Dan Parr: Theatre Workshop

Last week 2Bros and Escola Mouranghinos welcomed British Actor, Dan Parr in for a Culture Friday session. See below for pictures.

Having travelled over to visit his friend and Resident Volunteer Ben, as a team we thought we could use Dan’s experience and enthusiasm to give the kids a memorable theatre session.

After a great turnout, the group got started early with a meet and greet activity. Resident Volunteer Erin acted as translator for the session and we got the ball rolling by forming a circle and introducing ourselves as well as sharing an interesting fact with the group. Some of the kids even used their English knowledge to do this.

After this we got cracking with some games to engage everyone and get the energy levels up. Firstly we played a concentration game that focused on the use of eye-contact. By throwing a series of balls around, only to people who maintained eye-contact with you, the game kept the kids entertained, for the at me being at least.

Following this, we played Splat. For those of you who don’t know, Splat is a group game that requires quick fire reflexes both orally and physically. Having narrowed the group down to a final two, Ben and one of our teenage students, the game resulted in an agonizing defeat for our seasoned Resident Volunteer as he crumbled in the face of victory.

We continued the games for a little while longer playing Grandma’s footsteps, a personal favourite of the kids.

The main body of the workshop centered on some devised performances by the kids. We split them into groups, assigned a helper with each group and gave them a topic to base their performances around. The topics were music, sport, beach, and dance amongst other things. After allowing a 15-20 minute planning and rehearsal period we formed a little audience and shared each other’s work.

This was no doubt the hardest part to keep the kids engaged. A combination of it nearly being home time and embarrassment when it came to performing for the group seemed to be the main reasons. All in all, it was a great session. Vibrant, fun and engaging and Dan really enjoyed himself as well.

So a big thanks to Dan for coming in, hopefully we’ll see you again In the future and good luck with your acting career.