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Overheard a conversation about acting & improvisation, it took me back to when I was about 8, we had a teacher that was dramatic about drama and acting in many forms.
As I said we were 8 the most dramatic thing we ever had was school lunches with over cooked Brussels sprouts!
She would have us (about 30 in the class) strike a pose on her subject be it a building, a strangled turkey, it made no sense to us but we would have to stand there until she had inspected and asked each one what we thought we were portraying.
All it did was make our arms ache and wish we were somewhere else.
Then, one day she asked for something simple a tree.
This I thought was easy, all around me striking poses with legs akimbo and arms outstretched, obviously going to give pain as the minutes past.
Me? I just lay down on the floor.
She walked around asking the usual banal questions and getting the usual banal answer, she left me until last, when after 15 or so minutes and the rest of the class standing in agony she demanded to know what I was supposed to be.
A tree said I.
Annoyance showed on her face, a tree, a tree? (Her voice was painfully shrill) how are YOU a tree?
Well miss, there was a terrible gale and I got blown over in the wind.
Did she compliment my imagination? No, she dragged me to the headmasters office for disrupting the class.
The poor man was in tears and holding back his laughter because he could see what I had done, but not to upset this unimaginative women any further he gave me 100 lines to write out and bring to him the following day.
2 hours later I was taken aside by him in the playground and told I don't need to write the lines just try not to be so imaginative with that teacher in future.