It felt strange last thursday telling the story because it felt like we were letting everyone else on a secret. There was a lot of hype about it and we felt that there was a lot of pressure on us to come up with something original. I also tried to keep an emotional distance from the story as I knew that it would have to be up to the design team to make it come to life, and as I director, I don't want to have too much ownership over the story as I know it will probably change and shift in direction when we start working on it. Therefore, looking at it from an objective angle from after easter is good because the story will start to create its own identity when myself and rosie start directing it.
I have never directed before so I am very keen to start and I think Rosie and I will be able to work together well. I want to, before anything else, do a lot of company ensemble work as I feel that being in four seperate teams for so long has hindered us ( in some respect) from working as one. Therefore I want everyone to get to know each other again and get used to acting in an ensemble.
Sunday, 29 March 2009
The shrinking Land of Kalku
On our last meeting the creative team told the rest of the Golden Travellers the story for the play at Chiswick house.
The story is about the land of Kalku which starts to shrink after the oldest member of the land dies, the rest of the dwellers then lose their faith in life thus causing the magic tree (need to think of a name for it) that provides everything they need to survive to die which then causes the land to shrink, pushing the dwellers into the human world. Once out in the human world members of different tribes are forced to come together to try and save Kalku. They are given clues by the elders of the tribes and so go on a journey together. On their way they meet Milky Magician, Kenneth the sad Caterpillar, The queen of the Water Nymphs, The Sphinx and the tree tricksters who give them tasks to do in order to gain pieces of a puzzle that they need to solve. While all of this is happeing the tree tricksters pop up now and again reiking havok and playing pranks on the protagonists while they try and complete the tasks. They also capture Hapu (one of the main characters) when he decides that he doesn't want to work together with the rest of the tribes and leaves to try and save Kalku by himself.
The rest of the tribes people, when they get to the magic tree, discover that Hapu has been imprisoned and have to try and let him free. Hapu refuses to apologise so the tricksters go to roast him on a barbeque (maybe) when they are stopped by the rest of the tribes people when they say that they want to abolish the tribes and live togehher happily and peacefully and that they don't mind that people die, they accept that there is a circle of life. The tricksters are touched by this and let Hapu go. They then get to complete the puzzle causing the tree to regain life and the world returns to it's normal size. They then celebrate by having a party.
For me, the story is about forgetting differences and learning to work together. As the schools we have been working in are vastly multi-cultural, we saw fit to make this a theme in the story so that perhaps the children take away from it and begin intergrating more with their class mates and thus when growing up take a more intergrated approach to their lives. The story is also about belief and faith, where faith is lost but regained and shows that if you keep faith then good things might happen.
I think that the play will work well when all put together as the children will be taken on a journey with the characters and will also give them a chance (in the second show) to be with their parents on this journey and also perhaps make parents see that culture shouldn't be something that keeps us seperate but something that brings us togehter.
The story is about the land of Kalku which starts to shrink after the oldest member of the land dies, the rest of the dwellers then lose their faith in life thus causing the magic tree (need to think of a name for it) that provides everything they need to survive to die which then causes the land to shrink, pushing the dwellers into the human world. Once out in the human world members of different tribes are forced to come together to try and save Kalku. They are given clues by the elders of the tribes and so go on a journey together. On their way they meet Milky Magician, Kenneth the sad Caterpillar, The queen of the Water Nymphs, The Sphinx and the tree tricksters who give them tasks to do in order to gain pieces of a puzzle that they need to solve. While all of this is happeing the tree tricksters pop up now and again reiking havok and playing pranks on the protagonists while they try and complete the tasks. They also capture Hapu (one of the main characters) when he decides that he doesn't want to work together with the rest of the tribes and leaves to try and save Kalku by himself.
The rest of the tribes people, when they get to the magic tree, discover that Hapu has been imprisoned and have to try and let him free. Hapu refuses to apologise so the tricksters go to roast him on a barbeque (maybe) when they are stopped by the rest of the tribes people when they say that they want to abolish the tribes and live togehher happily and peacefully and that they don't mind that people die, they accept that there is a circle of life. The tricksters are touched by this and let Hapu go. They then get to complete the puzzle causing the tree to regain life and the world returns to it's normal size. They then celebrate by having a party.
For me, the story is about forgetting differences and learning to work together. As the schools we have been working in are vastly multi-cultural, we saw fit to make this a theme in the story so that perhaps the children take away from it and begin intergrating more with their class mates and thus when growing up take a more intergrated approach to their lives. The story is also about belief and faith, where faith is lost but regained and shows that if you keep faith then good things might happen.
I think that the play will work well when all put together as the children will be taken on a journey with the characters and will also give them a chance (in the second show) to be with their parents on this journey and also perhaps make parents see that culture shouldn't be something that keeps us seperate but something that brings us togehter.
Thursday, 12 March 2009
In order to make more head way on getting started making this story myself and the rest of the creatve team decided that we needed to find a stimulus to begin with, we need something that we can develop and play with. I find that just throwing in ideas doesn't work as we begin to get bogged down on wanting to do too many things, and we begin to get ahead of ourselves. Therefore we are going to research Egyption and Greek myths to find a story we really like and want to explore.
Also in our meeting today we talked a bit about culture. In going into the schools in the last two weeks I have noticed how diverse they are in culture, many children have English as their second language, thus children are from different cultures and countries. I want to perhaps address this in our story, can we find a way of celebrating difference and perhaps bring different cultures together in order to make a wider and more diverse community? I want the story to perhaps detail a confrontation and resolution to perhaps take a children to a dark place in order to bring them out of it. Also the ideas that the children have in the workshops are very interesting and I am excited about pulling out maybe characters and situations that arise in the workshop environment.
Also in our meeting today we talked a bit about culture. In going into the schools in the last two weeks I have noticed how diverse they are in culture, many children have English as their second language, thus children are from different cultures and countries. I want to perhaps address this in our story, can we find a way of celebrating difference and perhaps bring different cultures together in order to make a wider and more diverse community? I want the story to perhaps detail a confrontation and resolution to perhaps take a children to a dark place in order to bring them out of it. Also the ideas that the children have in the workshops are very interesting and I am excited about pulling out maybe characters and situations that arise in the workshop environment.
Saturday, 28 February 2009
The Golden Travellers!
There has been some progress in the big community project and we are now beginning to run workshops in primary and secondary schools. Crane Park Community school wants it to be about Egyptions as they are learning about it in class so last week we took an Egyption Myth and ran a workshop about it. We were very well recieved by the school and the children responded to the workshop material very well. I played the Pharoh throughout the workshop and was constantly in role which kept the children engaged all the way through as they kept reacting to me when I walked over to each of the three groups. It was a good device to have as it brought the story to life and children really believed in what they were doing and it allowed their imagination to be further extended as they believed the tasks they were doing was for the benefit of the Pharaoh.
We are also doing a workshop at a primary school which is aiding their Book week which therefore will give myself, Rosie, Hardeep and Maria to chance to see what sort of stories the children like to tell or be told which will hopefully help us begin to devise a structure for the story of the final project. It's exciting because we are beginning to get an idea of what children like, what devices in stories children find effective and the sort of characters that they will respond well to.
The venue is also looking very promising as it has statues and temple like buildings which we could incorporate into the story. Perhaps the house could be a Kings Palace and the Bridge could become some sort of challenge to cross and the temple could be a magicians cave. It's a very inspiring place and definatley the sort of venue we could unleash all sorts of possibilities.
We are also doing a workshop at a primary school which is aiding their Book week which therefore will give myself, Rosie, Hardeep and Maria to chance to see what sort of stories the children like to tell or be told which will hopefully help us begin to devise a structure for the story of the final project. It's exciting because we are beginning to get an idea of what children like, what devices in stories children find effective and the sort of characters that they will respond well to.
The venue is also looking very promising as it has statues and temple like buildings which we could incorporate into the story. Perhaps the house could be a Kings Palace and the Bridge could become some sort of challenge to cross and the temple could be a magicians cave. It's a very inspiring place and definatley the sort of venue we could unleash all sorts of possibilities.
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
Story workshop
In the last community theatre meeting myself, Hardeep and Rosie led a workshop about story telling. We did sentence bu sentence storytelling around in a circle but this wasn't that successful as the story failed to make sense as everyone wanted to tell a story and not aid the creation in a collaborative sense. Therefore in the story that was created, nothing really happened that made a cohesive story. However in the last exercise we did creativity was much more interesting. We did helicopter story telling so everyone got to tell a story and got to act and chose their peers to be the other characters in the story. There were many stories that were very interesting and structurally very clear, therefore we could start looking at their stories and perhaps use them as a starting point for the final product. This activity would also be useful to take into a workshop setting in a school as we can begin to get a sense of the kinds of stories the children want to tell.
Sunday, 18 January 2009
Keith Park
Last Friday I went to the globe to participate in a workshop with Keith Park and two schools from North London which had students that had complex disabilities.
The workshop was based on Shakespeares 'Romeo and Juliet' It was split into eigtht parts all said as call and response with a very definate rhythm through out. Everything was done in Makaton, and some words were said in Hebrew. Although Keith Park was involved in the workshop the person driving the workshop itself was an autistic teenager called PJ. It was very interesting how he remembered all the lines, made up jokes when we were playing a name game. It was successful because he had so much passion for what he was doing, in some sense it seemed that Drama had allowed him to become a confident individual and to be able to express himself in a way that best suited him. I also felt that having a child with high support needs in charge of a workshop helped the other children feel more enthusiastic about joining in the workshop, perhaps there was a stronger sense of identification?
Drama had helped him do things that are considered to be un-autistic, he made eye contact and was incredibly social. In my opinion Drama might have played a part in helping someone with a learning disability do things that would never have been expected of them.
The workshop was based on Shakespeares 'Romeo and Juliet' It was split into eigtht parts all said as call and response with a very definate rhythm through out. Everything was done in Makaton, and some words were said in Hebrew. Although Keith Park was involved in the workshop the person driving the workshop itself was an autistic teenager called PJ. It was very interesting how he remembered all the lines, made up jokes when we were playing a name game. It was successful because he had so much passion for what he was doing, in some sense it seemed that Drama had allowed him to become a confident individual and to be able to express himself in a way that best suited him. I also felt that having a child with high support needs in charge of a workshop helped the other children feel more enthusiastic about joining in the workshop, perhaps there was a stronger sense of identification?
Drama had helped him do things that are considered to be un-autistic, he made eye contact and was incredibly social. In my opinion Drama might have played a part in helping someone with a learning disability do things that would never have been expected of them.
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
It's Starting!
Over the last couple of days myself, Rosie Maria and Hardeep have met up to begin thinking about the big project. We talked about possible research areas, types of stories and basically had a think about our role as the creative team, what we can do and what we can create. I see us working closely with the design team in creating initial ideas and I also feel that it would make it more collaborative. I feel that working with the school laison will be important as making and doing workshops about the story we might want to do will be important.
We also went and had a look around Chiswick house to get some inspiration and it is a very beautiful place which we could transform into something magical, I can see a lot of fairy lights! There is also an amphitheatre there which is a possible thing to think about within creating the performance.
If anyone has any ideas for stories or characters or themes or structures or anything please tell us!
We also went and had a look around Chiswick house to get some inspiration and it is a very beautiful place which we could transform into something magical, I can see a lot of fairy lights! There is also an amphitheatre there which is a possible thing to think about within creating the performance.
If anyone has any ideas for stories or characters or themes or structures or anything please tell us!
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