Contact Jam (L2)

What sensibilities do you need to develop to be successful in a Contact Jam?

To be successful in a physical theatre contact jam you need to be able to demonstrate many different sensibilities confidently. You need to be able to be intimate with another person and therefore you should also be capable of comfortable self exploration. A contact improvisation jam has potential to be an extremely dangerous exercise, meaning there are many sensibilities that are extremely important to develop before practicing the technique.  

The ability to make physical offers to your partner is one of the extremely important sensibilities in a contact jam, as is the ability to accept other people’s offers and then to respond appropriately to these offers in a mature way. With so many individuals working closely together, it is vital to offer physical movements to others that allow your partner to create an originally organic physical response and as one movement flows in to the next, there should be a palpable energy in the room during the contact jam.

Maturity is also a very important sensibility that all of the training actors must employ during a contact jam, because the entire exercise involves vigorous spontaneity and intimate physical contact with other training actors, therefore it is extremely simple to ruin the entire improvisation if any individuals within the group are uncommitted to the work. The focus of the entire group will be instantly diffused and the palpable energy in the room is lost. Mutual respect is also required for the focus of the group as well as yourself in order to understand your own personal physical boundaries.

Another one of the sensibilities needed to be successful in a contact jam is spatial awareness. 


Although contact improvisation requires a very flexible body (something that personally I found quiet difficult and an area of my personal being that I must work on to improve) a contact improvisation jam can often include a very large amount of people in a small confined space and therefore lots of collisions and even injuries are likely to occur. It is absolutely integral that you are aware of any collisions that occur and react accordingly, but you should try to avoid them and being especially aware of the nature of those around you.

This is a movement that I found interesting whilst researching professional Physical Theatre performances. I think this position is successful because they are not holding each other using hands or legs, they are contacting each other using core and this is a very challenging movement. 


I hope that throughout the devising process I could possibly include this in our piece. However, this position requires extreme focus and confidence with one another because if not performed correctly, accidents could occur.