05 November 2022

Delicate Debrief/ The Other Mother

Junior Writers: The Other Mother

It's the first week back from half term and this half term will be partly focused on GHOST STORIES! Later on on the term all of the writers will be involved in a ghost walk made up of some of the stories and characters they create in the term.

To kick off the spooky theme this week we

created a one word at a time story about a ghost who got eaten by her much loved pet hamster after running away to a cave full of skeletons and books about parrots and bats.

After playing the game we watched a clip from Coraline of the character 'The Other Mother' - a witch like spirit called the Beldam who shape shifts to look like Coraline's real mother and entice her into an alternate world full of lost souls with button eyes. After watching the clip the writers spun a wheel and were given their own 'other..

' creatures to write a story about.

We had The Other Tooth Fairy, The Other Rock Star, The Other Teacher, The Other Garden Gnome, The Other Dancer (to name a few)...This was a great start to our ghostly term and some of the stories had very spooky drawings, illustrating the gruesome tales.

Young Writers:

5th November

We’re back! After a lovely half term we’re back, ready to start on our next project…

Ghost Stories.

Over the next five weeks we’re going to create a ghost tour around Lighthouse, leading our audiences on a supernatural journey through the theatre. We will have to decide on our route, our stories, and indeed our ghosts. So where better to start than a game of Werewolf? Our young writers each created a character – thinking about their age, parents’ jobs (our favourite was ‘full-time murderer’), hopes, fears, and secrets. We then proceeded to see these characters killed over the game (we had some very successful werewolves today). As each character was killed by the werewolves (or their fellow townspeople), their writer had to imagine how their character met their maker, and write it down.

After finishing Werewolf, we next talked about different types of ghosts and supernatural entities. The ghosts of Hamlet, A Christmas Carol? Poltergeists? Lingering presences? Each writer had to suggest a different location where their ghost might exist. It could be somewhere in Lighthouse, or somewhere else that’s a bit spooky – Function Room 4, a classroom, an abandoned church. The Young Writers had to imagine why their dead Werewolf character might be haunting this location, and begin to describe it from their perspective.

For the final half an hour of the session, we were delighted to be joined by Jamie Beddard, lead artist for Extraordinary Bodies and the writer of their new show Delicate, which we went to see at Lighthouse on the 2nd. It was a beautiful and tender production that explored different ways people (and the planet) can be delicate. Jamie spoke eloquently about his work, the company, and his thoughts on art and artistry. All the young writers came away inspired and with new ideas about exploring form onstage.

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Delicate Debrief/ The Other Mother