Archive for February 2012
Valley Theatre – Secret Performance!
On Monday night we started delivering drama and movement workshops with the young people at Valley Theatre. Each Monday for six weeks we’ll be working together to develop a secret finale performance – here’s the first weeks warm up…
We began with a few games to get to know each other. After a few raucous rounds of Grandma’s Footsteps and a ruthless game of Mafia (when some seriously cold-blooded tactics were used!) we started on some improvisation.
We played the game Party Quirks. The group divided into two teams. The first team nominated a host for the party while the rest of the team members were allocated a specific trait or quirk that they needed to develop during the course of the ‘party’. The first group had a riotous party that included a boy who believed he was a pirate, a girl who was slowly turning into a cat and a boy who thought he was being followed by MI5! As the improvisations escalated over the duration of the party, hilarity ensued with the cat-girl chasing mice and the MI5 person hiding behind everyone and everything! The second group had guests who included a boy who thought he was a bumble bee, the Queen and Pokemon!It’s up to the host, sometimes with the help of the team who are watching, to guess what each person’s quirk is. Some are more obvious than others; it was quite easy to guess the cat, it was trickier to work out why someone kept asking if the building was secure and if there were CCTV cameras around (the MI5 person)! The group has excellent improvising skills and were really able develop interesting and funny characters from a very simple premise. We’ll be building on these skills over the coming weeks as we start to develop ‘pop up’ performances and installations for the event. We’re looking forward to it!
Garston Past, Present and Future
This weeks report from Garston’s ARCH group…
Again the session was a fun filled one and they have all agreed to give up two extra full afternoons to develop the work on the Pop Up Monologues, and we have decided to give them the theme of Garston Past, Present and Future. We decided that it would be fun to also look at some potential people in the future to show the positive development of the community. We also decided that a narrator would link the whole piece together and we decided that within the health centre’s we would open the floor out to the audience to discuss people they have know from the past and present!
John
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
“Liverpool’s Not Dull!”
Parklands pupils have now finished their interpretation of South Liverpool as a tourist destination and have produced a set of posters that showcase a mix of known and local landmarks. The pieces contain references to Speke and Garston as well as the city centre – see if you can identify the landmarks. The images are bright and vibrant echoing what the artists stated when creating the pieces – “Liverpool’s Not Dull!”
The pieces will now be worked up into posters for the Airport as well as a set of stickers. Look out for them in March.
Tommy at the Woodies
Hot off the ARCH Garston Character project…
The group really brought in some really interesting new characters such as Tommy that used to collect glasses at the Woodies who used to get a 50p coin as a wage packet and they put a party on for him and he had a little difficulty in understanding that although the party was for him, that others could eat from the buffet! He stood by the buffet and said this is my party and then the landlady had the idea that she would call him and pretend that she was the queen and she ordered that everybody else was allowed to eat the buffet!
The Parent Hub
‘A Shared Place’ is working with a new venture to be hosted at the Noah’s Ark Centre, Ganworth Road, Speke – The Parent Hub.
Launching on Tuesday 6th March between 12-3pm the Hub will provide…
a range of services to help and engage parents and individuals by offering a unique reliable setting that allows them to access services that may have been hard to access in the past. By empowering parents and those who support parents to access support, guidance and information. The parent hub will provide a soft play supervised play area for children to allow them to exercise through play allowing physical , emotional and social skills to be advanced children will be able to explore the play area have a go at art and crafts and also have quiet time with story sessions.
Services will include – Citizens Advice Bureau – Liverpool in Work and Training – Addaction – Post Natal Depression Support – Walks – Beauty Therapies.
‘A Shared Place’ is supporting a creative activity – Libby MacKay’s Project Catwalk for Beginners – where we have provided equipment and resources to enable Dressmaking and Upholstery tuition. We hope they’ll make us something nice to showcase after their first month!
For more information about contact Laura on 07411014848 or email: theparenthub@gmail.com
Message in a Bottle
Back with the pupils of Gateacre comp this week after the half term break – we focused on the theme of the piece.
Alcohol abuse is a key issue for the PCT with 1 in 7 drinkers in Liverpool drinking at levels that will harm their health.
We had a brainstorm and discussion around the whole world of alcohol, what it meant to people, it’s effects, how it’s presented and consumed – this was to give us ample material to resource from. During the session several of the group were sketching and doodling and a common theme appeared – the idea of containment within a bottle…
We are looking to marry this idea with the PCT statistic that in the UK approx 90 people die every day from an alcohol related reason (33,000 a year) and there are 121 alcohol-related hospital admissions per hour. We aim to build a piece that will communicate these figures in an interesting and impact driven way. Next week we finalise our approach and get building!
Spam!
Another fun afternoon was had with the Ladies at Lee Valley – this time Frank Carlyle joined us again and sat chatting with two of the groups oldest participants – Sally (90yrs) and Flo (94yrs) – where they recounted some of their wartime experiences. Frank kindly brought a collection of his works on DVD which he raffled off to raise funds for Alder Hey.
I spoke with a group who were all connected around the local Spam Factory that originally stood on the site of Morrisons Supermarket. We are really starting to gather some interesting material.
Thanks also to Joan, Olive, Madge, Hettie, Pauly and Heather.
Can Cook Studio
‘A Shared Place’ is happy to support South Liverpool’s Can Cook Studio in their current campaign to ‘Teach Liverpool to Cook’. The scheme aims to raise the funds to train thousands of young people to cook across Liverpool – we aim to get some of our participants involved.
Visit their website to find out more or to get involved.
Netherley Youth and Community Initiative
On Tuesday we spent an afternoon and evening with Netherley Youth and Community Initiative (NY&CI) Afterschool and Youth club. We had a good turn out of about 40 girls and boys aged between 4 and 13. They worked on creating some portraits of themselves as a warm up and then explored the 5 ways to wellbeing as inspiration for their own pieces for the bus displays. They focused on things and activities they liked or made them feel good. We had a wide range, with strange fruits to ballerinas to representation from the the boys of ‘Nev’.
We’re back with them again soon…
