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CHRISTMAS TALES – ‘TALES FROM GEPPETTO’S WORKSHOP’

This Christmas do something different with your family; come to Chickenshed and experience the magical theatre for children this winter in Geppetto’s Workshop for a limited time only!
After a sell out tour of Christmas Tales last year, the Chickenshed Tales team are back with a newly devised, fun packed entertaining adaptation of Pinocchio’s story called ‘Tales from Geppetto’s workshop’. Our story follows the toys that are left behind in Geppetto’s workshop. You will all be apart of the story of the most recent toy created, a puppet who has no story, we will all embark on a journey to discover her story, with a little help from a few of our familiar friends from the shed and also some new ones too and especially YOU!

A Show where there is no edge to the stage, YOU, ME and US will create this show!

This is a fantastic way to stimulate your child’s creative imagination while being educated to The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). ‘Tales of Geppetto’s Workshop’ looks at the themes of giving, growing and learning to love who we are, using song, slapstick, puppetry, interaction and improvisation.

Not only is this Christmas Tales production at Chickenshed Theatre for selective dates with a bigger cast and bigger ambitions, the ‘Tales from Geppetto’s Workshop’ could be in your school too. With an interactive showcase of performance and workshop for Nursery to Yr2 age children.

So book now and let us see what we can create together!

Chickenshed Theatre Dates: Sat 12th, Sat 19th and Wed 23rd December

Times: 10am & 11.30am

Tickets: £5

Age recommendation: Tales from Geppetto’s workshop is for everyone aged 0-7 years.

Booking information: To book tickets, please contact the Box Office on 020 8292 9222, email bookings@chickenshed.org.uk or for textphone users call 18001 020 8292 9222 (Typetalk).

School Bookings:

Schools can now book for this combination:

A 45 minute interactive performance for up to 200 Key Stage One children and a 45 minute workshop following the show for 2 classes (up to 60 children).

(If it is necessary to go up to 240 children for the performance in order to for example, include all classes in a year group – and the space can accommodate this – then we can be flexible about numbers.)

Dates: Monday to Friday of weeks commencing 23rd November, 30th November and further opportunities during weeks commencing 7th and 14th December.

Times: 10.00 – 11.30am & 1.15 – 2.45pm

There can be room for some changes to suit your timetable.

Cost: The cost for the performance and workshop, which come together as a
linked package was £275.

But we can be flexible regarding reductions depending on certain circumstances.
If a date you request is booked we will offer you another date as close to your selection as possible.

Don’t miss out this Christmas on a magical adventure where toys come to life and wishes come true!

The first week of 'Tales From Geppetto's Workshop and trying to find my voice...

After a very long and hard working week of devising and rehearsing ‘Tales from Geppetto’s Workshop’, myself and a team of six are about to embark on six week journey of performing this production to children in schools over London, Great Almond Street, in shopping centres, and at the Chickenshed theatre. And the time has come for our very first and very nerve racking show at St Andrew’s Primary school. A very young Eger audience of sixty sat in front of us wide eyed waiting to be trilled. Everyone gave that look to each other of right we can do this but I’m bricking it, no words were exchanged but we all knew by that look we had each other’s support.

The session starts off with an introduction to who we are and what we do. Then we taught them a section of the show, movement. After this the story of Geppetto’s workshop begins with Geppetto running off to find Pinocchio outside the workshop. As he leaves the rest of the toys Geppetto has created come to life. The story follows a puppet called Pinocchi-u who has to complete five good deeds to get a wish. Along the way Pinocchi-u meets other toys who needs her help like the Pincchi-a, who has lost his conscience, dog and duck who are bad toys trying to trap Pinocchi-u into the fame of dome forever so they can take her wish, the green fairy who needs help recycling, Professors What? Professor Who? Professor When? Professor Where? And Professor Why?; have all given up on fixing their machine and finally Santa who is nowhere near ready for Christmas. In the show we all play a number of different characters using puppets and skins and ourselves, we use songs, speech, visual and sign language to communicate to our audience. After the show we lead a workshop based on the performance for 45minutes.

From the first week of performances we found that the show was too long for the time slot of an hour and a half where we were meant to perform the show for 45minutes and lead a workshop for 45minutes too. We decided that during the shows we would have to watch the time and judge what scenes could be performed. Obviously when performing in front of an audience you see what works what was well received and what didn’t. So from this we put in extra rehearsals to tighten the performance and make sure the message we want to deliver is clear.

I felt through this first week of performances I found my character, the voice and my reason of being. I tend to always have a late process into finding my true character, but an even later one with finding my voice/ accent, I find it especially hard to find voices/ accents to suit my characters, I have quite a strong north London accent and I don’t really like going for the obvious voices like posh or common, baby or low voice I want to be challenged.

Has anyone one got tips to finding voices or creating new ones as in Tales we use lots of different puppets which each need very different but also unique voices?

'I Found My Horn'

On the 19th November I went to Hampstead theatre to watch ‘I found My Horn’ By Jonathan Guy Lewis, adapted from the book by Jasper Rees. Tickets were only £10 with ‘A Night Less Ordinary’ funded by Arts Council England – great discounts on local theatre, check it out!

‘I found my Horn’ is a one man show exploring a forty year old man’s midlife crisis of his realisation that he has done nothing to make himself memorable. He then remembers the excitement he had for his childhood passion of the brass Horn. Even though he has not touched the French Horn for more than 25 years he decides to resuming his old French Horn from the attic, and sets himself an impossible challenge to him; to perform a Mozart concerto in front of paying audience of horn fanatics. The actor Jonathan Guy Lewis takes us back and forth through 25years of this man’s life of his experiences of learning the horn. He performs many characters with a wide variety of skill and humour.

This Production has inspired me to start writing and devising characters to maybe collaborate to make a performance using the idea of one or two actors with the challenge of performing many different characters.

A heart-warming performance piece tracing one man's inspirational journey to regain his self-confidence. - EMILY GOVAN

A Night To Remember...

On the 17th November 2009 it was a very special day and the most important day in Chickenshed’s yearly calendar. Each year a Gala event is held to celebrate the work of Chickenshed and to raise money to go towards the £3 million Chickenshed needs each year to continue their life changing, pioneering inclusive work to thousands of people across England. But this year the gala was bigger, the venue was bigger, the cast was bigger. This year Chickenshed celebrated its 20th annual fundraising Gala in style at the historical Royal Albert Hall.

I was luckily enough to be chosen to represent Chickenshed within the vocal choir for this event. As a member of Chickenshed from the age of 12years I have experienced quite a lot within the company, going from children’s theatre to youth theatre to becoming a Btec student and a Foundation degree student to now being a third year student with staff responsibilities and core cast within Tales. This night I was able to appreciate and feel a sense of pride on the stage of the Royal Albert Hall watching Children/ Youth theatre members, students of all levels and my teachers/ staff, thinking that not only have I as an individual come so far but Chickenshed as a company has too. It is one thing bringing together so many people to perform but it is an amazing thing when you see all these people sharing the same passion for Chickenshed and the support and pride that they all have for Chickenshed’s work.

This was defiantly a Night to remember!

KOLB's Learning Cycle

Concrete Experience

For this autumn term I have join a team of six in the weekly production of tales from the shed becoming a primary education assistant, rehearsing and performing four shows at the chicken shed theatre company and at a school in Enfield. Each week we improvise acting pieces using physical theatre and create movement to songs based on the weeks themes. We explore the weekly themes through puppets, songs, tales real life characters, like ERM Emergency repair man, and the primary education team members. Within Tales improvisation is a key tool we used to not only convey a message but also to communicate with the audience. The main key tool we use is influenced from Augusto Boal, with his practice of Forum theatre, were there is no divide of audience and stage. The audience are on the stage, the stage is amongst the audience. This makes each show completely different even though it has the same running order, as anything is possible. This week’s themes were Time and Travel so myself and Stephanie directed a scripted section called ‘Tales Time’ where we created two new characters to add to the tales friends using puppets which looked the same but one was small and one was big, we named these characters Tick and Tock the ‘tales time keepers’.

Reflective Observation

When we performed ‘tales time’ it was received well by the audience but we found a few things that needed to be developed, visually we needed to be more physical when creating an interesting picture for the audience and also our character voices. We found the voices we had devised for Tick and Tock were not complementing the size of their bodies for example Tock was small and had a very low, slow voice and Tick was big but had a very high, squeaky voice. Visually this did not look right as our puppeteer skills were not up to scratch, we needed to bring the characters more alive the key to this was to keep them moving and animated when speaking. We decided as a team to swap Tick and Tock voice’s around which suited the body shape and improved each character. I found at this stage ‘Tales Time’ was not at the right level for performing as not everyone knew their lines; this affects the delivery of the piece and makes the connection between character’s lines a little hesitant which can illustrate a unprofessional show at times. But luckily enough with Tales from the Shed we perform the same show four times which allows us to improve and become more confident with the material we are displaying.

Abstract Conceptualisation

From this weeks experience of performing in Tales, directing ‘Tales Time’ and the rehearsal process of this week I found that the last two shows the whole team knew what they were doing with confidence. I feel the process of getting to that stage was a bit to relaxed for example line learning. I feel I have a lazy attitude towards learn lining, as I find it hard to learn lines and to come of the sheet. In the future I am going to make sure I keep myself to a strict schedule to learn them as I do not want to feel the horrible pressure of not knowing what I am doing. What I would like to achieve is the confidence of knowing what I am doing before the first show so all I need to worry about is developing myself as a performer. I feel as a team we are very strong and creative when we get down to work, we are also quite good at feeding back to each other when things worked or did not work. We tend to always make the show work by all pulling out the stocks and giving it 110% when performing. I feel in the future as a team we should used our workshop and rehearsal time more efficiently to get the most out of it, so we all are confident with the sections and the running order.

Active Experimentation/Observation

For the following week I have asked for a structured running order on paper, to allow myself to connect to each section. I have also decided to question things to allow myself to fully understand the show. I also decided to watch the other tales team perform to develop my insight within tales. This allowed me to pick up pointers and report these back to the team I am in to positively develop the show. Within the next week’s rehearsal/ workshop I found myself applying last weeks worries and concerns to new work but then realised what I needed to do to over come these. I worked extra hard on keeping a focused energy by focusing the team when we started to go of track. I also started to question movement for a positive change. I found that this helped my confidence develop and I also found a new trust which I think I needed to have with all my team members from the beginning.