Ploughing Boulder

International audienc

From Grounded Foot to Leaping Foot

This research project developed from a realisation that there was a missing link between movement work for grounding and the next demand on the student to jump. Debbie Green and Ita O'Brien began their research, ‘From grounded foot to leaping foot’ in February 2009, proposing the statement ‘grounding is a pre-requisite’ as the premise from which to start the investigation into how the use of the feet can be developed to take the actor from this deeply grounded place to jump and leap safely. The work is explored within the context of fundamental movement for the acting student with the aim of maximising the actor's physical choices within her/his expressive work. From being grounded to leaping is quite literally a big ‘leap’ for acting students to make. Following nine months of research (March–December 2009), Green and O'Brien led a series of six practical sessions with nine volunteer actors between January and March 2010 to develop the progression from the ground, through the rigour and preparation required to take the body into a jump and leap, to the strength and articulation required to land safely. The work was then presented as a Practice and Pedagogy Forum, to an invited audience within the Research Events programme at Central School of Speech & Drama on 26 October 2010. The work has subsequently been taken back into the classroom. This article is the culmination of the research into the progression of work, ‘From grounded foot to leaping foot’

The drama of doing: occupation and the here-and-now

In this reflective discussion of Playback Theatre, parallels are drawn between occupation and drama, as a thing that is done, an embodied performance. Playback is considered from the perspectives of both performers, who respond to the teller's autobiographical narrative and the audience, who witness the performers’ and the teller's response. The moment of enactment of the story is presented as a kind of threshold, where the performers are in the moment and aware of the moment as they listen and begin to respond to the story. They tune into their somatic and emotional responses, call forth personal experiences that elicit ‘empathic imagination’, and listen for the imagery, emotions and cultural narratives embedded in the story. Knowledge of theatrical conventions, sequences remembered from previous performances, and collaboration with fellow performers compound the mix. The performance is discovered as it unfolds, with the phenomenological essence of the story creatively revealed in the doing. Understanding how ideas and artworks are created through and in the doing, it is proposed, is important if occupational science is to understand how the present is infused with the past, even as we inhabit the here and now

Winter daily precipitation variability over Cumbria, Northwest England

Daily precipitation totals at 55 sites were used to investigate geographic variability in winter (DJF) rainfall over Cumbria, NW England, over an 11-year period. Winter is the wettest season (> 800 mm in the mountainous Lake District), with rainfall mechanisms closely linked to North Atlantic forcing. The Lamb weather type catalogue was used to identify rainfall distributions under different wind directions. Precipitation magnitude over Cumbria is much more sensitive to a change in wind direction than the geographic pattern in rainfall, with southwesterly (easterly) winds producing the highest (lowest) spatially averaged daily rainfall totals of 8.2 mm (0.6 mm). S-mode principal components analysis was used to identify the main patterns of precipitation variability. Three principal components (PCs) were retained as being statistically significant (cumulative explained variance for unrotated PCs = 84.3%), with a correlated PC structure (direct oblimin rotation) best describing the spatial variance in rainfall. PC 1 has a very high index of strength (variance measure = 40.9), indicating that there is one dominant rainfall pattern. PC 1 shows a gradient between wetter conditions in southwest Cumbria and over the central Lake District and drier conditions in NE Cumbria, and is usually caused by active zonal west to southwest flows. Almost of equal importance to PC 1 is PC 3 (variance measure = 39.3), which has a more uniform rainfall distribution than PC 1 and is usually caused by fronts stalling over the region. PC 2, which shows an east to west decline in rainfall totals, is much less important than PCs 1 and 3 (variance measure = 18.6). PC 2's rainfall pattern can be caused by easterly flows with high pressure over Scandinavia and low pressure over the Continent, or by strong southwesterly flows, with depressions often centred over Scotland. Finally, cluster analysis was carried out to identify precipitation regions for all days and for each wind direction. Clusters were found to be largely stable to changes in wind direction, with stations in the central Lake District often clustered together, thus highlighting the importance of orographic enhancement of rainfall in this region