Tonight was the second class and it went great. Kaylie and our new facilitator Braden greeted everyone as they entered. And we danced to the sounds of Uptown Funk. After a spirited round of some of ABLE’s favorite songs Emily led us in a warm-up. We started out as bananas and moved on to chewing gum. A great warm-up for the body and voice. Next up was the check in question. In preparation of working with the Spirit of Christmas Past we asked, “If you could travel back to one day, what would it be?” It became very apparent that most everyone would like to spend time with family on a special day.
If you could travel back to one day, what would it be?
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A very important part of our class time is to build a sense of ensemble. To that ends we played some of our favorite ensemble games. First was Zip Zap Zop. This game focuses on eye contact and passing the energy around the circle with a clap as you say either zip, zap, or zop. Concentration comes into play as you have to remember which word the circle was on. The game took off rather quickly with a few stalls, (Andrew loves to throw in a “whoa” to try and redirect the flow.) The next game was an ABLE favorite, Rocket Ship. We started by climbing into our rocket ship, putting on our helmets and strapping down. We launched into space and landed on our first planet that was made of ice cream, very hard to move through. Colleen enjoyed the taste of her strawberry planet. Next we visited a frozen planet and a burning planet. Before heading back to Chicago we stopped at a very crowded planet, getting through the crowds without stepping on toes proved to be difficult. Once we got back to earth is was time to play one last game.
Our next game was focused on the Characters for our play. We call it Musical Characters. With everyone's help we made a circle of carpet squares. At every square was a character poster and a costume piece. Like musical chairs everyone started moving around the circle to the sounds of One Direction, once the music stopped everyone grabbed their costume and struck a pose that represented an aspect of the character in front of them. Claire made a very determined Bob Cratchet working diligently at his desk. Anna showed us that even though Tiny Tim was sick he was still very grateful. Lucy was a lovely Belle and Colleen’s Third Spirit game me chills. Emily laughed with glee as a celebrating Mr. Fezziwig. Sam F. didn’t want to stop being the Third Spirit and Ben was positively ghostly as the First Spirit. After reviewing the characters for Christmas Carol we moved onto scene work. Scene two and three was our focus for the day. Scene Two is a relatively short scene that introduces the Ghost of Marley. He tells Scrooge of what is to come and the importance of the visits. Scene three is the visit of the First Spirit. We spent time with the first part of this scene as Scrooge gets to relive a meeting between him and his sister so many years ago. With that it was time to check out.
The check out question for the day was, “What is your favorite Christmas Carol?” Everyone had great suggestions from Jingle Bells to Frosty to Jingle Bell Rock. I Take from the Heavens put a cap on the night. Everyone did a great job and next week we revisit scene three and add scene four.
