Alice in Wonderland

The group begin in a similar manner to previous rehearsals. The first lesson's work will focus on a scene in a boat.

The bad news:

The pace of development would make a glacier seem a bit racy.  With 3 weeks until xmas it is not clear that the project has a structure or a particularly well defined aim.  While there is work going on when the group is not on stage, it does not include preparing the group to make better use of the stage time.  The actors are not developing performance skills.  Attempts at creative ideas during the improvisation - e.g. when an actor uses an appropriately Victorian expression / attempts to develop character - there is sometimes an outburst of laughter because the group are not expecting someone to break into character.  This has the effect of stopping them pretty quickly.

When the group does stop, there are creative opportunities that are not explored and risk remaining unexplored: for example the idea of Reverend Dodgson's friend telling the girls the story of the plagues of Egypt or some other particularly violent episode from the Old Testament - is a good one because it contrasts with Dodgson's imaginative story telling.  There is much that can be done with this if the group reflects on what has been creative or successful in the first hour.

The good news:

Had one person attempted to script the scene in the boat ahead of today then there may have been creative opportunities that were missed.  The sketchy results of this hour's work at least has a sense of the different voices / characters in the scene.  By physically entering the space and trying to develop interactions the group do capture a certain amount of spontaniety in the conversation: the characters take turns and follow on from eachother more organically than they would had someone attempted to write a scene for 5 actors.

Ways forward:
Change the way you are devising.  Currently the group work as an amalgam. Let individuals take charge of different parts of the product, rather than all being involved in everything all the time.

Most importantly stop trying to create drama out of nothing.  You need objectives; goals; a clear idea of whether the moment is happy or sad or visually engaging or fast or slow; most of all you need a whole lot of stimulus material.  Lewis Carroll's writings are full of material.  There are chess pieces and playing cards and flamingoes and Jabberwockies and mirrors.... and that is only what is in the Alice Books.  What about "The Hunting of the Snark"? what about his other poems and riddles?  Perhaps the idea that the novel has to be adhered to is where things are going awry?

Just take the Walrus and the Carpenter.  All that brown bread, sand, oysters, sealing wax and candle strings - now what can be done with that, I wonder?  What other items, props, ideas, explorative activities, modes of speech, characters, subjects, meanings, movements might be brought on to the stage in order to do something creative  - perhaps Dodgson and his friend, rowing the boat, are in fact the Walrus and the Carpenter - a sort of bizarre double act / odd couple who barely make sense even to each other...

So.

More stimulus material.  More lateral thinking.  More individual leadership. That's about the best advice I can offer.