Singapore - week 2 - days 1 to 4
Posted : August 5, 2015
Monday 27th July
We began the week introducing ourselves with our names and a truth or a big fat lie about ourselves and then warmed up physically and vocally, learning Big Black Bugs and Orsino's first line. Then came the Shakespeare mini-quiz and the iambic heartbeat into the physicalisation of the iambic pentameter and the first line of the sonnet, Shall I compare thee.
We then had a bit of story time, going through the plot of Twelfth Night, using mirroring and statues and some lines from the text.
The children then came up with their own Shakespearean names (Lady Hammy, Lord Henry Danfriend, Queen Alice Balletshoe, Archie Hotfloor Esq amongst others..) and played Four Corners with locations from the play. This time, the children went to each corner to see what they could see and bring back an object from each place (a bottle of Sprite from Toby Belch's party, an unfinished letter from the Captain of the boat in the storm, and the Captain's skull itself...).
We then created the soundscape of the sea and the storm and the shipwreck with groups specifically being the seagulls, waves, cracking of the boat and Viola and Sebastian).
They then learnt the party song (with actions and great vim) and then recapped what they'd learnt through the day, where they'd had their best idea and where they'd felt most nervous.
Tuesday 28th July
We warmed up and learnt Two witches were watching two watches and sang the party song fast and slow. They learnt the call and responses of "What ho, Malvolio" and "What country, friends, is this?" then played problem solving games in groups.
We then played Four Corners, adding the Shakespearean lines and then completed the story of Twelfth Night. Next we played a clowny copying game with different people leading and adding sound effects. We then watched the girls walk and the boys tried to copy and then vice versa and worked out what Viola would have to do to pretend to be a boy. We all put masks on, like superheroes, to make us braver and see how that affected our walks.
Then we used balloons to emphasise bellies and shoulders and saw what characters we came up with then (Sir Toby and Sir Andrew) and then led with our noses to see if we could make Marias.
Then the children worked in groups to come up with scenes of the sailors at sea, trying to keep quiet at a party and trying to hide before Malvolio sees the letter.
We learnt a few lines of Feste's final song to finish and had a relay race of things that we'd enjoyed over the last two days.
Wednesday 29th July
After our warm-up we learnt the rest of "When that I was and a little tiny boy". We worked as shoals of fish to become a chorus then worked on the shipwreck scene.
We turned socks into exciting Feste puppets with decorations and colourful mouths and worked in five separate groups on little scenes. The Swimming Group were the Captain, sailors and the twins on the boat; the Car Group worked on the Party scene with Malvolio interrupting; the Boxing Group played the trick and hid in the garden; the Chimpanzee Tea Party Group made Olivia poses and fell in love with Caesario and the Wedding Group learnt a welcome speech and a closing speech for Feste.
We learnt Bippety Boppety Bop with appropriate Twelfth Night actions and finally played the tunnel of our favourite moments of the last three days.
Thursday 30th July
We warmed up physically and vocally and went through ALL of the tongue twisters and all of the call and response Shakespeare lines perfectly. We then plotted through the entire show piecing together all the scenes and games and songs (and adding a few little extras too).
They then painted their names and their favourite scenes or characters from the play onto T-shirts to create their costume for the show.
We ran through the show a couple of times before finishing with a hysterical game of Bippety Boppety Bop. To close, we divided into two teams and had a competition to see which team could get everyone to answer, "After this week I can...", "This week I enjoyed the most..." And "The thing I'm looking forward to most tomorrow...".
