Once upon a time....

Stories have always been a really important part of my upbringing. Coming from an Irish family I think this was amplified for me. I remember vividly being read to when I was younger and whenever the family get together you always find a new story to listen to, or hear one you haven't heard for ages. I think that storytelling is such an important part of childhood and is definitely needed to bring parents and children closer together. I think this is partly why I wanted to be a part of the creative team.

I have participated in quite a few workshops now and it has become really clear that the children have got amazing imaginations. I truly believe we have the ability to create ANYTHING. The children have given us so many ideas that now we have to sit down and work out what ideas will work for us and them.
The creative team had a meeting on Thursday and we are taking the weekend to find stories from Greek and Egyptian mythology. Then we are going to come together on Monday and look at the main structures and the themes which run through the stories. Then we will pick our favourite and use this as a springboard for our story.

When I was thinking about the stories I liked from a child the first that came to my head was The Lion and the Mouse which is one of Aesop's fables. I think all of Aesop's fables are brilliant and I always loved reading them when I was younger. I like the fact that they are all very simple and have a clear beginning, middle and end and since they are fables all make a very clear point. Other stories I loved when I was a child were the Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh stories. I don’t think anyone can deny that A.A Milne was a brilliant writer.
When researching Greek myths I remembered read the story of Perseus and Medusa when I was at school. I enjoyed reading the story again and it allows your imagination to run wild. I can see in my minds eye the three Fates and creating the costume for Medusa. The story is this;

Perseus and Medusa

Once there was a good king, but he died. His bad brother killed him so that he could be king. The bad brother needed to get rid of the good king's wife (Danae) and baby (Perseus), but he was afraid to kill them too. So he put them in a wooden chest and he dropped the wooden chest in the ocean. After a long time they drifted ashore in a new kingdom. Perseus and his mother Danae stayed there while Perseus grew up. But after a while the king of the new place wanted to marry Danae, but she didn't want to marry him. This king wanted to get rid of Perseus for awhile so he could make Danae marry him. So the king sent Perseus on a quest, to kill the monster Medusa and bring back her head.

At first Perseus didn't know where to find Medusa, so he went and asked the three Fates. The Fates were very old and they only had one eye and one tooth between them and they took turns every day, passing the eye and the tooth between them. When Perseus came to them, at first they didn't want to tell him where Medusa was. But Perseus waited until they were passing the eye from one to another, and so none of them could see. Then he quick grabbed the eye! The Fates had to tell Perseus where Medusa was in order to get their eye back.
Then Perseus met the god Hermes, who gave him winged sandals to wear so he could fly to where Medusa was, and fight from the air. And he met the goddess Athena, who gave him a sword and a shield. Athena told Perseus not to look at Medusa or her ugliness would turn him to stone. Instead he should use the shield as a mirror and look in that to cut off Medusa's head.

The key to my heart <3

Yesterday myself and Mark went to see Stovepipe at West 12 shopping centre opposite Westfields. Lately I have gone off theatre a bit. I have not seen anything which has really grabbed me in the first few minutes so I've been wrongly or rightly getting a bit bored. But yesterday I was put back on track. Promenade theatre is the key to my heart I think. This show created by National Theatre, Bush Theatre and Hightide had everything a good play needed; good writing; good acting and good direction. I was completly engaged the whole time and really felt apart of the story. Sometimes I find it hard to relate to actors when they are on a typical stage but this was not the case yesterday. The whole cast were engaging and I was really able to connect with the story through them.

The show wasn't too in your face either. Although it is a play about Iraq and the impact war has on soldiers I didn't feel like I was being bombarded with a one-sided argument. I felt that I was being given the opportunity to make up my own mind.

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.

Write what you know?

To start off the 'a night less ordinary' campaign by the Arts Council the Orange Tree offered under 26's to see Greenwash for free lastb night, as well as the chance to go to a pre show discussion with the writer.

I wish the dicussion had been after the show as it was diffciult to understand what everyone was on about. Sometimes I think its funny listening to writers because it is hard for them to be objective; or is that the same for everyone in theatre? At the end of the discussion someone asked 'what is the worst review you have had so far for the show?' David Lewis (the writer) replied with some ummming and erring and finally said a critic from The Times made a 'cheap shot at the american accents'. From the discussion I expected the show to be good, a few who in the audience who had seen the show before all seemed to have like it.

However, I was not particularly impressed by it. The story had the potential to be good but it lacked substance for me. I think this was partly a result of the acting which was over the top as well as the writing. But what irritated me the most was the american accents which were not very good. The whole show did not seem to understand americans and this really bothered me. I ask the question why not use american actors? During the discussion the Lewis explained that he had spent less than 4 weeks in America throughout his whole life. This really showed in the play itself. He clearly did not write what he knew about, rather he took what he had seen on tv and read in the news and wrote a play based on that.

Does the audience matter?

Yesterday I helped Tuan lead the 1st year warm ups in the morning. The students were good and did try but they were somewhat talkative and it was difficult to get them to listen to us. Though Tuan was very good at getting thier attention. As there are so many of them (80 altogether, we only had about 50) it is difficult to play normal drama games so instead the warm up was more about physically warming up rather than mentally. We did play one game with the which was cat and mouse; this works well with them as the majority of the group stand on the edge and 10 are actually playing the game. Although this was the only game they played most of the exercises required to be silent which meant they could really channel their focus and be ready for the day ahead. I found the warm up really helped me to be ready for the day and also focused my attention on what I needed to do as sometimes I can be quite wayward and not get everything I need to do done.

After the warm up myself and Carolina sat and read The Clean House, an american play written by Sarah Ruhl. I personally find it difficult to read plays because I can never immerse myself into them as you would with a book. However I think we have found reading out loud together works well and helped us to follow the action. The play was a bit abstract but the humour was my sort of thing and so I found it was brilliant. I recommend reading it in one go rather than reading bits here and there. The play is ultimately about what makes you laugh and what makes you love.

I really enjoyed US Drama yesterday as my thoughts about theatre were very much questioned. The man who took the lecture was once a student at the Lee Strasberg school and so had been brought up on method acting. I always thought this was the practice I understood and liked the most however, this has changed. I came to realise that method acting was about the actor and it was the actors job to always be truthful. But I do not understand how you can make something on the stage true when it is clearly pretence. The audience know they are seeing a play and the actors know they are performing a play. How can there be truth in that? Another aspect I could not understand was that it was not the actors job to care about the audience. In my mind the actors are there for the audience. The audience are there for the actors. The actors have to know their audience and respond differently each night to accomodate the different audience. Otherwise each night the performance will be exactly the same but the audience will not be. I believe that the audience are the most important people at any performance. If the actor is only performing for themselves then I think that is slightly egotistical and it will show in their performance.

Schools Schools Schools!

Myself and Danielle went to visit Alexander Juniour School yesterday. We were realy early so we sat in reception and reminised about our time at primary school. At the same time we got a good feel for the school. We watched the children coming and going from lunch, the teachers making sure they were all behaving and from the displays received a good sense of what the school wanted to achieve. I would definently recommend trying to get to schools a bit early just so you can get a feel for the school you will be working with.e
We met the two deputy heads of the school who were lovely. When we first went into their office we were both a bit scared but once we started chatting about the project and the teachers started telling us about what they hoped for both ours and the teachers enthuasim was flowing!

The school would like us to do a lot of work with them over the whole term and as much as I would love to do this I am worried that the other schools we will be working with will not get the same from us. However I think if we really organise our time well then I think we can do a lot with each school.

Another thing I am interested in doing is working with the parents. Like Danielle I believe it is really important that we focus on the link between parent and child. I think it is important that parents know what their children are doing at school and I think our project can help this a lot.

The one project I really want to do with Alexander Juniour is the book week! I think today children, teenagers and even young adults do not read enough. I think book week will be such a good chance to show the children why books are AMAZING! and they can learn to use their library properly (this was one thing the teachers were quite keen for us to do).

Its all a bit more real now!

We had our first big project meeting of the semester this week and I think it went really well. It was nice to have everyone together and hear what each team had been up to. I was particularly impressed with how far the schools liason team had come along and am very excited about going into schools soon (it makes it seem a bit more real now). I am excited about all the ideas the fundraising team have come up with and cannot wait to see it all in action.

The creative team (which I am involved with)@ are constantly bouncing ideas off of eachother and tomorrow we are going to do a workshop with the rest of the teams which will be lots of fun and hopefully we will acheive some more ideas.

I think I personally want to stick with Chiswick House, even though currently its being refurbished. I think its good to work with difficult spaces and as long as we create an impressive world I belive the audience will accept the building work going on around them. Its going to be hard but I think we can do it!

The prospect of working with the second years is also on my mind. I think its a good opportunity for them to see what community theatre is and we can achieve. I helped out on the project last year and it gave me a real insight to what drama in the community is. Originally, I was going to do the directing module but after seeing the third years in action last year I realied that community theatre was really what I wanted to do.