This blog post is intended for all of the children who attend Saturday Morning Drop In Drama! It is also for people who might be interested in joining in, in the future… so take a look to see the kind of work that we do in our drop in sessions during term time!
We have had a fantastic term exploring the question ‘What are you fighting for?’ We have made protest banners with visual artist Nathalie Palin, exploring what is important to us and devising new theatre. Our sessions stopped short before our final sharing due to the pandemic, so I just wanted to remind you all of what we were in the process of creating.
The 4-7yr olds made fantastic protest banners with Nathalie, most of them were about saving animals and being kind to them. A lot of you talked about being worried about the wild fires in Australia and how you wanted to save the animals from the fire. Other wonderful banners made were mountains, monsters and portals to a better world.
Here you can see the wonderful visual artist Nathalie Palin helping Melody think about her concept.
Melody and Daniel making a story
Hannah has nearly finished her Protest banner
Everyone busy painting
Polly also came in to cover a session and she played all sorts of fun and exciting games with you all… I hear she also used the parachute!
Melody making her Protest Banner
Here we are starting our session off with a check in. This is something we do every week. We take it in turns to share any news, thoughts or ideas that aren’t related to drama, so that we can get it all out of our systems at the beginning and focus on the drama itself.
This is a protest banner that shows a Portal to a Really Good World
William has lots of incredible energy and he needed short running blasts in between painting to stay focused! Jade timed him running round the room to see if her could beat his own target!
Lucas, Daniel and Benji all made incredible animals in the bush in Australia and explored the movements and sounds that they would make.
Evelyn creating a Protest Banner about the plastic in the sea.
The 7-11yr olds also came up with very poignant protest banners about protecting animals, the environment, Equality for all, plastic in the sea and so, so many more that I cant remember them all.
You had started to devise really wonderful movement sequences in small groups all about what you were protesting for. You used your bodies and your banners to get your messages across and I am so proud of the work you were creating.
Oscar being a ninja painter…
One of the beginning movement sequences you created
Most of you created more than one banner. Here is Ivy sorting them all out.
Pip getting creative with painting styles. Here she was flicking and splattering paint off the brush attempting not to splash it on Martha’s. She did, but if my memory serves me well, Martha eventually learnt to appreciate the new colours on her banner!
Here are a few photos of the devising process:
and here you were combining movement with your protest banners… It was starting to all come together.
Finally the 11-18yr olds started with a fantastic scene about a hotelier wanting to buy land to build his hotel in a beautiful forest. You created a scene whereby people were protesting about this and you could see two opposing views via two different families watching TV at home. People then went away and thought up new ideas – we had a script written in a court room scene and the outcome if the hotelier hadn’t gotten his way!
All of you have been working super hard and I was so impressed with your work. I am looking forwards to seeing how we can use the protest banners in the future when we start our sessions back up again!