A reflection by Bassi on behalf of the Drama Group

My name is Sebastian and I’m going to tell you about the learning and the process of our play.
It all started when we had to write a persuasive letter to the teachers to persuade them to let us into a group of our choice. My choice was the play group.
When we were in our groups we had to get into smaller groups and create a character. We all had to think about what our character would be like and then we had to use each other’s ideas.
Once we had our characters we drew what we thought they would look like.
Then we all came together and thought up a story that included all of our characters and everyone’s ideas. We weren’t allowed to have too much violence and our story had to have a problem.
It was hard to negotiate what we would have in and what we would leave out but we all learnt that you don’t have to always get your own way and that other people’s ideas can change things and make them better.
Then we thought about what things we could do on stage to tell the story. We were inspired when we saw Emily Eye Finger and that gave us ideas for how we could make the car and use the audience space.
It was hard to think up the dialogue. Everyone kept thinking up new ideas and we had to choose which words to say.
We had lots of experts come in and help us.
Gabi the teacher helped us think about the staging. I learnt that you have to use our space a lot more than we usually do. She also helped us to make a storyboard and set the scenes in order.
Our story changed a lot from how it was in the beginning.
Gabi, my Mum talked to us about costume design. We had to think about what we could wear to tell the audience who the characters were and what they were like. We drew our costume designs then Gabi, Sule, Michelle, Sue and Laurel helped us to create our costumes. I learnt that wearing a costume can make you feel more like a character and it can make you feel more confident.
Clare, Ivy’s Mum is a director so she helped us with our expression and showed us some movements to help us be like our characters. Clare taught us to always have our feet, hips and shoulders pointing at the audience.
Linas, Rita’s son talked to us about sound. I learnt lots of new words from him. Linas talked to us about all the different parts in the story where we could use sound effects to help explain what was happening and we chose some sounds.
Then Will, Isabella’s Dad helped us with the lights. He told us that different coloured lights can help the audience know what is important and can set the scene.
Sheryal helped us with our singing and Tim also helped us with our acting and expression.
Justine, Jasmine’s Mum told us about stage make-up. I learnt that stage make-up has to be really heavy so the audience can see it. We all drew face charts with our make-up designs.
I was surprised how much time and effort it takes to tell a story through drama and how many different things like sound and lights and costumes are involved.
I learnt lots of new things like how to write a movie script and a play script and how to say things with expression. I also learnt that working in a big team is difficult because there are so many ideas but that is good because exciting things can happen.