2024 – Exploring the Act
Six day workshop at Sigtuna Folkhögskola
This is the results from the Exploring the Act workshop 2024.
Participants
14 students from 8 nations:
Finland
Germany
Hungary
Northern Ireland
Norway
Spain
Sweden
USA
Instructors
2024
Peter Gröning – Instructor
Oskar Hejll – Instructor
Extra lectures
Ottar Kraemer – Pyrotechnics.
Jim Steinmeyer – Zoom lecture.
Response rate: 93%.
13 of 14 participants responded to the survey.
Average points: 83.31 of 90.
Learning Objectives • Bonus • Course Design • Challenges • Safe space • Workload • Contributions • Venue • Satisfaction • Extra events • Teachers • Expectations • Value • Changes • Future • Final comments
Learning Objectives
In the stated learning objectives, certain promises were made. It was stated that on completion of the workshop, the student should have improved specific skills and abilities, as well as having gained new knowledge:
- Exploring the Act 2024
- Have a better understanding of how a magic act is constructed.
- Feel more comfortable with indepth artistic research.
Was the actual content of the course relevant to these learning objectives?
1: I do not agree at all / 10: I agree completely
Comments
It is harder to stick to the course plan in Exploring the act. I felt, that everyone needed a different time to complete each task. (Partly because we all arrived with acts which were in different stages of completeness.) So some of us completed some of the tasks later than others (I was about 1 day behind of others the whole time.) That’s why we decided that on the last two days we do not stick to the objectives that strictly but work on our acts in our own tempo.
Jag har gått många år innan och det är alltid bra men det här året är nog det bästa hittills.
There was not exactly anything new that I didn’t know already from previous conjuring courses. However, it was good to review all the tools again and put them into use.
Most of the content was very appropriate, useful, and exhaustive. If I had to think of something to comment on, I’d say that the methodology could be somewhat more focused and specific. I enjoyed the group work sessions and discussions, but perhaps some “hands-on” work, practical examples, or practical theatre work would be nice additions.
During the course, many ideas emerged either from the facilitator or from fellow students. A bit more theoretical background could have been fruitful.
I wasn’t sure exactly what “Exploring the Act” would entail but after starting in familiar territory with reviewing all of the tools we explored in previous courses, I was surprised that we moved onto focus on some things that we never focused on previously. This course allowed us to explore storytelling in a lot more depth than previous courses. And learning how to make conscious choices in our performances to stay true to the character and our stories. Both these things make what we are doing clearer to the audience and ultimately make our material understandable and in turn more enjoyable to watch from an audiences perspective.
All the content was indeed aimed at the stated goals. There might be some room for making it more explicit and perhaps try to not only focus on the most common ways of constructing an act but also other types and even bad examples so as to know what to avoid.
Exploring the act: upplägget fungerade mycket bra. Jag gillade att vi började med teori de första dagarna och sparade det praktiska arbetet till lite senare. Annars hade risken varit att man börjat jobba med sin akt och kört på i gamla hjulspår i stället för att försöka tillämpa de nya idéerna.
Det är en suverän lyx att med mycket tid och noggrannhet undersöka sitt material. Mer därtill omgiven av erfarna och kompetenta kollegor/ lärare.