Aurora’s Thoughts

Can we make a children show? What to make and how to make it? Is the approach the same as for the adult show we did previously?

Well… I could make a long list of questions and we did one at the very beginning of the process and we questioned every idea and tried to find answers for all of them. But when it came to showing it to the age group that we were aiming for, we were not sure if we would get it right – would they understand what we were trying to say, would they be exited or we had we got it wrong from the beginning?

In the creating process I had to retry to think like a child, I had to follow my instinct, the memories from my childhood, I had to recall what I was interesting when I was little, what made my laugh, frightened, happy, think about what I played with, what noises or sounds I was making…

Trying to enter the children’s world, and creating a child’s language through trying different ideas, creating scenes; mixing them up became more and more a part of it. But the process wasn’t smooth and easy at all. My attitude towards the material and the concept shifted from liking it, being bored by it, being really disappointed or even unhappy to finally finding some answers, re-finding the excitement and pleasure with one of the ideas which was about doing the whole show as two weird characters with coats over their heads.

So actually what I found out was that the creating process is not much different from making a show for adults. It’s again taking one idea and increasing and developing it to the maximum and working from it.

There were a lot of things, which pushed me as a performer in this project. The main thing was the mixture of skills that we were playing with - the musical, vocal, silent movie acting, and puppetry and perhaps most of all the movement material whilst being blindfolded.

I think one of the hardest things was to think about myself as a puppet, a character that can act most of the times only with form, gesture and sound. You are loosing your face, your eyes and your facial expression is not visible but you still have to be expressive and readable in your emotions.

At one point during the rehearsal process I said to Charlotte (the director) “I can’t work this way”. When I tried to explain that I have to feel first and when I do I can move or act more truly and naturally. But that wasn’t the way we worked this time. The acting had to happen through the body as puppet, through the form, not through my head. My freedom as a performer was taken away for a short time, but then what a pleasure when it’s given back within the structure of a show! I could finally find myself and just play.