This was our last week of exploring possible material and 'devising' in a sense with the two Year Groups before we begin to 'rehearse' and stage a show with the groups next week. As such, the planning of this week's session was important to ensure we gained as much experimentation as possible before we have to write a script.
YEAR 3 PLAN:
Overall, our session with the Year Three's was hugely successful. It involved a lot of adaptability and improvisation on the part of us as facilitators, since the plan we came up with was in actuality quite loose and not too specific. I feel like this was one of the successes of the workshop since it allowed us to put the children's needs before ourselves, accentuating the principles of community theatre.
Specifically, the visualisation exercise was probably the exercise the Year 3's seemed to resonate with the most - probably because it was almost the exercise that most emulated proper 'acting' with guidance from us as facilitators. We each took a chunk of a visualisation of the children waking up and going christmas shopping, before Croydon gets turned into a jungle and how that unfolds. This was a good structure for helping the exercise to flow easily and for the guidance to be easy for the children to digest while applying it almost immediately. Using the ideas of physicality and emotion, we got the children to grapple more with the detail of the exercise. In hindsight, the masses seemed to more engaged with this and to actually take more of this on board and apply it as this is a concept that we've emphasised over the weeks. Therefore, the repetition over the last few weeks of using your bodies, physicality, face and understanding emotion has definitely been an element that the Year Three's have seemed to understand, and this has been one of the successes of our plans of the workshops.
One of the challenges of the exercise was that it seemed to go all too quickly and nearly ran out of steam. This is an issue we've had before as facilitators: it can sometimes be difficult to time how long each aspect of the activities should go on for - weighing how engaged the children are with the importance of what's coming next. We had seemingly rushed through this activity and it got to the part where Croydon had turned into a jungle and we then didn't know what to do. One of my personal successes was that I thought on the spot and offered suggestions on how we could extend the exercise - using the idea of the animals wandering through the streets of Croydon and having to come across people, traffic lights, zebra crossings etc and how that changes their physicality. Subsequently, this added a new dimension to the activity that the children found quite fun since they were met with an obstacle. Other Year 13's played these obstacles to keep the energy alive - for example, Sofianne played a ticket inspector on a tram, which was really successful since it was clearly something the Year 3's took on really seriously and found really fun as a concept to play with.
As such, this visualisation exercise, keeping in touch with the original brief we were given from the beginning of working with the Year 3's is something that I think could definitely go into the script that we will create for the final showing with the Year 3's. It follows a narrative, was something that the children really engaged with and as such is definitely feasible as an aspect within the showing.
Again, the soundscape exercise was successful since sound is something we haven't massively touched on within the workshops so far, but became something that likewise could also be put into the script for the showing. The children were a bit shy coming up with sounds that represented Croydon at first, since we were stood in the circle, yet with the encouragement from us as facilitators, this problem was tackled with quickly, as we were able to make all children feel safe and not obligated to participate if they felt truly uncomfortable. The variation of sounds that the children demonstrated was amazing - it really captivated me as the exercise emphasised how much children can really see things in a new extraordinary light to you, having such vivid and undamaged imaginations. Because of this, I think this exercise really gave the Year 3's ownership over the work and as a result should be something that is implemented into the script.
YEAR 1 PLAN:
A primary challenge that we faced from the onset of this session was that one of the facilitators in our group forgot to bring a speaker which was quite necessary for the dinosaur dance. As such, I wasn't available for the first bit of the workshop as myself and Lucie were trying to source a speaker. Nevertheless, the basis of the workshop warm up which focused on physicality was successful structurally since like with the Year 3's, physicality is a concept we've been repeating and some of the skills the children have learnt have started to come to fruition by this point in the process. Pretending to be dinosaurs who the children are learning about in their lessons is something the children really like, as they can apply the knowledge they've learnt to physical reality, and I think that's hugely fun for them and allows them to learn in different ways.
Extending the session from last week, we divided the group up into smaller groups and endeavoured on developing the idea of 'hot-seating' further. This is an exercise that we've developed on with various stages over a couple of weeks, so it wasn't foreign to the Year 1's, and they were able to feel safe and comfortable while learning about the dramatic technique of hot seating. They seemed to enjoy using the prop of the dinosaur mask and asking eachother questions. There was about two facilitators in every group yet the children seemed to embrace this with maturity so in my experience we didn't face many issues. One thing that we had to try and aim to do as facilitators over this exercise was encourage the children as usual, since many still needed to be almost shown an example of how they would interact with the dinosaur before doing it themselves. With me and Stash joining in with our group, it didn't just help the children feel more comfortable but also made it a little bit more real for them, since we were equally as enthusiastic and committed to the idea of a dinosaur being in the group. The exercise of hot seating is also a really effective way of getting young children to understand emotion and empathy, as well as how to build characters. There was a tender improvisational element to the exercise which gave the children more freedom and challenge who were playing the dinosaurs, while the children questioning the dinosaurs were able to understand what it's like to 'put yourself in another person's shoes'. There was an almost forum theatre introductory feeling to this aspect of the workshop. As such, this hot seating exercise was a really great and successful element of the workshop.
The final stage of the workshop involved Luke and Lucie teaching the Year 1's a short dinosaur dance, which we are hoping to implement into the show next week. From my knowledge from the children's theatre unit from Year 12, dance and song are things that children really engage with since they are quite bold and extravagant and fun. By tieing this into the show, we are trying to ensure that there is variety and moments of colour and fun where the children can perhaps feel a bit more free in doing something a bit silly. The children took on learning the dance quite seriously, and Luke and Lucie executed the exercise effectively through implementing the idea of a handshake and so different children would interact with their other classmates.
Overall, this session was successful in developing character, physicality and emotion in preparation for the beginning of our rehearsals next week. In hindsight, I think that we could have been slightly more creative in trying to add more exercises into the workshop in order to make the most out of our last devising session with the children, nevertheless we still have plentiful material that we can use when creating a script.
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