Creative Beginnings

After matriculating on the Monday Tuesday was the first proper day to get to meet everyone at the academy. We had a meeting with Maggie Kinloch in the Ath where she gave quite an inspiring speech about the relevance with what we are all doing in regard to the economy and more than that to society as a whole. It made me feel quite lucky to be studying in the Arts . She made a point about imagining a world without films or music etc and it's good to be able to learn something that is connected with something people choose to spend what little free time they have coming to see.

The creative beginnings was defenitley a good way of bringing everyone together. It was good to meet they guys from the DFTV course etc. I don't think we would really get to know them otherwise but now the different groups can say hello in the common room or the corridor or whatever.

Sometimes I felt the creative beginnings threw us all together a little too quickly. It's fine being friendly to new folk and it's good making new friends but I did find some of what we were expected to do a bit off putting. I don't particulary like discussing personal topics or bad memories with people I've known for years never mind folk I've known for a few days. Public displays of emotion are not something I really feel comfortable with or really think is necessary. However I can see the value in using these exercises to make people see that they do have things in common, fears, dreams bad habbits etc.

Later on in the week we got the chance to meet some graduates from the academy and see some examples of their work. One that I was quite impressed with was from a graduate of CCP. It was from "Trilogy" and was the third in what should become a Trilogy of productions. It was quite a political piece and involved naked feminists which is always going to get a reaction. There were women of all body types and ages dancing naked on stage. It was quite agressive and angry and it really had a power about it. The fact that the women were up there naked and just not giving a fuck really impressed me. At the same though I was quite angered by the show. I felt a bit like it was making assumptions of the way men percieve women that are just unfair. Firstly it's a bit big headed to assume that just because you are female men are going to see you as a sexual object and secondly the type of guy that would just see women as pieces of meat aren't all that likely to end up going to see Trilogy. Some of the ideas and opinions raised in the show I didn't like but most of it impressed me and it defenitley got me thinking which is quite an imrpessive feat.