Our Performance

After our Whose Shoes project we were then split into two groups and given a new brief. To put on a performance to primary school children and to include captions for deaf and hard of hearing children and adults. We were given the same script of Whose Shoes however, we were allowed to edit it if we wanted. After some brainstorming we decided to give it a modernised view and to base it around a persons hobbie/passion. We divided up our roles and then gave everyone the task of storyboarding the script so we could decide how we were going to stage it. After some sessions with shadow puppetry we agreed to perform our play using mostly shadow puppets.

The next week we had planned out our set, people had been given roles and we all worked on making our shadow puppets. We also decided to set the play in Nottingham so it related to the children more. There was going to be thee different hobbies that Eldamina would try, these were, Scuba-Diving, Football and Ice-Skating. We wanted some props on stage for each scene so I took the job of making a jellyfish for the underwater scene. I was inspired by a costume I'd seen in St Ives on New Years it was quite a simple design just using an umbrella and fairy lights but I loved the end result so so much!

We were given a budget of £200, which was spent on some costume and materials to make our props. We only had one main actor so we didn't have to source much costume which was helpful. By this point we had started setting up our stage and we were adding details we didn't know we needed till that point, such as our backgrounds for each scene and our captions for the hard of hearing.

We had a week left until performance day and we did our first rehearsal in front of Red Earth director Amanda Wilde who suggested some changes which really helped our final production. The rest of the week was full of rehearsals from 10 till 5 until eventually it was show day. Both performances went amazingly and it felt so amazing to be back in theatre again, the children loved it and laughed all the way through. It was sad to be over so fast. We got our feedback from the children and then we spent all Monday taking everything down.

I really enjoyed this project as it was so hands on, I worked amazingly with my team and I'm so proud of everything we achieved in just 5 weeks.