Center Stage Youth Theatre

Posts Tagged ‘Alice In Wonderland’

I admit this was a frustrating week for me.  I found it hard to keep the kids engages, and this made everything we were doing that much more tricky.  We are trying to prepare a song for the awards ceremony as well as getting all the kids dressed in costumes in order to create the photos that will make up our Alice in Wonderland Montage.

I wonder at my frustrations – and at what was going on.  The kids, I truly think, have got summer on their minds in a  big way; speaking to other teachers I hear this is absolutely the way all kids react to this time of year.  And it is interesting, and a very big lesson learned on my part, that rather than finding our very special guys to be less susceptible to peer pressure, vacations coming up, and social conventions like dating – I had thought they would be oblivious for some reason! – our students in many cases feel a heightened awareness of these situations, struggle mightily with them, and are very harsh in judging  themselves concerning their levels of success or failure.

This week we worked more on getting ready for our photo shoot for Alice in Wonderland, we painted (we are painting) a big giant backdrop in class, and began rehearsing “When You Wish Upon a Star” for our school awards ceremony.  I am excited to give the kids this opportunity, and while everyday there are glitches to overcome, conflicts to discuss, and personal issues and learning challenges that interfere with our work, the kids sound really pretty on that song!

I am hopeful this will be the first in a long line of singing traditions.   I do feel that more singing opportunities would add so much to our school, as well as to the self esteem and creative experience of our kids.

This week our silent movie project metamorphosed into something completely different.  I have learned much this year at school, and could stand to learn a great deal more.  But  think I have finally learned that there should be almost no sitting around and lots and lots of getting going and doing.  That yes, a bit of time focused o high pt low pt is good, but then get up and go.  We have changed our project into a series of photos depicting the various scenes in Alice in Wonderland.  Against them we will put the music we decide best describes the mood and emotions in the scene, and then this will all be put together into a montage.

I was trying to work through all the details involved in making a movie as I know them (and truth be told I don’t much know them) and it suddenly came clear to me that there was no way these guys were going to make it through.  That what I ultimately hope to accomplish with them has little to do with the discussions and the planning that what I was trying to do with them and can just as easily and much more happily be learned through…doing. So we are now up and running.  It is still disorganized, and I am sure it will still seem out of control at times, but we will all be happier.  And more productive.

It has happened – I finally settled on a topic for our film project.  It became clear to me this week that we are not ready to write our own screemplay by any stretch of the imagination, and then things started to fall into place a little better.  We rae going todo Alice in Wonderland, which is chock full of mysterious creatures, will lend itself nicely to the beautiful outside becoming-flowery locations we can find around the school, and the costume designs wil be great fun.  There will not be much set building, though perhaps we will need to paint the indoor scenes in the classroom.

I think this will be a great way to finish out the year.  I will show a couple of version so the film this week I think; many of the kids are very visual and this should help them get a grip on the plot.  Here we go…