After a summer off, the Friday class was back in the swing of things starting with a rocking dance party. New teaching artists Mara and Isuara joined the dancing meeting the teens and boogieing.
After we had finished dancing, Kendra led the class through some warmups for our bodies and voice. "A Big Beautiful Blue Balloon Burst!" was passed from teen to teen as a tongue twister. After plenty of giggling from burst balloons, we settled down to learn the characters from A Christmas Carol.
Jack is getting ready to catch Kendra's purple ball of energy during warm ups!
Sam P. led off the character portrayals with an excellent "Bah Humbug!" in his top hat as Ebeneezer Scrooge, Jack perfected his limp acting out Tiny Tim, and Natalia was eerily silent as the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come. Many of the teens were familiar with Scrooge and Bob Cratchit, but some of the smaller characters like Fezziwig and Belle were less well known. We'll continue to learn about the characters and their motivations as we continue through the semester.
Scrooge's spooky former business partner, Marley, is sure to be a favorite!
After reviewing the characters and some plot points, we played a game called Pearls on a String. The teens were asked to come up with plot points from the story and then put themselves in order as things would happen in the play. Again, some of the story beats with Scrooge were familiar but there were definite gaps in the story the teens told. As we continue to work on the story, we'll fill in those gaps.
Finally we wrote in our journals to end the class. We asked the teens who their favorite characters so far were and we had a fair number of people who were fans of Scrooge. Next week we dive into Act One and will really look into the characters of Marley and Fred. See you then!
