22 March 2022
This week’s session began with a prompt to write about our week as if it was a balloon model (like a balloon animal). Responses included a basic sword balloon made by an underpaid clown at a children’s birthday party, a blown-up balloon in the middle with two disappointing un-blown-up parts on either end, and a balloon horse made by someone who is new to balloon modelling so that it starts awfully and gets progressively better constructed.
Antosh is reading The Cyberiad by Stanislav Lem, about two constructors who try to one-up each other creating impossible machines. Inspired by this, we were tasked with coming up with an impossible machine of our own. See the full list below.
We each chose one of the impossible machines which the group came up with to explore in a writing activity, treating it like a thought experiment, following the logic of the machine.
After this activity, we moved upstairs to join the Mayflower Youth Theatre. The youth theatre participants have spent time rehearsing our duologue scripts (written and submitted by members of Crow’s Nest).
The writers became audience to their own short plays and were allowed time afterwards to ask questions of the actors, and vice versa, which led to group discussions about the pieces.
It has been a well-received opportunity to see our writing brought to life onstage; next week, we will attend a final showcase of the most rehearsed versions of the pieces, and have an opportunity to go along to a showing of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde afterwards at MAST Mayflower Studios.
Our List of Impossible Machines
Archive
Storytelling and Escalation or Rising Action
Junior Writers Club Acrostic Poem
Notes on Intention for MAST Collective - Year 3 - Facilitation Focus
Earthquakes & Dominoes - MAST Collective Blog #4
SUPER MARIO AND POP CULTURE POEMS
Receptionists & Inky Voids - MAST Collective Blog #3
Saying No and saying YES on National Poetry Day!
There's a Dragon in the Wardrobe...
House Warming Party (The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known) - MAST Collective Blog #2
Intern Blog 5 - The Publishing Process
POEMS TO SOLVE THE CLIMATE CRISIS
On The Streets With Theresa Lola
Intern Blog 4 - The Internship Journey
NEW DIRECTIONS, STARTING SMALL - THE ORWELL YOUTH PRIZE
LIGHTHOUSES, HOPE AND METAPHORS
on workshop and transformations: frogs, lions, and the duck that becomes a larder...
Poetry Ambassadors - Interview with April Egan
Intern Blog 1 - Finding a Voice
World Poetry Day: Fluffypunk and the Invisible Women
On Being a Writer: A Conversation by Beth Phillips & Sam Morton
Poetry Ambassadors - Interview with Kaycee Hill
UNHEARD VOICES: INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY, AND STORIES OF CONFLICT
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