Christmas Theatre - "Father Christmas" by Raymond Briggs

On Sunday we spent the morning in London watching a production of Raymond Brigg's "Father Christmas" (ISBN 0723277974) at The Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith.

Recreating theatre at home

I was particularly excited about the production because the Time Out review mentioned "In an original twist, Kate Adams performs the music and sound effects live on stage, perched in an attic-style room above the action. She rattles maracas when Father Christmas (Vic Llewellyn) shakes salt on his breakfast, whistles when the kettle boils and becomes a well-spoken radio voice reporting snowy weather." Lucie Horton Time Out.com 2/09/15

I knew S would love to see the music and it did not disappoint. The show was in the Studio at the Lyric - a small, cosy setting the the closest the boys had been to a stage show.

 Our attention was split between the routines and rituals of Father Christmas and the musical sound effects - the pouring of water in to a jug whilst  Father Christmas ran the tap was particularly superb.

We had the book with us too and A spent a significant part of the tube journey reading. S was planning all the things he would need to re enact the show.

Once home S gathered props and started moving furniture around.

Feeding the reindeer.

The outside toilet.

The play continued the next day with a gathering of sound makers and musical instruments a Saxaphone, the guitar as a ukulele substitute, shakers and maracas. The piano was also included in the recital.

It was fantastic to see the boys processing the play they had seen in their own play - adapting and using resources and props to do so. The hardest thing is to decide which show to see next year!

How have you recreated visual arts and music at home?

Summer Festival - reenacting visual art

One of our favourite museums is The Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green. This July we went to their Summer Festival which was largely a celebration of music and dance from around the world. 

The museum is set in a beautiful building. The acoustics were amazing, particularly when the South London Samba band played - you definitely felt the music move through your body as the drum beats echoed and filled the cavernous space.

The boys were equally transfixed by the folk band "Tragic Roundabout" which featured a clarinet, one of S's favourite instruments.

I particularly wanted to see the Ecuadorean dancers, having spent some time teaching in coastal Ecuador before we had the boys.

Papa's favourite act was the juggler who put on a silent movie style show.

Without any prompting when we got home the boys started to reenact lot of what they had seen.

First was the samba drums. The boys stepped side to side in rhythmical jumps, their hands banging down on a imaginary drum, the beat coming from their voices.

S then wanted to be one of the Ecuadorian dancers who were adorned in flamboyant bird headdresses.  He used his owl suit which consists of an eye-patch mask and a cape wings. We put on some Latin music and they moved around the lounge, mimicking several moves they had seen the dancers make.

The juggling came the following day when S wanted to reenact the tricks the juggler performed where he catapulted teaspoons and sugar cubes into tea cups followed by flipping over a tea tray with its contents intact. 

S set out their play tea set ready to start. We talked about how maybe the juggler started with just one or two things and built up to a whole tea set. With this in mind S and A chose a single teacup with which to practise with. 

What visual arts have you re enacted at home?