Inauguration of "Emotions in Silence at Cendeac

The inauguration of the Workshop, “Emotions in Silence”, with the collaboration of the actors John Malpede and Henriette Brouwers, was really remarkable. We enjoyed having the use of Space 5 at Cendeac/Centro Párraga, a spacious room adapted to contemporary theatre acts. We started by forming a big circle with all the participants: people with Alzheimer, families and friends, medical team and drama students at the School of Drama in Murcia. We were almost 40 in total!

John and Henriette directed the seminar, encouraging interaction between people and participation at all times.

After participating in the game of greeting and a physical and mental warm-up exercise, the people with Alzheimer sat down with their families to look at Bill Viola’s video “Six heads”; to look at the progressive change of the emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, awe and the state of sleeping/dreaming). It was really an unexpected experience to feel the peace and tranquillity transmited by this group of people. They fixed their attention without distractions on the images in a very slow motion and responded with empathy to the feelings with facial gestures. It was an experience that lasted for the whole length of the installation, 20 minutes!

Then the group, together with John and Henriette, returned to their seats in the circle and all the participants took part in a play of how to “transport” an emotion from one person to the next. This initiated a lot of laughter, to see how the emotion changed along the way.

We finished the day by creating small groups between the people with Alzheimer and the students, with the aim to connect them through the emotions. It was really important to reach/connect to the emotion and not to be in a hurry of leaving it. It was not a matter of imitating the “smile” or the “anger”, but to feel the emotions.

It was a really good start!