2nd meeting 23/11/10

Theo warms them up with a game of rubber chicken which involves a lot of jumping and shouting. I find it quite stressful.

Next i present the group with three envelopes. envelope 1 contains emotions, envelope 2 contains famous lines from... stuff, and envelope 3 contains numbers between 1 and 10.

I get Jean-Luc to give an example, he takes one piece of paper from each envelope:

1) angry (the manner in which he says the line)

2) The impossible can become possible if. you're. AWESOME. (the line that he says - it's from BOLT)

3) 10 (how angry he is on a scale of 1 to 10)

So Jean-Luc says ''The impossible can become possible if. you're. AWESOME.'' very, very angrily. 

After this beautiful example the clubbers each have a go themselves with new pieces of paper.

this activity was to make them think more about the different ways they could say things wehn working from a script... so after this, i split them into two groups and gave them scripts: for one group; an extract from Think of a Story Quickly and for the other group; and extract from Over The Wall.

they seem to work better without scripts so i decide that we will devise the play ourselves or do an adaption. The group agree with me. Another benefit of devising or adapting is that it is easier to give everybody parts of relatively equal size and characters that suit them well.

first meeting. 16th november 2010

I convince two of my friends (who are wonderful at drama) to come and help me, they are Jean-Luc and Theo.

Only nine people turn up... less than i was expecting... but they begin to feel like family (one of them is).

I get them all to give me their name and phone number on a form so that i can hassle them if they don't turn up.

They all know each other so i don't bother with the name game i had planned. They tend to bore me anyway.

We play a game to get started then I put them into two groups and tell them to come up with a scene including; a monkey, selotape, and a fish called Ron.

They do rather quite well and this is when i discover that they are all very funny.

After watching them back I talk to them about the possibility of a production and if they want to do one. They do.

How it all started.

First i check with the head of year nine and the head of drama to see if I am allowed to start up the club... I am :)

I can't have year nine drama club if there's nobody in it.

I begin with publicity.

I make posters (showing the date, place, time, etc) and put a few up around the school. i then force a (charismatic) friend to come around the year nine form rooms with me one form time and tell everybody in person about the club.

That is certainly the best poster ever.