Friday, November 25, 2011

Giant With No Heart Rocks Terrace

Had the pleasure of performing the folktale 'Giant With No Heart' to approximately 900 Terrace students today for their End of Year Liturgy service.

Connor Finn was looking for a good story that would stimulate some thoughts about appropriate student behaviour over the Christmas holidays and that would fit in with the Christmas message. I gave him the choice of 6 or 7 folktales that  I thought would work with boys of that age group and he picked the one I thought would be best.

'Giant With No Heart' is both a dramatic and interesting story from northern Europe. It basically talks about how men get to be 'giants with no heart' and what to do about it.

I asked for some music students to play drums and cymbal to add some more atmosphere to the story and we went for it.

It worked. It's great to have 900 teenagers interested, involved and challenged. Hearing their energy as they debated how the story should end was amazing. Would the oldest brother win as he went for revenge or would the youngest brother win as pleaded for his friend? The story hung in the balance for some time.

Our percussionists were spot on. Loved the orchestral base drum but I couldn't talk them into loading it into my van after the show.

It was a really good try out for the Queensland Storytelling Guild's 70w amplifier system as well. It filled the hall quite well. I was able to play a mp3 sound effects recording straight from a memory stick.

One little moment afterwards was when I was just driving out of the school grounds. One of the students looked up and recognised me. It was good to see his smile.

No comments: