For this project, my class worked with Co-Director of Red Earth Theatre Amanda Wilde to design, create and perform sections of the poem 'Life Doesn't Frighten Me at all' by Maya Angelou in small groups, through shadow puppetry. Our performances needed to be targeted at children and had to include captions for all the words of the poem and would be filmed and put on YouTube for wider audiences.

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My group were given the second and third stanzas of the poem ('Lions on the loose... I just smile, they go Wild. Life Doesn't Frighten Me at all'). We created storyboard pictures for the performance, splitting the section of the poem into a scene per one or two lines.

 

Experimentation and compromise were very important throughout the creative and rehearsal process. The captioning proved to be an area where experimentation was key. We looked at physical and projected captioning, experimenting with writing them on acetate to project on an overhead projector, creating captions on black paper to hold up and creating virtual captions with transitions, using Adobe After Effects.

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Our puppet characters combined a mixture of styles, from the neat and intricate dragon to the floaty, more comedic dementors.

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(Pictures and information from the rehearsal process on my blog)