Bringing Stories Alive - Creetown Drama Summer School July 2012

 

By Megan Monteith

  

On Monday the 16th of July, the Scottish Youth Theatre came down to Creetown to do a workshop with us. There was a junior workshop and a senior workshop, in which I attended the senior one. Craig, Jen and Emma were the three people that came down to do the drama workshop with us.

The workshop was from the 16th of July to the 20th of July so we had a lot of time to learn things. On the first day of the workshop I was quite shy and not sure about doing it, but Craig, Jen and Emma were such lovely, kind and encouraging people which boosted my confidence a lot. Craig also told us that we were doing a performance for our friends and family at the end of the week, which we were all frightened to do but when our confidence kicked in we were raring to go.

Craig was the Artistic Director, and he did games which helped us focus, script reading and role play. At first we found it hard to focus and we giggled quite a lot but after we kept practicing, we were very focused by the end of it. We also read a story which helped us think about emotions.

Jen was the trainee Director, and she did movement pieces with us. We did a movement piece which was based on the story Craig showed us and we had to think of three emotions within the story and show them through movement. I found doing the movement pieces helped me with my confidence a lot before our performance on Friday. 

Emma was the Visual Artist, and she did crafts with us. The first thing we did with Emma was to help us show our artistic side, so she rolled out a big sheet of paper and we drew shapes and patterns etc. We also made our own flying machines, in which we used one for our performance. I enjoyed the arts and crafts because I like doing that sort of thing at home. 

On the second last day we worked hard on perfecting our performance for the next day. Our performance was about Creetown having its own Aviator Club and we did some role play at the beginning and then went into a movement piece at the end. I enjoyed to the movement piece in the performance because we had worked so hard on perfecting it. My job was to carry in one of our Aviator club's newest members with two other people. The whole movement piece was basically about making the new Aviator club member an official Aviator club member by preparing her for her first flight.

Overall I really enjoyed the drama workshop because it really boosted my confidence and I learnt a lot of new techniques as well. I really hope Craig, Jen and Emma will come to Creetown again and do another workshop, and I'm sure everyone else wants them to come again too!