This week, our ensembles continued to shape their original stories for The Forms of Things Unknown
As we explained last week, we have a collection of 8 very different fantastical tales for this project. Each group of actors and facilitators is taking a unique approach to their story by adding things like dance, music, sign language, and even puppetry! This week, our ensembles dug deeper into these extra story elements in many different ways:
The actors in The Sickness at Fire Lake designed their own costumes from materials they found at home and enjoyed showing these off to each other:
The team in The Quest for the Dragon’s Eye worked on a crowd sequence that will be populated by stuffed animal friends and other puppets:
The actors in The Betrayal of the Taniwha spent some time making construction paper fish puppets for the Taniwha’s epic swim across the ocean. You can make your own with a few simple supplies. You just need:
Construction paper to make the body of your fish
Crayons or markers to decorate your fish
Scissors to cut out your fish shape
A Stick (e.g. a popsicle stick, straw, chopstick) to control your puppet
Scotch tape
Teaching Artist Katie will walk you through how to make a puppet in this clip from Sunday’s rehearsal:
Meanwhile actors wrote original lyrics for songs in The Love Song of the Fairy and the Centaur and The Contest of the Creepy Castle. And the casts of The Adventure on Windy Raft River, The Scourge of the Evil Rat Fairies, and The Journey to The Triolympic Games practiced movement sequences, wrote additional dialogue, and thought through some staging.
Of course, this is a lot of work, but we still had time for some of our favorite ensemble games this week like Yes Let’s!, Group Mirroring, and Find Your Frame. We also took our time with a thought provoking check in question:
All of our characters have something that frightens them. What is something you used to be afraid of that doesn’t scare you anymore?
People shared about different animals like bugs, snakes, monkeys, and dogs that used to scare them. Many people noted loud noises like fire drills and fireworks. We also talked about rollercoasters, visiting new places, and creepy clowns. But the most common answer across all 4 of the ensembles was thunderstorms facilitators, teaching artists, and actors in every group mentioned this as a fear! But we also talked about how we’ve found bravery by taking deep breaths, asking for help, and trying new things.
Our teaching artists are putting the final touches on scripts and next week we’ll do our screen tests before we start filming in week #9! This week, we’re also mailing out a filming kit to all 70 of our actors, facilitators, and teaching artists. This kit contains instructions for finding the right filming set up and camera angle, adjusting Zoom settings to get the best quality footage, and troubleshooting technical issues when they arise.
Stay tuned for more fun from rehearsals here on the blog!
