Linda A. Carson, a graduate of
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Have you ever thought you knew exactly where you are going but when you arrived you were nowhere near the place you thought you would be? This happened to me one warm September morning when I went to the Casa Loma Daycare to try out some ideas for a new play I was working on. But let me back up…
Last year I was lucky enough to join a group of writers gathered by Lorraine Kimsa Theatre For Young People who were interested in creating work for 3-6 year olds. LKTYP linked us with George Brown College and their affiliated daycares so we could observe our potential audience in action. We quickly learned that it was difficult to simply sit back and observe the dynamic play we’d arrive into because within moments we’d want to join in. Many of the successful theatre I had seen for this age group were interactive in nature and I thought, “Ah, this is why! The youngsters probably feel like jumping into our play as much as we feel like jumping into theirs!” With this in mind, I wrote windows of opportunity in my new play for the young audiences to jump in. But, would these sections work?
This question found Allen MacInnis, Stephen Colella and myself on the steps of the Casa Loma Daycare. We felt like we were on a well deserved field trip into the day to day lives of our audience. As we waited to be led down to our class, inquisitive toddlers caught our eye from the doorway into their room and began to entertain us with their antics. Great fun. Eventually they were led outdoors. hand in hand. and we were led into our kindergarten class. Sitting before us were sixteen sets of bright, happy eyes quietly waiting for us with their teacher Ms. Laura.
After a brief introduction, we set right to work with one of my interactive ideas. I had imagined a quiet game of "store" in which the audience would put their hands up and bid to buy the toys I wanted to sell. Oh la, la! When I set up my exercise, the students got very excited (a good thing!) and full of ideas, (another good thing!) but somehow my structure led them to begin to call out, jump up and down and run over each other to get their ideas to the centre of our attention. What was going on? This had never happened when I had earlier observed Ms. Laura working with her class but now the walls were vibrating while some of the quieter students sat in despair with their hands over their ears. Oh yi, yi, yi, yi! Learning on our feet, we changed and adapted till we had things more settled and eventually went on to some games that we knew would work. But, where had I gone so wrong?
As I limped away Ms. Laura and Sue Feltoe (who heads up the daycare and has been extremely helpful to our process, thank you Sue!) gave me some suggestions to try the next day. Allen, Stephen and I regrouped at the George Brown College coffee shop and made some plans. We decided we would need a strong contract with the audience to bring them back into a listening mode after and during our interactive sections. Also, we would have be extremely clear about what we wanted them to participate in and how. Perhaps it is not a good idea to ask too many questions that they of course all want to answer! With the help of Allen and Stephen, back to the drawing board I went.
The next day, much to our delight, our new listening game worked wonderfully and the young audience stayed on track and were able to listen and participate in our story. However, the activity that I thought they’d be intrigued with fell flat. Hmm? It had all gone so well in my imagination. But thanks to the process, I immediately got a new idea to try out next time around, so onward ho!
I owe a huge thank you to Allen, Stephen, Sue Feltoe, Ms. Laura and her class for providing me with the opportunity to find things like this out while I can still change course and re-write! As we left the still bright and smiling faces of Ms. Laura's class we thanked them for their help and invited them to our show once we got it up and running at LKTYP.
Thank you so much Sue Feltoe, and your group of great teachers, for providing us with this safe place to experiment as we create our plays for your young students. And thank LKTYP for giving me a chance to explore my writing in this way.
And now? Back to the drawing board for me!
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