youth centre
Childwall ‘Mafia’!
Last night at Childwall Valley Youth Centre, the Mafia were in town….
Mafia is a group game played with cards. The group leader (The Sheriff) picks out the same number of cards from a normal deck as there are members in the group, shuffles them and then each person picks a card without looking at them. Most of the cards are number cards but one is a Queen. Whoever ends up with the Queen is the Mafia! Everyone closes their eyes as the people of the ‘town’ go to sleep; when the Sheriff says so, the Mafia opens their eyes and indicates who in the town they want to ‘kill’! When the morning comes, the people of the town who survived the night must decide who they think the Mafia is and evict them from the town. If they get it right, no one else will die the next night: if they are wrong, then there will be more deaths – and a person has been wrongfully chased out of the town!
It was a lively session with strenuous debate after every ‘death’ as to who was responsible. It must be said that, on the whole, we as a group were collectively wrong and evicted the wrong people from the town, allowing the Mafia to carry on! There were several elaborate and dramatic ‘deaths’ which added some real drama to the game and showcased some fine acting talent! Once we had a handle on the game when there was only one Mafia, we played with more and more Mafia – until everyone was under suspicion!The group were able to develop debating skills, work on group discussion skills and practice performance skills as everyone tried to outwit each other, protesting their innocence or performing elaborate ‘deaths’ when they were targeted!
A big well done to the group who all played with such enthusiasm – and a certain amount of ruthlessness!
Laura
On the Buses – thanks to Arriva!
We now have the agreement to place works on Arriva buses throughout March! With thanks to Debra and Derek from the Speke Depot there will be pieces appearing on the 79, 80, 82, 86 and 89 routes in a few weeks time.
A host of the work will be coming from St Gregory’s After School and Youth Group in Netherley – with ages ranging between 4 and 19 we hope to get a wide representation of the 5 ways to showcase on the routes. Some sneek previews will appear online soon.
Childwall Youth Centre – Getting into Character?
Laura Cockett has been working with Chrissi Jones and a group of young people at Childwall Youth Centre, Lyndene Road to create some drama based waiting room happenings. The sessions will develop a set of characters that will be unleashed upon several Health Centre waiting rooms across the area. Here are the details of the first session last thursday evening…
A fantastic first session at Childwall Youth Centre last night as we started delivering drama workshops which will lead to the development of ‘happenings’ to be performed in locations in the south of the city.
We started off with some games to warm up and get to know each other. We played Two Truths, One Lie – a game which is always revealing as we make certain assumptions about what will be true about someone! Later on, we started developing some simple improvisations using a bus stop as a setting. One person would be sitting at the bus stop and another person enters and begins the scene. There were some great ideas and some very honest performances as well as a great deal of humour! We met some very funny characters including a very vocal drunk character! Then we moved on to a variation of this; still using the bus stop setting, one person started the scene by sitting at the bus stop and the character entering needed to try and get them to leave. There was lots of innovation here as the young people worked hard to find ways to persuade the person sitting down that they should move away.
Finally, we played a version of the game Party Quirks as we started to think about how an interesting character or scene can be created quickly and simply. We had a character who thought he was being watched by MI5; someone who only communicated through mime; and a therapist who was intent on helping everyone!
It was a great way to kick off the project and all the young people involved should be really pleased with the ideas they had and the energy they gave during the session. Can’t wait for next week!
