Beginners | Teacher Resources

BEGINNERS

TEACHER RESOURCE PACK FOR TEACHERS WORKING WITH PUPILS IN YEAR 4 AND UP

BEGINNERS Written and directed by Tim Crouch

FROM 20 - 29 MARCH 2018 FOR PUPILS IN SCHOOL YEARS 4 AND UP LET’S DISCUSS THIS LIKE ADULTS. Beginners plural noun 1. a person who has just started to do or learn something.

2. a call given to prepare to start a play.

Beginners tells the story of three families trapped in a waterlogged holiday cottage over summer. The children are bored. The adults are down the pub. So far so normal.

Renowned award-winning writer and director Tim Crouch (National Theatre, Royal Court, Unicorn) presents this joyous and imaginative new play for children everywhere. Beginners is an exquisite, funny and moving story that reminds us that the adult we’ll become – and the child we were – is always with us.

An extraordinary show for everyone who has ever wanted to be understood.

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TEACHER RESOURCES

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION TO THE PACK ABOUT THE PLAY

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MAKING THE PLAY: INTERVIEW WITH WRITER AND DIRECTOR, TIM CROUCH DRAMA ACTIVITIES - OVERVIEW SEQUENCE ONE: HOLIDAYS

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SEQUENCE TWO: PLAY MAKING

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SEQUENCE THREE: STORY MAKERS RESOURCES FOR ACTIVITIES

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TEACHER RESOURCES

INTRODUCTION The Unicorn production of Beginners is a funny, imaginative and surprising new play about children’s innate creativity, resilience and resourcefulness.

The classroom activities are designed to support and extend pupils’ visit to the theatre and offer teachers ways to pick up on and explore the themes in the play, before and after a visit. They will use drama and storytelling as ways of exploring ideas that are relevant to the play and to support National Curriculum requirements: ‘All pupils should be enabled to participate in and gain knowledge, skills and understanding associated with the artistic practice of drama. Pupils should be able to adopt, create and sustain a range of roles, responding appropriately to others in role. They should have opportunities to improvise, devise and script drama for one another and a range of audiences, as well as to rehearse, refine, share and respond thoughtfully to drama and theatre performances.’ National Curriculum The resources will also provide National Curriculum links at Key Stage Two: to English through the development of spoken word and writing tasks, and to SMCS aspects of learning.

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TEACHER RESOURCES

ABOUT THE PLAY Beginners is set in a rental cottage in Cornwall where three families holiday together each year. While the adults amuse themselves in the kitchen, or down the pub, their four children are left to their own devices. The children have not chosen to spend time with each other, and, as the rainy week goes on, they find ways to be together and to express the difficulties and challenges they face in their daily lives.

Beginners takes a look at what happens when adults are preoccupied by their own lives and children are left to fend for themselves. It is about what isn’t said to children and about how children find ways to process their experiences without the help of the adults in their lives. It’s also about play and theatre and creativity as powerful means for processing and expressing our experience of the world.

Lucy is the daughter of Jen and Paul; she imagines she’s a ballet dancer and that she has a baby called Jasmine.

Nigel is the son of Fran and Steve, who have split up since the last holiday. Nigel dresses as a doctor.

This year Nigel’s dad, Steve, has come away with his new girlfriend, Lisbeth. Nigel’s sister Sian has chosen not to come on holiday this year but to stay at home with their mum, Fran.

Bart is the son of Lisbeth (they are Dutch). This is the first time he has been on the Cornwall holiday.

Bart is aware he has taken Sian’s place on the holiday and that his mum has taken Nigel’s mum’s place. Bart’s father died of cancer.

Joy is the daughter of Maddie. Maddie is a single parent and has cancer. Joy is withdrawn and sometimes angry with the other children.

Sandy, the dog, likes to keep close to Joy. The structure of Beginners is unusual. When we first meet Lucy, Nigel, Joy and Bart, it isn’t clear at first who these four characters are. To start with, we think these characters are adults, and then we come to understand that the adults are actually playing children.

There are also four child actors in the play, who later play the four children too. At times, a child actor will enter the stage and shadow their adult actor. For example, at one point when Nigel is ill in bed, the child actor, who also plays Nigel, stands next to him. They are a little like daemon’s in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.

The adult actors are then replaced by the child actors at a point when the children have decided to put on a play for the parents and to make Maddie feel better after she has been very sick.

At first the children rehearse a play about a princess and kissing and dancing. They call for the adults to come and watch their show but discover they have forgotten about the play and have gone to the pub. Nigel and Lucy are furious and refuse to do the play just for Maddie. So Joy and Bart are left to improvise a new play.

What emerges out of Joy and Bart’s imaginations is a play about a beautiful Nirvana and the arrival of Page 5

TEACHER RESOURCES Death (played by Joy). Death destroys the final bee on earth and in so doing condemns the whole of humankind, because if the bees die, then we too will die out.

In Joy and Bart’s play, the adults abandon the children and they are left to face Death alone. At first the children despair, but after a visit from an angel (Bart’s dad) they realise that they have got the resources within them to fight Death and win. Nigel and Lucy rejoin the play and through the deployment of a powerful weapon - blackcurrant juice squirted from a carton - the children triumph and Death is defeated.

Their improvised play powerfully communicates the children’s deeply felt experiences and transforms them from victims of their circumstances to creative artists, giving form, as theatre makers, to their imaginations.

There is one other character in the play; a dog called Sandy. Sandy is also played by an adult actor. At the end of the play we also hear Sandy’s perspective on what has happened.

Spoiler alert: at the heart of the play is the ambiguity around who the five characters at the beginning of the play are and how it is gradually revealed that we are watching adult actors playing the four children and the dog. We would ask that you do not explain this aspect of the production to your pupils before you come so that they can experience the discovery of this for themselves.

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TEACHER RESOURCES

MAKING THE PLAY

INTERVIEW WITH WRITER/DIRECTOR TIM CROUCH WHY DID YOU WRITE THE PLAY? Why does anyone write a play? I want to tell a story. I want to create a live moment that is shared between everyone at the same time - the actors and the audience. I want to see what happens. I want people to think and feel and have fun together.

Why did I write this play? All my plays are about how people present themselves to the world. Who we think we are - and who others think we are. Beginners is about a group of people who are just beginning to learn who they are, how they are, what they are - and where they are going!

WHERE DID THE IDEA ORIGINATE? Theatre - and play - is about pretending to be something or someone else - something slightly different to our everyday lives. We use both to explore situations and ideas and stories safely. I have always been interested in the parallels between children’s play and adult ‘plays’. They are closer than we think. Children are natural dramatists in their play. They structure and create character.

I am fascinated by the journey from childhood to adulthood - what we keep with us as we grow up; what we lose. Where is the ten year old me? Where did he go? Is he still somewhere inside me? Also, when I was ten, what did I think I’d be doing now? What was my idea of being an adult? I remember wanting to be an adult, but not knowing what that really was. I remember watching the adults, pretending to be the adults, but not understanding what that meant. Children play at being adults in an attempt to understand.

The emotions we feel as children are no different to those we have as adults - fear, insecurity, jealously, love. As adults, however, we process and present them differently.

WHAT IS THE PLAY ABOUT? It’s difficult to talk about this play without giving the game away. I could say it’s about four children but I could also say it’s about four adults. It’s about four people who are flung together every year, the same place, the same time. Four characters who are made to get on with each other. They spend a week each year in a holiday cottage in Cornwall. With them, they bring all the baggage of the previous 12 months of their lives - illness and divorce, new relationships and new hopes. In the week we spend with them during the play, these four gradually work out a way of being together - and more than that. They work out a way to make sense of what is happening to them.

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TEACHER RESOURCES The play is also a bit of a ghost story. The holiday cottage is believed to be haunted. The four characters are ‘haunted’ by four children. Gradually, the children take over from the adult actors.

CAN YOU TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT THE STAGING? I started to write this play around the time I was finishing another play - Adler & Gibb. In that play, the form travels alongside the narrative. It begins quite abstract and ends very naturalistically. With Beginners, I’ve done the same sort of thing - but for a young audience. To start with, however, the abstract is not so easy to spot. It takes a little while to realise that the adult actors at the start of the play are not playing adults. They are playing 9 year olds. This is the abstraction. One thing pretending to be something else. Gradually, over the course of the play, the adult actors playing children are replaced by real children. The abstract becomes figurative. The audience slowly understand what these characters really look like, what they really are. To add to this swap, the adult actors reappear playing the parents of those children.

Beginners starts as if it is a play for adults. It ends as a play by children - for children.

The excitement for me is to see how a young audience takes to this journey.

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TEACHER RESOURCES

DRAMA ACTIVITIES The activities in this pack are designed to capture children’s imaginations and increase motivation to learn. They will offer a range of possible ways to link with your classroom priorities.

Our teacher resources and CPD support teachers in embedding drama in their curriculum planning.

Working through drama allows children to explore things that matter to them within a fictional context, draw on their prior knowledge and apply it to new situations, develop language as they give expression to new understandings and develop emotional intelligence and critical thinking as they see things from different perspectives. It also allows the children to take responsibility, make decisions, solve problems and explore possibilities from within the drama.

DRAMA SEQUENCES WILL INCLUDE: Sequence 1: Holidays Activities will use children’s experiences of holidays and days out to share, create and act out stories; exploring the way in which holidays are different to the everyday and the way in which what people hope for or expect from a holiday can be very different in reality. .

Sequence 2: Play making This sequence is designed to be run after the children have seen the production as a way of responding to what they have seen and exploring their own imaginative responses to the characters and events of the play. Like the children in Beginners the children will improvise, write and perform their own plays set on a magical island Sequence 3: Story makers The final sequence will build on the previous sequences and will explore ways for children to release their imaginations and creativity and write their own stories, based on where their imaginations lead them.

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TEACHER RESOURCES

SEQUENCE ONE

HOLIDAYS INTRODUCTION The play Beginners is set in a holiday cottage in Cornwall where a group of friends and their children holiday each year. This sequence of activities can be run before or after your visit to the theatre and focus on the idea of holidays; the expectations people have of holidays and how the reality can be very different.

This storytelling activity allows children to see the way they can make narratives out of everyday experiences. The actiivity enables each child to own their story, however small it might be, and see their experience acted out by others in their peer group.

AIMS • To explore the idea of holidays, how they are different to the everyday and the differences between what people can hope for or expect from a holiday versus the reality.

• To use children’s experiences of holidays and days out to share and enact stories.

STRATEGIES Discussion, STOP-GO, still image, story sharing, listening, story acting.

RESOURCES IWB or big paper and pens.

STAGE ONE: WHAT IS A HOLIDAY? Begin a discussion about what a holiday is. What kind of things do people do when they’re on holiday?

What do people want from a holiday? Do different people want different things? What might a mum want? What might a child want? Does a teenager want something different? Why might someone not enjoy a holiday?

Now ask the class to share ideas and write down as many ideas as they can on the IWB under the heading ‘The perfect holiday’. Now create another heading and ask them to write down ‘Things that could spoil a holiday’.

STAGE TWO: STOP-GO - A WET HOLIDAY If you haven’t yet seen the play, explain that it is set on a holiday where three families go away together. Everyone has been hoping for sunshine and trips to the beach but it is raining a lot and the Page 10

TEACHER RESOURCES children are stuck inside.

Play a game of STOP-GO: Ask the children to walk around the space and when you say STOP to stop as if they were a statue. When you say GO they should continue to move around the space.

Now add in that when you say STOP you will give them an image to create from the list below; either on their own or in small groups. All of the still images should be of children on a holiday where it is constantly raining and they are stuck inside.

Looking out the window at the rain (individual children) Making a den out of bedclothes (groups of 5) Jumping on the beds (groups of 4) Reading (individual children) Playing in-door badminton (groups of 2) Thought track some of the children in their images, asking them what is going through their minds in this moment.

STAGE THREE: STORY SHARING - A HOLIDAY OR DAY OUT THAT WENT WRONG Ask the children to find a space and to think of a time when a holiday or day out they were on didn’t go to plan. Share an example of your own – it can be helpful to tell a fairly simple story to show it doesn’t have to be exciting or complex, but a small story of disappointed expectations. For example; you set off excited and the trains were delayed.

In pairs, ask the children to listen to each other’s stories. Child 1 should tell their story to child 2. The listener shouldn’t interrupt, but can ask one or two questions for clarification. Child 2 should then attempt to write down their partners’ story as accurately as possible, checking back with their partner that they have got the details right.

Swap around so that child 2 tells their story to child 1.

STAGE FOUR: STORY ACTING Now create a story acting circle and demonstrate with your own story how the simple story can be acted out: Narrate your story and invite children around the circle to act out what is happening. If you come to the end of a ‘scene’ you can Whoosh away the action and start with the next children around the circle.

Whoever’s story it is can choose what part they would like to play in their story (including the director/narrator role if they would like).

Perform a range of the children’s stories around the circle.

Return to your list ‘Things that spoil a holiday’ and add any new thoughts.

It will be useful to reflect on the way in which being on holiday can often unearth things that have been going on in daily life at home, at school or at work.

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TEACHER RESOURCES EXTENSION: STORY WRITING-THE HOLIDAY THAT WENT WRONG Give each child a piece of paper and ask them to write a fictional story with the title: The holiday that went wrong.

Before they start ask them the children to decide who the protagonists are (the people going on holiday) and where they are going.

Now ask them to do automatic writing; to write non-stop until you say; they should keep their pen in contact with the paper and keep writing at all times.

If they can’t think of what to write next they should write the words ‘I’m writing, I’m writing’ until the next idea comes.

The stories can be realistic and believable (naturalistic stories) or they could be surreal; where things happen which couldn’t happen in real life.

When time is up, the children should have created the heart of their story which they can now develop, edit and write up, adding any further detail they want.

They could also turn their story into a script/scene which would include: • The setting - where their story takes place, including any key features – for example a helter-skelter by the sea • The dialogue –what the characters say. You could give them the constraint of 8 lines of dialogue • Stage directions that are important; for example; ‘she stood nervously at the top of the helter-skelter and looked around’.

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TEACHER RESOURCES

SEQUENCE TWO

PLAY MAKING INTRODUCTION This sequence is designed to be run after the children have attended the production. The activities enable children to respond to what they have seen and explore their own imaginative responses to the characters and events of the play.

At the end of Beginners, Joy takes charge of the play the children are going to perform to the adults and she, with Bart’s help, finds a way to give expression to what is happening to her. Joy and Bart follow their imaginations, improvising together and allowing one thing to suggest the next, and by doing so, allow their subconscious to shape the story they tell Maddie. As the story takes shape Nigel and Lucy join in and they all perform the story together.

AIMS • To respond to Beginners and the way in which the children create their own play within a play.

• To explore ways of freeing the imagination and tapping into subconscious images, motifs and narratives.

• For the children to collaborate in the creation of their own version of the play within the play.

• To create design ideas for the world they have created.

STRATEGIES Improvisation games, re-enactment through still image or short scenes, role on the wall, text reading, devising, performance.

RESOURCES Rope or stick, role on the wall (Resource 1), text extracts (Resources 2 and 3), shoe boxes, crayons, fabrics and magazines.

STAGE ONE: FREEING UP THE IMAGINATION Start with a simple game of ‘Yes let’s’ – this game allows children to guide the game through making spontaneous suggestions which everyone else accepts and affirms.

• With everyone in a circle explain that you will begin by suggesting something everyone can mime by saying the words ‘Let’s all …’ and then add an action everyone can do. For example; ‘Let’s all ride a horse’.

• Then everyone else must reply ‘Yes let’s all ride a horse’ and everyone acts out riding a horse.

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TEACHER RESOURCES • Give as many children as possible the chance to say ‘Let’s all...’ and come up with their own idea.

• When you have finished the game, discuss what it was like when everyone accepted your idea and everyone acted it out.

Explain that what you were doing in ‘Yes let’s…’ was improvising; coming up with an idea and going with it. You are now going to develop that idea with a game that asks the children to improvise – to make something up on the spot. The idea of improvisation is to do whatever comes into your head and anything goes, it doesn’t have to be clever or funny – in fact as soon as you try to be clever or funny it’s no good. It is possible to practice improvising – freeing up the subconscious imagination so that you don’t think about what you’re going to do, but just act spontaneously.

• Ask the children to stand in a circle and for one volunteer to go into the centre and mime an action. Someone else enters the circle and asks “What are you doing?”

• The person miming (for example mowing the lawn) must answer, not by saying what it is they are miming, but something different. For example - they may say “I’m cleaning windows.” They then leave the centre and return to the circle.

• The person who has entered must now start miming cleaning windows and, when a new person enters, give the next person a different action to mime (while miming cleaning windows they might say ‘cleaning my teeth’).

• Continue as a whole group and let everyone have a go.

• Alternatively, you could get the class to create circles of around 10, which would allow everyone to have a few goes at being in the middle. The more you do the activity the more you can practise being spontaneous.

When the children in Beginners start to act out their play the set will transform, creating a visual representation of the imaginary world they are in. One of the ideas the designers have used is that in their imaginary world things from the everyday have been amplified and transformed; so a carpet becomes a mountain, tangtastic sweets become stalactites and stalagmites and beds start to grow plants. The following game allows children to transform everyday objects into whatever their imaginations suggest.

Use a simple object such as a scarf, a rope or a stick. Standing in a circle demonstrate the game to your class; speak the words ‘this is a piece of rope, but it could also be a ...’ and then name what you have decided it could be.

You then need to mime an action that makes it clear what the rope has become.

Play the game a couple of times around the circle. Make sure children know that if someone else has acted on their idea before it gets to them, they can still do it – try to facilitate the activity in a way that children don’t feel pressure to have to come up with good ideas, they need to be able to relax in order to free up their imaginations.

Discuss what they observed about playing the game: How easy did they find it to have an idea? Was there anything about the object which suggested their idea; such as shape or the quality of the material it’s made from? Were they influenced by what other people did? Did seeing someone else’s idea trigger another idea?

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TEACHER RESOURCES STAGE TWO: REMEMBERING THE PLAY AND HOW THE CHILDREN’S STORY BEGINS In Beginners Joy and Bart lead the creation of the play the children perform. They have both experienced difficult times: Bart’s father died and, with his mum Lisbeth, he is now part of a new family along with Steve, Nigel and Sian. Joy is having a particularly difficult time as her mother has cancer and is very ill. The story they enact is a powerful vehicle for expressing their emotions and dealing with them in a metaphorical form. It is a story about difficulty, struggle, hope, determination and resilience. It does not diminish the difficulties faced, or find easy solutions, but it is a powerfully creative outlet.

Nigel and Lucy are less challenged in the play, life is not as difficult for them, and they do not find their voice, or agency in the same way as Joy and Bart. But when Joy and Bart start telling the story Nigel and Lucy gather around it and add to the storytelling.

This activity is designed to explore the process of collective storytelling and what other stories the children might tell; and imagines Nigel and Lucy started the story, what might have happened next?

Explain that you are going to respond to the play that they have seen and remember the key moments that stayed with them.

• In groups of 4 or 5, ask them to recreate a moment from the play that they remember. Decide who is going to play which part, where they are and what they are doing. Ask them to re-enact their moment with a clear opening image and closing image (you could ask them just to show a still picture of their favourite moment if you prefer).

• See all of the moments and discuss why these particular moments from the play stayed with them.

• Now move the class into four groups and give each one a ‘role on the wall’ outline (Resource 1), for one of the four child characters; Joy, Nigel, Bart and Lucy. Ask them to write on the inside of the outline things that they know about their character, things that are facts. Around the outside of the outline ask them to write anything they sense or feel might be true, or questions they have.

• Share the groups’ facts, thoughts and questions about each of the characters.

STAGE THREE: REVISITING THE ISLAND OF BEES • Remind the children of the play that the children in Beginners acted out for Maddie.

• Read the text extract (Resource 2) where the children begin to improvise their play. Ask for volunteers to read for the rest of the class or put the class into groups to read the text extract together.

STAGE FOUR: CREATING THEIR OWN ‘PLAY WITHIN THE PLAY’ • Move the children into groups of 5 and explain that they are going to create another play; the play that Nigel or Lucy might start to make up and that Joy, Bart and Sandy would join in and help to create.

• First ask them to decide who is going to play each of the characters.

• Give them the opening lines for their play (Resource 3) and ask them to finish the lines of dialogue.

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TEACHER RESOURCES • Ask the children to build on this opening and decide whether there is a force for good like the bees in the play Beginners, and what they make happen on this Island: And when the bees fly overhead, the cars slow down and the babies stop crying and the bullies stop bullying, and arguments end and sick people get better and everyone listens.

• Now ask the children to decide: What challenge or threat there is on this Island to the children?

Who or what helps them and who or what tries to stop them?

What do the children have to do to win out in the story?

What, if anything, does Sandy the dog do or say?

How are they going to end their play?

• Perform the plays that the children have created and discuss how these new plays express other aspects of Nigel, Lucy, Bart and Joy’s hopes and desires, and how Sandy the dog fits into this.

STAGE FIVE: CREATING A DESIGN FOR THEIR PLAY • Discuss the changes they noticed that took place in the set when Sandy and the children began to tell their story. Using images (which will be provided when the play opens) discuss how the stage was transformed and list all of your observations.

• Provide the children with shoe boxes and ask them to design the set for their island story. Ask them to imagine that they have started, as the play does, in the bedroom of the holiday cottage.

But their imaginations can take them anywhere. So anything in the room can be transformed, and new things can just appear out of the children’s imaginations.

• Provide a range of materials; fabrics, pastels, magazines that they can cut up, which the children can use to create their shoe box

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TEACHER RESOURCES

SEQUENCE THREE

STORY MAKERS INTRODUCTION Beginners is a play about the power of the imagination and creativity. It is about the way in which each of us can be a storyteller because we have lived through a range of experiences, and have an imagination we can tap into. Any story we choose to create will be as personal as a fingerprint, but also has the power to connect with others who have faced similar things, who can empathise and share contrasting and complimentary experiences.

This sequence of activities provides suggestions for ways in which children can be guided through creative writing and devising activities. We have selected the theme of the sea and islands as a starting point, but you could replace with another theme or starting point. The aim is to create a structure which allows the subconscious to inform the imagination and allow the children to take their story wherever they want to take it, without being so open that children can’t access their ideas.

AIMS • To collaborate in the creation of a group story.

• To allow children to create their own personal stories based on the stimulus of the sea and islands.

• To share stories and collaborate in acting out each other’s stories .

STRATEGIES Discussion, collaborative story acting, using images and music as stimulus for creative writing, visualisation.

RESOURCES Images of the sea and islands.

STAGE ONE: COLLABORATIVE STORYTELLING Start by discussing the idea of the sea and Islands. What kind of things happen at sea and what kinds of things happen on Islands? What do we feel about the sea and islands; which do we prefer?

Ask the children to share their ideas with a partner, and then together write up words they associate with the sea and islands on the IWB or a piece of paper. These can be returned to later.

Ask the children about any stories or parts of stories they know that take place on the sea or on an island.

Now look at a range of images of the sea and islands. Ask the class to choose one of the images to start to build a story around and ask for ideas of what might happen in a story that takes place there.

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TEACHER RESOURCES Don’t close down the possibilities at this stage, you are talking about a range of possibilities for a number of potential stories. This should provide a broad range of ideas to choose from and develop.

Ask the questions one by one and take a range of ideas: 1. Where does the story begin?

2. Who is the main character in our story?

3. Are there any other characters?

4. Are there any special objects or things (maybe magical but not necessary to ask)?

5. Is there something that happens that is a problem or a threat?

6. What do the characters do in response to this?

7. What happens at the end of the story?

• Take some of the ideas they have offered and write down a story which incorporates as many of them as possible. Make sure that you stay true to the ideas and don’t add much; the aim is that the children develop confidence in their storytelling and that we can say ‘yes’ to as many ideas as we can.

STAGE TWO: ACTING OUT THE STORY Bring all the children together to act out the story. Mark out an area with tape where the story acting will take place. Explain that you will be the narrator or storyteller and that the children will take it in turns to act out moments in the story.

Read out the story you have prepared, bringing children up, in turn, around the circle to act out the characters and objects in the story - for example; children can be the ship, sea creatures or the moon in the sky. When you get to a natural end of a scene or moment you can whoosh the children away and start again with the next children around the circle to show the next part of the story.

Having developed a collective story and demonstrated how the activity works, now develop this by giving the children the chance to tell their own story set on the sea or an island.

STAGE THREE: FREEING UP THE IMAGINATION Display a selection of the images around the room, printed large so that they can be seen. Ask the children to choose the one they like and go and stand by it. Give them time to look at the image and maybe discuss with other children what they like about it.

Now ask them to lie down and close their eyes and ask them some guiding questions to help them shape their story: Where does their story take place? Who are the characters in their story? Is there a problem? Does anyone or anything help? How does their story end?

Now ask the children to tell their story to a partner – the partner’s job is to listen to the story without interruption, only at the end can they ask questions. The partner should then write down the story, asking the storyteller to clarify any details they need to hear again.

For children who might struggle with the writing task you could ask the children, once they have shared their story to their partner, to gather in small groups and tell their stories to a member of staff who can write them down ready for the story acting later in the day.

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TEACHER RESOURCES The partner or adult should try to write the story verbatim; exactly as they tell it, they shouldn’t critique the story, or make suggestions of what happens next, but can encourage by saying ‘and then what happened?’ or, if sensing the story has reached its end, by asking ‘is that the end or does something else happen?’

STAGE FOUR: STORY ACTING Set up the story circle and, as a class, act out the children’ stories. You don’t need to do this all in one go, but could do a few at a time over a few days.

Ask the child whose story it is which part they would like to play in their story, or whether they would like to narrate and direct their story. All other parts are allocated at random as you go around the circle.

After acting out the stories, discuss the different ideas and themes which have emerged.

EXTENSION • You could repeat the story making activity using a piece of music as a starting point, rather than an image. Ask the children to find a space, lie down and close their eyes.

• As they listen to the music, ask the guiding questions from the activity above, but let the music influence the choices they make.

• They can then go on to write their story down and then act it out as a class, as before.

• They could turn their story into a script.

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RESOURCES RESOURCE ONE - ROLE ON THE WALL

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RESOURCES RESOURCE TWO - TEXT EXTRACT CHILD JOY takes a microphone.

CHILD JOY

This is where our story starts. Our story starts here.

CHILD BART takes up the second microphone.

CHILD BART

Here on this island.

CHILD JOY

This island full of ghosts.

CHILD BART Here where the summers are hot and the towels are always there when they say they’ll be.

CHILD JOY

And there’s always milk in the fridge.

CHILD BART

Here on this island.

CHILD JOY

Where death never visits.

CHILD BART

This Canary Island. Full of the most beautiful –

CHILD JOY

– bees.

CHILD BART

The most beautiful bees you have ever imagined.

The sound of beautiful buzzing.

CHILD JOY

Bees of every colour and size and shape you ever saw. Bees that never sting you so they live forever. Bees as big as birds that fly together –

CHILD BART

In flocks.

CHILD JOY

Flocks of bees across the island skies.

An iridescent flock of bees fly slowly across the stage.

And when the bees fly overhead, when they do that, the cars slow down and the babies stop crying and the bullies stop bullying.

CHILD BART

And arguments end and sick people get better and everyone listens.

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RESOURCES RESOURCE THREE - TEXT EXTRACT CHILD NIGEL

This is where our story starts.

Our story starts here.

CHILD LUCY

Here on this island.

CHILD NIGEL

This island full of …..

CHILD LUCY

Here where ………

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BEGINNERS A Unicorn production

Written and directed by Tim Crouch Resource pack written by Catherine Greenwood