Center Stage Youth Theatre

Posts Tagged ‘Silent Movies’

The Glenforest elementary school’s Peter and the Wolf production plans passed from the exploration zone – with the children learning to recognize and identify the characters, the instruments that represented the characters and the themes those instruments play to conjure up the characters -  into the actual creating the show zone this week.  We began writing lyrics, and the sweet voices of the children  chimed in happily as they caught on immidiately to what was happening.  So it looks perhaps as if the show is going to be an opera of sorts!

The middle and high schoolers spent the week learning about storyboarding and how that helps the film maker organize his story into the scenes he wishes to shoot.  We were very proud of their work, and of their ability to stand and deliver to the class the process by which they divided up their stories created their storyboards.  They worked hard on these and in the end all took it very seriously which was a treat.  The next step for the kids will be to decide on a theme and divide into groups for the actual creating of the silent movies.  We will be introducing classical pieces of music for them to use in their work for the specific purpose of communicating to the audience the moods as well as the action involved in their production.

We are still a long way from knowing exactly how this is all going to look, but I do know that already the children are taking ownership of the process, and the shows can only benefit from that.  And the benefits to the children?  Well, that is the most important part of all, and the reason we do this.

I have had the most delightful last nine weeks with my FAW group of kids.  They worked well and got along well (ok, for the most part) happily took part in helping me prepare for the show by constructing and building and even velcro-ing the pipe system for hanging the black curtains. And  I have been sad to think that it was almost time for us to change groups, though I had definitely missed some of the other Drama oriented FAW kids and was looking forward to working with them again as well.

So I was really excited when our music teacher suggested that we work together on a project.  She told me that in her music class she had played ragtime for the kids, and they had really enjoyed it.  And when she explained to them how it worked during the silent film era, with the music as the background, they became very excited and had a great time creating little silent scenes to go with the music.

So that’s what we have decided to do.  And in this way the current drama kids will not have to move over for another bunch, as we can incorporate them all into the drama/music class while adding another set of kids for this big project.  We’ll have twice as many kids as usual, but we will also have two teachers and lots of material to work with.  I’m really looking forward to getting started tomorrow!