ABSTRACT
Training and improvisation played an integral role in Joan Littlewood's rehearsals, which acknowledged the centrality of the performer's physical skill, imagination, spontaneity and creativity within collaborative processes. This chapter provides practical suggestions for working with documentary sources that specifically relate to Littlewood's early work developing 'Living Newspaper' style agit-prop and her later experience generating Oh What a Lovely War. Littlewood believed that any theatre work, whether it be acting, designing or directing, requires an active imagination to fuel the creative process. The chapter divides into three broad sequences: the first offers preparatory warm-up exercises. The second tackles the practitioners that most inspired Littlewood's methods and provides practical ways to explore Laban's approach to the moving body and efforts, alongside exercises based on Stanislavsky's work to release the imagination. The third sequence outlines more advanced exercises that focus on work with text, ensemble playing and creating theatre out of documentary sources.
