Create Theater or Live Melodrama! Implications of Large Groups for Experiential Workshops.

(This observations have a caveat of an American and first-time visitor to the Philippines.  I could be misinterpreting or missing cultural cues.  These are exploratory observations and open to revision!)

My Cabin John neighbor -- Caroline Casey -- says:  "Create theater or live melodrama!"  When we are in melodrama, we are passive and driven by outside forces.  When we creating theater, we are active and moving in harmony with interior and exterior forces.

Creating theater instead of living melodrama is the core of the Heroic Improvisation workshop.  Participants create their own moves to disaster instead of being driven by fear or passivity.

We completed our largest Filipino workshop yet:  24 people in a special needs school.  We went over our maximum workshop participation of 16 by 8 people.

These extra eight people made a difference in the quality of the experience we could create with the Heroic Improvisation workshop.  It appeared to me that because the intensity of the experience was diluted with the larger group, that participants could have been more passive during the worskhop.  The larger group slowed:

• developing trust in the group
• sharing of feelings and
• building momentum towards group action in the workshop.

Our ending exercise was an unimaginable, dramatic event in the school.  The participants' feedback stated that they wanted more drama associated with simulation.  We were holding back our theater special effects because we didn't want to freak anyone out. 

I'm wondering if participants wanted more drama because the size of the group lent to passive participation.  That in the larger group people feel the need for more MELODRAMA, because the participants did NOT create their own THEATER in the workshop.

Just an exploratory observation...would love your thoughts here or dr.marytysz@ymail.com