We were delighted to have two sold out showings of our Work in Progress, “Where Does the River Go?” on Friday 27th July here at Nenagh Arts Centre.
Musician Julie Tiernan and I spent 3 days together devising the piece and Julie composed original music and songs. Performing together for the first time we both felt energised and excited by the artistic outcome and the responses of audiences to the piece.
I choose an ‘in the round’ presentation style in order to facilitate an informal and intimate atmosphere and make transitions between participation to audience feel natural and relaxed and I was delighted that this worked really well. I’d also wanted to include lots of sensory moments and the children and their adults all responded really well to these.
Having a second performance allowed us to refine a number of elements including shortening the boat interaction song; how we presented the feather / chime play and my movement with the frog puppet.
We had some great feedback from audiences too! The children told us they had enjoyed musical moments with the drums and the drumming, playing with the boats in our lake parachute and the fish and underwater shadow show were popular too!
From parents and educators, they told us how they really enjoyed the interactive, sensory nature of the piece as well as the calm, playful nature of the presentation. Some words used to describe the piece included: Excellent! ; Refreshing; Amazing ; Magical ; Fabulous and Entertaining.
I’d like to say a big thank you to our audiences on Friday and also to Nenagh Arts Centre and Creative Ireland for making this residency possible
Joanna
www.littlebigtop.info
