Orpheus Centre: Day 1

First day at the Orpheus Centre, and if there was a word to sum up the entire experience it would be... AMAZING!!!

The Orpheus Centre is an organisation that was founded by entertainer and musician Richard Stilgoe in his former family home in Godstone in 1998. The centre promotes transistion into independent living; providing opportunities for young independent adults to promote personal development through Performing Atrts so they gain the skills to live independently in the community and to make informed choices about their futures.

Over the next two weeks Salwa and Juancho are members of a team of enablers (this consists of dancers, musicians, artists, actors and writers) which will work in partnership on all artistic activities with a group of tutors and the students from the centre, in order to produce a resounding show that will be staged at the Linbury Studio in the Royal Opera House.

Today we met with the entire team (a group of about 40 people) in their theatre which is a lovely converted barn. In this morning's session we explored a number of games which involved the entire group, one to one and small group work in order to learn everyone's names and their personal interests. Bearing in mind this is the first time all parties of the group have come together, by the end of the morning session, in agreement with Danny, the director of the centre, we were delighted with what we had achieved as it seemed as though we had known and worked with one another for a long time.

For the rest of the afternoon the group was divided into three small groups where we explored elements of the performance through devising ideas and games. We also learned a couple of songs that were written by some of the students and with these we brought the day to an end.

The plan for the rest of this first week is to devise all the material that we will use in the performance and use the second week for polishing and tech and dress rehearsals.

We shall be keeping you updated on the process.

Salwa and Juancho ;-)