Wednesday 3rd March - Paper Birds

Today was a weird, busy one. At 9am some year 9 students from Portsmouth schools, Priory and Mayfield, came over, for a Diploma taster day. Because they were in this morning we didn't have to come in to school until 11am. When we came in the year 9 students had created some good props and were really good at making things in such a good time. They spent the afternoon writing up a presentation on their process and production, whilst we were in the Gymnasium taking part in a workshop.

At 1pm the Brookfield crew arrived at our school and so did our workshop guest Ellen, who is a designer for the Paper Birds Theatre Company. She asked us to think about how we may create an atmosphere, character background or location with just props that can be easily moved on and off of the stage.

She then talked to us about the idea of creating a set in a suitcase, creating a character's whole world in just one small box. They would walk on to the stage with a suitcase, open it up and their world would be created. With this thought in our minds we had a go at creating some suitcases of our own that would create a set. We would first create a story line with four scenes and then we were to design four different suitcases that contained these worlds.

After we had all designed our suitcases we had to present our ideas to the rest of the group... we really need to work on our presentation skills but other than that our designs were good.

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That evening we travelled by minibus, thanks to Miss Flux who drove us, to the Ashcroft Arts Centre in Fareham to see the Paper Birds production of 'In a Thousand Pieces'. The performance followed the story of three young eastern European girls who had been promised new, exciting lives in the UK but they are then sold into the sex trade. The story was very strong and was a very graphic piece of theatre. It was a real shock for us all as we didn't know what it was about before we went into the theatre. The way the play was performed was very interesting, as it involved 3 actresses playing the same character. A tape recorder of 'her voice' with recordings of her speaking was repeated throughout the play, giving it a real impact. It was really shocking.