| |
|
 |
|
Children's Theatre
Workshop final performance. |
The Children's Theatre Workshop is a theatre camp for children 8 to 12 years of age. Meeting Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to Noon for two weeks, the children experience all aspects of theatre first hand, including script writing, set design, costuming, make-up, vocal production, stage presence and much, much more.
Director Paul Callihan on the 2011 Children's Theatre Workshop:
Every day started with physical and vocal warm ups. Actors need to warm up just like in athletics. After warm ups, the story line of the play was discussed. We talked about the history of theater, from its origins in Greece to the Roman theater which favored Pagan themes. After the fall of Rome, the Church, as the most stable entity closed the theatre. For the next 400 to 500 years (commonly known as the dark ages), education did not happen. Common man did not read; he toiled in his field of endeavor. The various fields of business developed group associations (called GUILDS.) Around 1100-1200 AD, the Church started what was known as "liturgical dramas" within the church. The guilds were selected to perform the various stories of the bible on special occasions: feast days, Christmas, Easter etc. The guilds were also sponsors for some of the marvelous stained glass windows to found in the cathedrals of Europe. These windows told the stories of the bible. This is where our two week children's theater play began.
The class talked about scenes; we improved their ideas; notes were taken and rolled into a script. Their play was a contest set forth by the King to see which guild’s stained glass window would be the best design and allow ed to be put into the cathedral. The two guilds, the tailors and the smiths (black, silver, gold) both decide to tell the Adam and Eve story in stained glass; neither one knows the other’s story. A complication . . .a shortage of stained glass in the land and all have to shorten the Bible story to 5 panels. On the feast day when the panels are revealed it takes both of their panels to tell the complete story. The King accepts both and a happy and unified ending with a wonderful stained glass to show.
The class designed; colored their stained glass windows; the designs were then transferred to lighting gel and cut out and pasted onto a white translucent sheet that was framed; allowing the light to transmit the colored images.
We used class time to establish characters with different walks, voices that fit into the framework of the story. Rehearsals, set design, costume selection, props, sound design (eac h day they did warm ups to music of the medieval period) so they could get into the mood of the time...all of these things came together in a delightful 30 minute presentation called The Challenge.
|
 |
