- Stand on a podium and announce their favourite food. The 'crowd' erupts in applause.
- The child on the podium controls the applause. Raise hand high for wild adulation, lower hand for more subtle cheers.
- Signal end of applause, next child.
Boosts Confidence - each child takes a turn to:
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Today is the first day of Wolf Club at The Grove Primary School.
We are going to be playing one of my favourites. The Human Board Game. All you need is a way of marking out a course,a die and some people. That's it. The rules of the game are agreed upon by the group such as if you make the bench squeak you go back to the blue mat. Try it at home. Maybe avoid real water hazards etc. So we've made a version of the Sea Change Song.
You can hear our version of the song at foxproblem.bandcamp.com A musical entitled 'A Pacifist's Guide to the War on Cancer' isn't the easiest of productions to sell. There will have been audience members shaken by the experience. You can't be sure what to expect. But I was immediately struck with admiration of the ambition I wanted to live it. We asked a friend to look after our children for the evening, for the first time ever! That's the strength of the show's pull for us.
I found the evening both rendered speech ineffective and prompted a deep desire for shared expression. In the way falling in love can do, having a baby or experiencing grief. I was surprised to see a show of such powerful innovation and nerve performed on the big Northcott stage in little Exeter. With its small touring schedule we are fortunate to catch it. I hope it is opened up to a national tour and beyond. The briefly mentioned hope at the end of the show, for the people working in the NHS to be properly thanked for their work, was to me an indicator of what next. Our bodies are all we are and when they go wrong we have only one thing on our mind, making ourselves right again. As a society we need to better understand this vulnerability, it doesn't matter if you never get ill, people do, all around us, it is part of life. We need to make sure people are nurtured by a health and social care system reflective of the huge wealth of this country. Pushing forward real, particular stories and opening up the truth of those lives to each of us in the audience, acts as an insistence that these individual experiences of ultimate vulnerability are all our business. Brave and cancer are words often used together. Bravely fighting cancer, almost as if it were a choice. What is difficult is dealing with cancer in your own body, those you love or those in your care. Making or watching art that gives voice to those people isn't hard, it feels like work we should all involve ourselves in. As brave as the show undoubtedly is, I felt that we, the audience, were only just getting going. I felt we could have been given further permission to find voice and expression with the emotion generated by the work. I don't think, at this point, singing together could be justifiably called "cheesy" by anyone. I would say be even more brave Bryony. "Push it, push it real good." Alternately I heard a chap say "I wish the second act had been done like the first," as he got in his car to drive home. I suspect that may have been more a reference to the painful wait of the MRI scan than the broken down artifice by the end. But how could there be a performance about cancer without a painful wait? I was left with lots of questions, none of which I asked at the post-show Q&A, at that point I was still a little lost in the world that had been created for us all. Q: Was there a stand-by option in case the person at the end felt it was too much to go on and speak? It was clearly a difficult thing to do and I was surprised to learn that people will do it more than once. It is a lot to take on as the whole performance seems to rest on their physical presence at the end. Q: How did you decide where to stop with the offer to the audience? Did you trial it with fresh audience members in rehearsal? Do you feel tempted to push it further? Q: Making work for social change, do you want to be political? Is there an impulse to do so and what is it restrained by? For instance the degradation of the NHS by this government is so starkly clear, I wonder do those in the production want to make a point about that? We're back with a theatre club at The Grove Primary School. In 8 weeks will make a performance of Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches. A story so good that NATO had 500,000 copies translated into Serbo-Croation to give to children to encourage tolerance in Bosnia Herzegovina in 1998.
We had a lot of fun talking to members of the public outside the Civic Hall and St Mary's Church Hall as people milled around before and after performances around the market and streets of Totnes. We asked questions and played word games on the theme of 'sea change' and based on the responses we received, we've arranged a Song For Sea Change Well I guess it's too early to sing Standing on the steps of the Civic Hall Collecting lyrics The children are in Syria The undertakers are on the stage This town is waking Let's change the time we wake up in the morning And my hair and my hair and my hair and my hair We are considering stopping all nasty things and terrorism People's attitudes to keeping bears in prison Everyone's going to have somewhere nice to live... In the desert I will pluck the feathers off your wings and your head It's a kind of murder ballad The school the bank the school the bank the school the bank the school The children are on fire The undertakers are on fire This town is on fire I will pluck the feathers from your legs and your beak We are considering changing our garden Getting some tools Being kind to each other Sitting on a hill In the Middle East When the sun goes down What we need right now is fewer choices We'll make it happen slowly so no-one notices On the steps of the Civic Hall Quietly demanding equality for women in every different country We are quietly demanding We are hesitant We are uncertain We are already dead Now now now now now Never As soon as it can be clearly expressed Start coming to terms with the fact that a more peaceful world is a better place As soon as possible The Jungle within Parliament within We offer these words to anyone who wants to turn the lyrics into a song. Get out your old guitars, tambourines and tubas and give it a go. Anyone can make a song, how? Just do it. Record it and let us listen. Put it on Soundcloud or Bandcamp or send us an email or come over and play it live on Victoria Street outside our flat. With thanks to all who took part, especially Drift Records for putting on the festival and asking us to take part. Thank you to our new collaborators Chief Questioner Rosie Wolf (7) and Chief Photographer Martha Wolf (5). This band name is up for grabs everyone
#4 The Band = Exactly Album = Shouted First Single = Medicine #3
Band = Bigger Pigs Album = The Crow Single = The Harness Who will start this band? #2
Band = Don't Forget Album = It First Single = As small as a pin This band name generated by memebers of the public at Sea Change festival Totnes are up for grabs for anyone to use. Make a band. Why not? #1
Band = Medicine Number Album = A Hand Single = Good Look At Sea Change Festival we spent time outside the venues collecting song lyrics from the public #LyricCollector. Some of them also got to play one of our favourite games...#BandNameGenerator You choose a book at random, flick through to a random page and with eyes closed point to a word or words which gives you your band name, album name and first single. All that's left to do then is actually start the band! Have a go yourself at home, it's really fun. |
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