Sunday 8 March 2009

From Year 3 to Year 7 in a day!

This week was the beginning of our schools workshops. We are aiming for at least 30 and we have already done 4 so we are doing well. I have participated in 3 so far , 2 at Crane Park Primary and 1 at The Green School. Before we went into Crane Park I was really nervous as I had never done any drama workshops with primary school children before. However once we got started it was brilliant! The children really responded to our interpretation of Egypt and helped us a lot by using their imagination. We have lots of good material from them like a tree of sweets, a princess who is very friendly but is quite lonely because she isn’t like a normal girl. Going into the school proved to us that we can actually do anything in our show and as long as we believe in it the children will believe in it to.

The Year 7’s we worked with were very lively. They are a drama club and so are very enthusiastic about the whole project. I think they are very excited about the fact that will be helping us design the project. We started the workshop with a name game; Prisoner and Guard and then played Bang Splat which the children already knew how to play. Then we played Yes Lets which really got them riled up. After this I had to tell them a story but because they had so much energy I had to find a way to calm them down so I asked them to lie on the floor and take deep breaths in and out. This really helped and they listened to the story without any fidgeting or talking. We then put them into four different groups and they created an improvisation to finish off the story. The work they came up with was all really nice, though slightly 2-D but I think once we start working with them more they will create more meaty performances.

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