have a clue what it was except me (I had a particularly good group of GCSE Drama teachers... ;) ).
I put my hand up. I said what it was (theatre where the audience don't realise it's a performance.) The lecturer, Dr. Kiszley liked this. He also liked it that I was able to point out that a potential risk of it would be that you could get arrested.

He also played a little bit with the idea of proxemics. He got us thinking about what effect it had on us, as an audience, if he delivered his lecture from at the front, on the stage in front of us, or somewhere up in the seating. Or what it's like for the rest of the audience if he suddenly sits next to and addresses the lecture to one person.

These aren't exactly completely new ideas to me, thinking back now. But I'll tell you what this did do for me: it re-ignited my passion for Drama. It was a thrill to be learning it again.

When I chatted a bit to the Dr. Kiszley afterwards, what I'd got up to before in terms of Drama, and what sort of a student I was, he did say to me, "you're for us." That brought me no end of pleasure. To be told by a lecturer who also happens to be the admissions tutor for Drama at Leeds University that I'm the sort of person they're looking for gave me a little thrill in itself.

Original post ends.



Well - little update. I went back to Leeds recently. I had been invited for an interview/group workshop with them, which would decide whether or not they wanted me. And, to cut a long-story short (especially if you've seen this bit before):




















I got an offer!

There we are. Some of you had seen that I had an offer already, but what I thought was interesting was looking back on my account of the day that I'd forgotten about until now. Had I remembered what I'd written here, perhaps I'd have gone into the interview with a tad more confidence!

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 Then again, perhaps I'd have been even more nervous....