Yesterday we arrived at the Worboys Productions Theatre Farm Retreat to start week 1 of developing ‘The Ugly Duckling & Other Tales’. After a rather hot car journey in this glorious sunshine, we stopped off in Bury St Edmunds to pick up some last few bits to prepare for the week. Upon our arrival at the farm, we then set up the barn space and planned our week, looking at what we would do each day. It was decided that today we would start to experiment with some of the puppets we have made, and also begin to make some new shadow puppets based on some of the ideas from our workshop at Brixington School. We started the morning developing a scene between the farm animals, discussing the appearance of the ‘Duckling’. This lead to us developing a clear distinction between rhyming speech and non-rhyming narration, something which we are thinking about for our narrator characters.
In the afternoon, we cracked on with making our shadow puppets and have included some of the children’s designs (a house with an opening door). The main difference between our previous shadow puppets and our newly developed ones is that we have used coloured cellophane which makes for a more detailed and interesting puppet visually. We have made some scenery for some scene changes too, which we can’t wait to try tomorrow!
Our musician Emily arrives tomorrow and we can’t wait to introduce her to our world. We are looking forward to experimenting with creating a soundscape for the piece, including some continuous sound, and hopefully, some of our trade mark catchy tunes!
We’ll be posting every day, so pop back tomorrow for more updates on our process! On Thursday we’ll also be performing a work in progress showing at the Farm, so get in touch if you are in the South East and wild like to come along!
Helen x
