The Performance Research Network invited staff and practitioners from the local community to a FREE 2-day physical theatre workshop facilitated by a Gecko practitioner. Gecko is an award-winning and internationally acclaimed physical theatre company, led by Artistic Director Amit Lahav. Founded in 2001, the company has created 8 critically acclaimed shows, 2 Associate Shows and 2 films. Gecko is currently touring their eighth stage production Kin, commissioned by the National Theatre, exploring themes of racism, family, migration, and home. https://www.geckotheatre.com/about

The workshop enabled us to explore shared interests in emotion and embodied methodologies, providing new skills, and opportunities to experiment with embodied and relational ways of connecting with objects, people and space. 

Two of the attendees wrote about their experience:

Hannah Waters:

Reflecting on our time with Gecko, it is remarkable how much material we were able to cover in a two-day workshop. It was a real gift to be in an environment where all participants were committed and generous, open to learning and experimenting, and how this atmosphere was facilitated so skilfully by Gecko practitioner Vanessa. Our introduction to the methodology was through the breath: moving and breathing as an ensemble, using breath as a cue, an anchor, a way of knitting the group together. We were introduced to simple devising techniques in order to generate material; simple, but imbued with an extra Gecko specificity, whether that be layers of improvised text, breath, music, shifts in focus, tempo, or dynamic. It was fascinating to learn exactly how the company juxtaposes the ordinary and the quotidian with the extraordinary, the extra-daily, and actually how easy and effective that was for us to integrate even as newcomers to this idea. I was particularly struck by how the methodology navigates working with emotion: working with the physicality of emotion rather than the psychology of it allowed for safe and boundaried exploration and, in my opinion, a richer and more relatable expression of feeling. I also loved getting a chance to experience how Gecko work with props and objects – as if they are characters in their own right, members of the ensemble. I think we all made strong connections with our satsumas! This was a wonderful opportunity that I am very grateful for, and I am really impressed by the depth of performance we managed to find by the end of our time together – commitment, energy, and fun!

Bridget Kennedy 

I feel like much of the Gecko methodology is about building trust – trust in the process, trust within the group and trust in yourself. During the two day workshop in April we were presented with some very challenging exercises, but being together in a room full of people who were fully committed to the journey made it possible for me to let go of preconceptions and engage with the process. I enjoyed the moments of playfulness and have come away even more convinced than before of the power of touch. After two days of intensive physical and emotional work I was feeling a bit raw, very tired but that I had learnt, or maybe re-learnt something about my body and how it can move with other bodies. Peeling away and then building up layers of movement, breath, expression, awareness, voice, rhythm felt like a lesson in the complexity of human communication.