My Childrens Workshop Plan

In order to use the Ashcroft 'Stories Left Behind' in a children's workshop my aims would be to create a workshop where the children could meet some of the characters and also some of the actors and learn a part of the play . In doing so I would be developing the children's understanding of how theatre is an accessible art form that they can get involved in have fun doing. I would also love to give the children opportunities to meet and talk to there favourite cast members of the show and work with them .

My workshop would ideally last about an hour and be split into 4 15 minute sections so that the kids could experience as much of the play as possible whilst not getting bored and annoyed if there favourite part of the piece was left out .

For the first 15 minutes I would have most of the cast saying hi to the children as actors and then starting some simple name games and games like splat around a circle to get everyone relaxed and comftorbale around each other. Then I would have the main characters run into the room and introduce themselves to the kids in character. I feel this would be exciting as it would bring the play to life right in front of them and give them a chance to talk to their favourite characters. After doing a sort of meet and greet session with different characters I would separate the kids into groups under different characters. The characters would be the team leaders and would lead each group of children in a big group game of tag . However instead of just having normal tag it would be in character form so the kids would have to act and move like Peter Pan and his lost boys if they were in that group , or evil pirates if in Hooks groups and so on.

After introduction games were played I would then move on to the next part of my workshop. This would involve a character building mini workshop. I would put the children into three different groups. A Hundred Acre Woods group , A court room scene group and a Pirate scene group. Each group would first be given different characters to explore , they would have little improvisation task and games that they would play in character. This would hopefully introduce a lot of children on how to use their imagination to create real characters that they can explore in imaginary worlds.

The next section of the workshop would focus on teach each group a part of the song and cheorgrapgy fomr their scene. Obviously the first scene is a lot less physically demanding than the pirate scene so the children in the younger years would be put on the easier scenes. Then I would take really exciting parts of each bit of cheorgraphy and song and then incorporate them into material that the kids would be able to learn. The cast members and cast members still in character would help teaching all the children .

For the last section I would get each group to share there final performance of the piece that they had learnt. After each group had performed I would wine down the workshop with a question time. First allowing the kids to ask any questions they wanted to the cast and crew then I would ask some of the children questions about what they enjoined and why and what messages they may have got from the show.