How to make a car using physical theatre?

Depends on a couple of things – is the audience seeing the car from the front or the side? Is anyone supposed to be in the car?

If it is seen from the front, you could have to people kneeling at the front to represent the headlights (they could have torches too?), possibly with their inside arms linked for the bonnet/front grill. You could then have two people standing directly behind them with their arms stretched in front to become the windows/doors. Fifth person could become the steering wheel etc..

You need to think of whether what you’re creating is obviously a car to an audience. Maybe try out a few ideas and either get a non-A level drama friend to take a photo or tell you what they think you’re creating. You could also incorporate chairs or rostrum if you have them.

INTERPRET IT HOWEVER YOU LIKE!

Be creative within your thinking, just because you are recreating a car doesn’t mean it has to fall into a GCSE/A-LEVEL style cliche. eg – people being the wheels, head lights, arms-for-steering-wheel’s etc. Unless of course you want to go down the easy route.

It’s physical remember, so ask as many questions within your group about your physical response/representation of what you associate with a car OR car journey – you will come up with a wealth of ideas to work from. For example, I relate car journeys with restlessness, bumpiness or texture of the road surface, boredom OR adventure, something swinging from the rear-view mirror, sound and hypnotizing motion of the wind screen wipers. And so on…

Once you have some of these ideas maybe mess around with a few of them together each time. Let one person step outside the scene and watch to give feedback. Personally, when I watch physical theatre it’s less about having a full representation in front of you – it is most interesting when I can relate to a couple of divised attributes to whatever you are creating. Plus, If you use the car in your piece more than once you will be grateful if you can easily create it just by using a few well thought through and quirky ideas to represent it. And of course this means you will never sacrifice the flow of the transitions into the piece.

Most of all have fun with it! Hope this provoked some thoughts for you, best of luck.