Week 5: Drama Workshop 3 "Bringing Puppets to Life"

 

Week 5: Drama Workshop 3 – 11/4/13

                                   

                                         OH! I WISH I CAN GO TO THE BALL!!  

 In this week’s workshop, we thought about how we will bring our critical moment to life with our handmade puppets and improvised script. My group and I considered how the quality of our voices changes depending on the emotion being conveyed by our chosen characters. We also considered how the personality of the character changes according to the many different scenes from our critical moment. During this workshop, we were given the opportunity to create our puppets using the materials: newspapers, net, balloons, textas, and rubber bands. Before we began making our puppets we wrote up a short script to use when performing our Scene. I created and improvised on being the evil, viscous stepmother where I used a newspaper and made a twist in the middle and drew her eyes with a angry face using a black texta, I brought it to life with a certain character depicting the evil stepmother.

                                                                                     
Unfortunately, my improvised puppet wasn’t complete and made to perfection. However, this insightful experience made me realise that puppetry is not just about the purpose and making, it encounters many detailed aspects on: who is the character? Choice of setting? What viewpoint is the puppet looking? What messages are being conveyed to the audience and what are the emotions of the audience? What is being portrayed to the audience?

Overall, It felt like the puppets came to life and that the puppets were in role and focus intent. It was a new experience to take aboard for my future teaching as it made me realise that when using puppets to perform you are performing in a dramatic role. "Part of the never-ending appeal of puppetry lies in the fact that the puppet is the focus of attention, and so the puppeteer feels safe." (Ewing & Simons, 2010, p.53). What really amazed was the amount of critical thinking and decision-making surprised me, which made me consider good aspects add  into my teaching. This has opened several opportunities to incorporate puppets into my teaching.

http://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=z08titE6s1A&feature=youtube – This video shows our scene focusing on our critical moment of the fairy tale ‘Cinderella’.

 

 

Ewing, R. & Simons, J. (2010). Beyond the script: Drama in the classroom take 2. Newtown, NSW: Primary English Teaching Association

 This is the script that my Group and I came up with when performing our  critical moment scene of Cinderella.

                       

Week 4- Drama workshop 2 - No Workshop "Good Friday"

 

Thursday 28th of March 2013

Good Friday - No drama workshop

Week 3 - Drama Workshop 1 "Cinderalla Storyboard"

 

 

Week 3:

Drama Workshop 1 – 21/3/13

“If you see the magic in a fairy tale, you can face the future” (Steel, D).

In Today’s drama workshop 1, we created a storyboard (narrative) for our critical moment of our chosen fairytale ‘Cinderella’ and presented our work in the form of a storyboard. As a group, we decided to focus on the critical moment where Cinderella watches her stepmother and stepsisters getting ready for the ball and she comes along thinking she is going but then her evil stepmother takes away Cinderella's dream. We drew pictures of our critical moment in a series of events and came up with a narrative on what is happening under each scene of the storyboard. Together we presented our critical moment scene of Cinderella to the class were we role played each scene and read our narrative to the class while improvising for the some of the events we drew. For future implications for my teaching, I would utilise this activity into my classroom, as it is fun and engaging for students where students work together as a team and improvise together a script for their chosen fairytale. This allows students to take on a persona and trait, which therefore students input is valued and all the elements of creative arts are explored and demonstrated through role-play, film, and artworks. “When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.”(Albert Einstein).

NA, (2013). Quotes about fairy tales: Good Reads Inc, retrieved 23^rd March 2013 from http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/fairy-tales