The Idea

After looking at 'Monsters' last lesson it was clear to the group that the play had sparked the most interest out of the workshops we had looked at. We decided to research for the event for verbatim, news articles, interviews, book articles and anything else we could find to broaden our knowledge on an event that happened before any of us were born. The information we turned up was shocking but also engrossing and interesting in the same way.

As a group we decided it would be interesting to look at the idea of starting our piece with a Fairy-tale scene that would confuse and sugar coat the event. We wanted to retell the event using Knight's and Witches, to make the 10 year old boys seem as if they were saving "a far away village" and then at the end of the scene drop upon them the fact they had just watched a retelling of the brutal murder of 2 year old James Bugler.

We started by playing the roles of narrators writing a script that without too much context would be suitable and funny for an audience of 6 year olds, but due to the deeper underlying narrative would have a much more shocking event on the audience. (The finished narration can be seen to the side.)

We decided we wanted the scene to be told with elements of physical theatre to make the violence stand out more and therefore make the Knights seem more 'noble' and 'brave. However when it came to actioning this we had many problems as our knowledge of physical theatre wasn't very extensive.