Dressing up Duckie: Marisa Carnesky in C'est Barbican! Photograph: Tristram Kenton
Wearing a feather boa, with stockings and shoes on my arms and hands, and writhing around like an octopus in front of complete strangers isn't usually my idea of a fun night out. But that's exactly what I found myself doing on Tuesday. How did I get myself into this? Oh yes, silly me, I signed up for it.
Mark Ravenhill recently wrote an article on how he dreaded doing workshops, suggesting no one is getting much out of them. I thought I'd try a couple, starting with Carnivalesque, a workshop at BAC in burlesque, magic, horror and sideshow in theatre practice led by Marisa Carnesky.
A member of the Duckie troupe and the force behind Ghost Train, Carnesky has a chirpy manner and models her look on the Tattooed Lady in the psychotically kitsch cult movie Santa Sangre: she has ornate peacocks and dragons peeking out from under the sleeves of her T-shirt. She's soon dividing up the participants - mainly from BAC's Young People's Theatre programme - into groups to work on short pieces. We're given props: dismembered plastic hands; a pack of playing cards; Victorian nighties; stilettos; fake knives; the kind of wig that looks as though it might bite you; and a pile of stockings.
In a startlingly short time, one team enthusiastically devises a scenario about a magician who meets a sticky end when his slaughtered assistants come back to life. Another creates a creepy Victorian séance conducted largely in the dark. The group I'm in is not quite so together. Our theme is a sinister cabaret at the end of the world (I play a freak called The Legged Lady), but what we've come up with isn't a piece: it's a mess. When it's our turn to perform, I feel slightly queasy and seriously consider hiding in the toilet and smoking a cigarette. But as Carnesky helps us to give some shape to our ragbag of ideas, I become so absorbed that I forget I'm making a tit of myself in public and I start to have fun.
Workshops may not give you all the answers to how to make a show, but if you're lucky, they'll kick-start your imagination. The session with Carnesky reminded me that theatre can start from something as simple as a bunch of people mucking around with daft costumes, though it will be a while before I put on stockings again without blushing.
