It was fantastic to deliver some workshops last week with Creation Theatre's Youth Chorus for their Christmas production of Pinocchio. 

As well as basic theatre and performance skills we also looked at creating industrial-inspired group movement sequences, different types of puppetry and ways in which classic stories and fairytales can be re-told (along with plenty of fun games and breaks as well!).

A big highlight of the sessions was creating a larger puppet called Bob, controlled by 3 young people at a time. We looked at creating weight, breathe and eyelines to make Bob come to life and challenged teams of 3 with different actions and scenarios for Bob to act out.

Last week I had the privilege of leading a play-in-a-week workshop for 6-8 year olds for Creation Theatre in Oxford. The participants chose between 3 stories to do and we ended up creating our own version of Treasure Island. Our adaptation included a sea shanty (created by the participants), a dance to 'Wellerman' and a carefully choreographed 'battle scene' (which is fair to say was probably the young people's favourite scene ). Lots of the text was devised by the group and participants were able to contribute to sound design and directing choices.

On the final day, they gave a performance a small audience and we shared what we were proud of achieving during the week. One participant said it was 'meeting new people and making new friends', one said 'creating our own sea shanty' and another said 'learning to work as a team'. ​I had a fantastic week and it was so wonderful to be delivering in-person work with young people again.