Fighting Machines | Session

1. Form a circle (if you have more than 10 students have them make 2 or even 3 circles) facing in. Ask one student from each group to start the exercise by standing in the middle of the circle and, by making a gesture accompanied by a sound, beginning the process of making an imaginary machine. They should choose a gesture and accompanying sound that they can sustain for 3/4 minutes. One by one encourage the other students gradually to add their physical presence and become part of the machine, contributing a new movement and sound as they do so. Continue these until all of them are physically and vocally involved. When this has happened and the full machine 'run' for a minute or so, change the nature of the machine from mechanical to abstract.

2. Ask the students to repeat the exercise but this time in order to make, for example, an 'American' machine or a ‘French’ machine. If time permits go on to others - a 'Shakespeare' machine, a War machine, finally a Henry V machine. You can see an example from a workshop conducted at the National Theatre of making an image of the play.

Try to make the construction process as spontaneous as possible by encouraging the use of the first gesture and sound that comes to mind. The work can and will produce clichés as well as more original gestures and sounds; it can result in some arresting images. In the context of Henry V if the students have constructed, say, an 'English,' followed by a 'French' machine, it gives an ideal platform to move into a discussion of national stereotypes, nationalism, and heroic images, and their relationship to ideas and issues in Shakespeare's play. Similarly, a war machine may, by exploring images of war, raise gender-based issues. For example, are the male students' images and actions different from those of the females in the group, and if so why is this? In the West, in largely macho, homophobic cultures, is war one of the few opportunities for male bonding where men can experience and display emotions that are otherwise denied a legitimate outlet? Watch the sequence “Once More Unto the Breach”, from the battle of Agincourt as it was staged at the National Theatre in 2003.