A day in the life of a Making Theatre Student

Let one of our making Theatre students tell you about a typical day at Mind the Gap..

My name is Alison Short and I am currently in my second year on the Making Theatre Course at MTG. Although I hadn’t done any theatre since I was about 12 I have always embraced drama and knew that I would really enjoy it.

I’m going to tell you a little bit about an average day on Making Theatre.

I live quite close to MTG Studios so I walk in the mornings and usually arrive somewhere between 9.30 – 9.45am, one of the good things about our new studios is that we all have our own key fobs to let ourselves into the building. When I arrive there are usually other people from my course and members of the Acting Company already there, so I will leave my bag in my locker and go sit in AllSpace and have a general chat about what we have all been upto, but running upto productions we will all chat about that.

One of my responsibilities is keeping the register so just before the start of session I tick off everyone who has arrived. Our week is mainly split into Acting, Directing and Design Skills so depending on what we are doing that day we will move off to one of the studios – generally if we are doing Acting or Directing we work in Studio Three and Design in Studio Two.

On the days when we have Acting Skills we usually start with some warm-up exercises. Then we start a script and go through the story to adapt it so everyone can understand it and make it our own story.

Through Directing Skills, we all get the chance to direct everyone to hone our technique as directors. Being a good director isn’t as easy as people think, a good director should praise and offer criticism too which can be difficult for a kind hearted lot like Making Theatre, but we are all friends and know that criticism helps us improve.

Often, in Design Skills, we will make 3D models and this week in one of the sessions we were making models of moths and I helped my friend Jonathan to make a cube out of folding paper. I must admit I am a bit of a perfectionist so in design skills I like to have time to think and get an idea of what is possible before I start.

Normally our we do Acting skills on a Monday, Directing on a Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday are Design days – we get Friday’s off to rest after all our hard work!

Morning break is at 11.30am and we meet with the Acting Company in Allspace and have a drink from the kitchen, I have had kitchen training so I can go in and make a drink – usually a cup of tea if its cold! And after break we go back to what we were doing until lunch.

On the days when we have Acting Skills we usually start with some warm-up exercises. Then, generally, we start a script and go through the story to adapt so everyone can understand it and make it our own story.

The day finishes at 3pm, some of my friends get a taxi home and I walk to the bus stop with everyone else then leave them there and head home.