Winchmore's Radio Play

Year 8 pupils from Winchmore School spent a week working with LIFT artists Sue Mayo, Dan Scott and Mia Harris.  The project was an opportunity for a keen group of actors to take on a new challenge and revealed to them a wealth of possibilities for working with sound and voice in performance.

"It opened my mind and gave me new ideas and thoughts" (Winchmore school participant)

The pupils began the week looking at documents from Buchettino, a show by the Italian theatre company Societas Rafaello Sanzio, which uses sound to build a frightening sensory experience for both adults and children.  Having considered the focus on listening in Buchettino they began experimenting with different ways of using sound to tell a story.  For example, could you tell a story using just a newspaper?  In small groups they came up with atmospheric stories using newspapers to evoke the rain, running feet, a train, a rustling bag or the sudden opening of an umbrella. 

The pupils worked with Sue on a story, weaving their different skills and ideas into a fantastical tale of an unknown character’s journey to find the Olympics. Along the way Unknown, the protagonist, is confronted with various challenges and acquires new skills such as how to speak Greek, how to dance and play the bass and even how to tame an Elephant.
 
The pupils worked with Dan, combining sound effects, voice, song and a recording of one of the pupil’s rock band, to build Unknown’s story into a fantastic radio-play.  Dan introduced the pupils to Foley techniques used for making sound effects in film and to the incredible polystyrene cup, a surprisingly versatile instrument.

The group also worked with Mia to visualize Unknown’s character and build models from newspaper and recycled materials.  The children came up with short phrases to introduce the universal character of Unknown:

“Unknown is everyone, Unknown is nobody, Unknown was unknown, unknown is now somebody”.


Intrigued?  You can listen to the Story of Unknown here.