Tuesday morning I made my way over to the Tarragon Theatre at 30 Bridgman Avenue in Toronto for a workshop with some of Theatre Gargantua's core members. Before the new year, I sent an email inquiring about possible workshop participation to the Theatre Gargantua admin. I had previously seen some very visually pleasing works by the group, and as a budding Toronto theatre individual, I recognized that this company had much to teach me about the creative ensemble technique of devising theatre.

Theatre Gargantua is well known for its deep respect to the individual theatre creator, letting actors be part of the writing and directing processes as well as inviting individuals from all types of artistic backgrounds to contribute in making the theatre product. The work is often very physically based, sometimes even having individual actors climbing ropes and holding extremely physically demanding positions for long lengths of time. The work often has a strong audio element as well, making many of the pieces celebratory of the actor once again, as they are expected to perform very physically demanding theatre while helping to create the sound scape of the piece. Impressive to be sure.

My first workshop inquiry was followed by an explanation that the company had just completed a number of workshops, but I would be informed of any in the near future. It wasn't until a week ago, Friday June the 12th, that Jacquie Thomas, the company's artistic director, emailed me. Jacquie invited me to a workshop on the following Tuesday at the Tarragon Theatre apologizing for the lateness of the email explaining my original inquiry had been lost in the email world shuffle. Figures, but yes, I agreed.

Once at the Tarragon, I tried to prepare myself for something quite different than anything else I've experienced in a while as I am not an actor, but a writer and director, and have not attended an acting workshop in a long time. In the upstairs studio, 5 eager-faced individuals and myself met 3 Theatre Gangatua ambassadors who would be leading us in our three hour workshop journey. First, Jacquie herself made clear her role as the overall leader of the experience. Her calm, confident demeanor made her the ideal choice to be the decision maker of the trio. Michael Spence and Joel Benson identified themselves as the demonstrators and movement leaders for the day. Micheal, a strong, energetic man's man and Joel an encouraging sprite-like powerhouse.

Beginning any workshop with a warm-up is important, but when you really use that warm-up to prepare you for what is to come it becomes an oh so vital part of the workshop process. Immediately, the warm-up introduced the very physical nature of the next couple of hours and the experimental environment the workshop would take on. Michael and Joel took turns leading the group in pilates style exercises and tried to initiate the group in choral movements. Lift, tuck, hold, reach, breath, roll, curl, things my body hadn't really been expected to do in a while. Rusty, to say the least, but I felt a smile broadening as the blood started pumping encouragingly through my body.

The end of the warm-up nicely segwayed into what the Lead Trio kept referring to as the "base positions". Always two handers demonstrated by Michael and Joel, the base positions where physical body holds where one individual is responsible for being a base to the other. The holds implement stability, strength, and flexibility having the coupling fluidly move in, through, and out the positions. All the individuals in the room rhythmically coupled and released while having support from the other participants in the room both physically and verbally. A key element to all these base positions is the reversibility of each movement. By this I mean, anyone can be both the base or the one being held, as weight is distributed fairly equally between both parties. At first I wasn't convinced of the reversibility. It wasn't until the man's man Michael climbed up and over my shoulder as if he was a 90lbs girl that I understood what the heck they were getting on about. My doubts were legitimately squashed.

As the session came together I was sucked into the tremendous positive energy that ballooned in the room: Positivity feeding positivity feeding confidence feeding strength feeding respect feeding endurance feeding me. Phrases like "You are stronger than you believe!" and praise like "Beautiful!", "Excellent!", and "Lovely!" were thrown around a lot by instigators and participators alike. Although in some environments these words would come off insincere, as everyone was developing the world of the room together, the encouragement and positivity was an integral step in moving onto the next stages of the workshop.

Breath, I began to notice, was crucial in keeping the collective together in rhythm for the day. As we moved in and out of base positions, the collective kept a breath rhythm that helped determine when each movement was to be performed. Also, Jacquie would periodically bring the collective into physical stillness where we would develop the audio part of the process. While the group kept a constant sound or noise, Jacquie would instigate both individual and coupled "sound journeys" where you were invited to let noise organically flow from inside yourself. I was struck by the beauty of some of the improvised sound journeys. It always amazes me what can come out of seemingly nowhere.

After a well deserved quick break for a bite of food, Jacquie revealed one of her secrets to writing the pieces. "Everything starts with lists," she explained, "they're simple, direct, and to the point." So the next step in our workshop was to create two lists; one describing the things we think the world should have more of and the other illustrating those things we wish the world had less of. Some lists were longer than others containing typical things like wishing there was less violence, poverty, ect and others containing not so typical choices like wanting more little rubber balls, lobster meals, and fountains.

To combine all that we had learned we were individually responsible to come up with movements that described action words like kill and protect. With these movements the collective created a sequence bringing it all together in a seamless movement piece. This piece was then brought to life with music and Jacquie periodically chose different leaders for the sequence in which we performed in a theatrical way, Jacquie herself being our sole audience member. It was then that the collective brought in the audio element verbalizing the lists we had created about what we wanted more and less of in this world. The performance was repetitive in its style, but with each new leader the piece took on a different feel and held new meaning.

As I was a part of the sequence I was able to be aware of the fact that this movement was inspiring, uplifting, courageous. In many of my theatre experiences lately the theme is to condemn, shock, accuse, I was happy to celebrate a different feeling, a different want: positivity. So refreshing. I want my world to have more time for writing. I want my world to have less rodents. I want my world to have more fountains. I want my world to be more like this moment.

If you would like to know more about Theatre Gargantua and their upcoming workshops and/or performances please visit their website at http://www.theatregargantua.ca/.

If you would like to know more about the venue/theatre company the Tarragon Theatre please visit their website at http://www.tarragontheatre.com/.

Thanks for reading. Have a good one!