Early
Years Creative Theatre Research and Development
at the
Lowry, Salford
18th to 21st September 2006
Over four days a team of performers and
musicians led by Artistic Director Rachel Riggs, explored working
with the circular/rotation schema and the physical properties of
materials, objects and puppets in a process of simple play with
an engaged imagination, similar to the ways that young children
explore the world. DNA built and worked with two circular frames
of different sizes to symbolise a ball pond, and explored their
limitations and possibilities. We were aware a real ball pond would
just confuse early years as they would want to jump in immediately
and rightly so! So the suggestion was made to have a ball pond specifically
for play in another area in a venue. They played with balls: rolling;
spinning; falling; bouncing etc and adding percussion instruments.
Getting dizzy was good. They filled an old purple furry babygrow
with a hood with balls from the ball pond and put a larger ball
into the hood area, zipping it up firmly, which made a very good
puppet!
We really liked this idea of creating the
puppet in front of their very eyes. The 'executive producer' toddlers
who visited were initially fearful of 'the faceless one', the abstract
puppet but quickly became very attached. They very much wanted to
give him eyes and features. More investigation needs to be done
with the target audience to see how much face Bobby needs to make
him easy to relate to by the very young. The team worked with variations
of movement with circles - hoops and balls, balls on sticks in the
air, flowing cloth. It quickly became apparent that a choreographer
will be needed as the movement of the performers and objects and
figures are an important element. The performance is based around
a ball pond with the audience sitting in the round creating an intimacy
between performers and audience. We are still working on ideal size
of audience for show, 40 children to 40 adults is the latest!
DNA is intending to develop the project
into a touring interactive performance event for the very young,
with originally composed music which involves children between 2
and 5 years old and the accompanying adults. In March 2007, DNA
will be conducting trial sessions and gathering feedback before
a national tour to theatres and arts centres later in the year.
