TheatreCenter

Guess who’s in charge this week?! Yep! Once again, Pip is in the driving seat!  Contact her on her mobile 07957 641210…

It was Muppet Madness all the way this week as we were joined by the uber talented Ryan Laight; who took time out of his frantic West End schedule to introduce the students to Muppet creation and operation!! We designed and created our own individual Muppets (all of which I think Jim Henson would have been proud of!), looked at what made a puppet life like (it’s all in the eyes!) and then explored movement and physical animation! The Seniors even managed to find the time to create a short piece of film; working to the backing track of the Muppet theme song! Took me right back to my childhood – Brilliant!!

It’s Pip! Again!! You know the score… 12:30 onwards – 07957 641 210!

We had another new girl on the block this week; the totally awesome Abi Harris who brought us a session on Physicality and Physical Story Telling. She started by explaining the set of three people in the audience that you need to make sure are entertained: Those who can see but can’t hear; those that hear but can’t see and those who don’t speak English; the theory being that if these people can understand what’s going on, so will everybody else!! The students explored the necessity for clarity and incorporating small details into a performance in order to make the story clear and discovered that when there is no speech in a piece you have to work harder physically to get the story across! The juniors then created 3 crazy car journeys and worked on showing the audience how heavy something is; whilst the seniors took the scenario one step further and created characters using the characteristics of the seven deadly sins which they then incorporated into 3 pieces using the title ‘Bizarre Breakfast’!!

The students also devised 5 fabulous pieces of Random Word Theatre this week:

DISHONEST: Lies will get you found out…

FATE: It’ll get you in the end…

END: Two friends discover that they are not alone in the dark and creepy mansion…

MISUNDERSTANDING: A change of identity leads to tragedy…

FUNNY: Laughing gas and llamas at the dentist…

Pip will be playing her supervisory role again this week – you can contact her throughout the afternoon on her mobile – 07957 641 210

Our guest tutor this week was the wild and crazy Frank France who brought us a session on believability and how to take comedy seriously..! Both groups looked at physicality and explored ‘shapes’ of words culminating in some hysterical ‘Random Word Choreography’! They also developed the old favourite ‘Park Bench’ and worked on making each character (despite their strangeness) as real and believable as possible as well as looking at the intent and definition in each scene and how not to ‘block’!

Our Random Word theatre this week  incorporated the additional challenge of using random opening, closing and central lines (just to make things that little bit trickier!) a triple whammy that, despite some very difficult lines, produced some fabulous theatre (as ever!):

Kids! – ‘Grounded’ kids get caught running an anti-parent web show from their bedroom

Sleepwalking – A dream turns into a nightmare when it appears that the hero’s Grandmother’s house is Hell and his Granny is the Devil herself…!

Sad – A ferret adventure (!) with mishaps galore, culminating in a violent rampage through Tescos (one of the funniest things I think I have ever seen!)!

Gravity – A weird and wonderful space adventure

Distance – What’s in your basement? Why, the Devil, of course…!

Yep! We’re back!! Half Term is over (hope it was a good one) and we’re now ready for another 5 weeks of hard work (!) and theatrical fun..!

Pip is running the show this week. She’ll be at the Drama Studio from 12:30pm and can be contacted on her mobile – 07957 641 210 – throughout.

See you there!

Please note that it is Half Term at theatrecenter so there will be no sessions for the next 2 weeks. See you all again on Saturday 25th February!

Happy Holidays!

The brilliant John Hinton managed to find some time in his crazy, mad world tour (no, seriously!) to come and share his knowledge of Norse Legends with us this week…

Melody is back in charge this week – contact her on 07867 563 437!