Creative Schools Blog Four

What happened in 1916?

As this process progressed I noticed as one of the guiding adults that the children were shying away from writing the dialogue for the 1916 scenes of which there needed to be at least two. I realised that this was because did not have the information and background knowledge required. Armed with this knowledge we chose the creative technique of

'Idea Advocate'

to decide as a group which character was most suited to our play.  As a homework exercise I asked the children to research some of the signatories of the proclamation as each participant had to present their case for including their chosen character in the script. Each case was taken on its own merit and evaluated. Padraig Pearse and Eamon Ceannt were chosen. Their Galway connections were not realised until afterwards.

We felt we needed to flesh out the scenes a little and so needed some more characters. We used the 1916 resource books that were in the school as inspiration.

Random ideas were suggested and we attempted to build on these. Many were discarded as they ran into dead ends but the story of young Sean Healy who was really too young to fight but begged to take part only to face death struck a chord with the group. They could see the dramatic effect an unexpected death of a well liked character could have.

The group were very animated jumping up, improvising  his death and his burial and the dialogue of revenge that would follow.

Improvising