Forced to Perform in Real Life
Of course I never really became a social worker — well, I did my practical year, working with kids. It was fun and challenging all at the same time. But then, when my year was nearly over, a flyer found its way into my letterbox, and that was it. An additional one-year training in Theatre & Education. There was no doubt I had to do it, so I moved from Göttingen to Heidelberg and dove in.
We had theatre history, acrobatics, contemporary dance, and so much more. It was a feast of approaches, workshops, everything. This is where I found Lecoq.
I read his book The Moving Body and I was hooked. Just about everything about his approach spoke to me — to respond to impulses from the outside world, find resonance on the inside, and then express that again. The work with masks, among so many other things. Just everything.
There was this voice inside me, pushing me toward the things that let me be more in my body, express myself truly.
Because in real life, it seemed like there was no space for it. Maybe the real irony is that, from where I stand now, I was forced to perform in my real life — and when I was doing physical theatre, improvisation, dance, I could finally become myself.
I found Ron East's School of Physical Theatre, and as soon as my training in Heidelberg was finished, I moved to London to do it. No further thoughts wasted, just a deep pull. Do it. Just do it. So I did.
Ron was a great teacher — just the right amount of constructive feedback mixed with real kindness, letting his pupils explore on their own.
For me it was perfect, and I felt truly seen, as a performer and as a human being. I never missed a single day, no matter how bad I felt — it was that special to me. I took notes on everything, too.
It wasn't all roses. It was physically intense and challenging on many other levels — that, and exhilarating too. I didn't feel as at ease in our small group as I had in Heidelberg. I never really warmed up to my fellow actors, even though there was nothing wrong with them. It just didn't click. Every week we'd have a theme — "Make the Invisible Visible," for example — and we'd improvise around it and devise a piece, which each of us had to perform by week's end.
Improvisation played a huge part in our training, not just for exploring principles but for generating original material, which would later be structured into something whole.
I still remember certain improvisations from that year as clearly as I remember the Grotowski ones from my studies. One was with a half-mask I'd built myself — a character sure of herself, sensual — giving driving lessons to another character who was her stark contrast. The improvisation flowed; we were both surfing the same wave, so completely that nobody noticed we'd already been playing for over thirty minutes, or that water had come in through the front door of the building, because the nearby river had overflowed from all the rain.
Another vital improvisation came near the end of our training, when we were doing clowns and buffoons. We had to devise a piece where the clown is born into the world. Some of us came out of a huge present. I decided to come out of a volcano. I had a table with a box on top, and inside the box I'd stacked two mattresses so they looked like a mountain. I sat inside it, throwing out confetti, shouting "Born to Be Wild," until I finally emerged from the volcano — only to realise I was afraid of heights.
My clown, I mean. Of course.
It took her a long time to come down, and it was very funny. The best part was that I hadn't rehearsed a single bit of it, because I'd had a friend staying with me at the time. I just thought: okay, I have the idea, and it'll probably go very wrong because I haven't rehearsed. I was carefree, and that's exactly why it felt so magical. It was exhilarating.