We begin with name tags and by the end of the day we’ve made a show together. Gen Butler and I are taking Terrapin’s Shadow Play workshop into regional schools, where we work with a whole class to complete a story about alien invasion, build the shadow props from cereal boxes, and rehearse it with sound effects. Then the lights go down, the audience arrives, and we perform it for the school.
It’s bedlam, but everybody has a role and excitement is high. It never ceases to amaze me how this process can fire imaginations and bring kids who are used to the fringes into the spotlight. We need crazy ideas, and restless people, and noisy ones, and technical minds to pull this off.
These are some of the cue cards for the sound effects orchestra at Bruny Island District School.
