Class 1/31

I thought we had an interesting discussion about what we can learn as performers from Yoruba rituals. Both Soyinka and Drewel talked about the power of improvisation as a part of ritual, and as artist, we need to be able to incorporate improvisation into our acting process. Yoruba rituals are all about connecting and celebrating the seen and unseen, the known and unknown together as a part of life. In a sense that is what improvisation can do for the performer, thus making every performance fresh and full of energy. I used improvisation with some the students in my class in their interview scenes, and doing so brought their scenes to another level. 

The question about why and how we should learn about other cultures and their performance, and do we have the right to will always come up as we learn about other cultures. It would be interesting if we could find performers from the cultures we are studying to see if they think it's a good idea for outsiders to study other cultures for the purpose of performance.