{"id":293,"date":"2011-05-18T18:24:42","date_gmt":"2011-05-18T17:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sallypommeclayton.com\/blog\/?p=293"},"modified":"2023-06-22T13:52:53","modified_gmt":"2023-06-22T12:52:53","slug":"zarinas-orchard-comes-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/makeandbelieve.uk\/?p=293","title":{"rendered":"Zarina’s Orchard comes to life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n

Sussed Theatre Company<\/span><\/a> <\/span><\/strong>asked if they could use my story ‘Zarina’s Orchard’<\/strong><\/span><\/em> from Tales Told in Tents<\/span><\/a>, to create a play with a community theatre group based at Sidlesham School.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sussed used the story as a starting point to: research Central Asian music and dance; improvise scenes, develop characters and invent dialogue; write a song, and explore how movement and gestures can tell a story. They created set, costumes, props, and an evil Dev (demon) puppet, inspired by Sophie Herxheimer’s<\/span><\/a> <\/span>illustrations in the book.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The evil dust Dev – who has no heart in his body!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

I was invited to the final performance, and given my own special Central Asian seat! The performance was truly wonderful. Sussed had taken Peter Brook’s idea from ‘<\/span>The Empty Space’<\/span> <\/a> that a theatre company is ‘a many-headed <\/span>storyteller’<\/span><\/em>.  So there was no ‘fourth wall’ – the children spoke to the audience directly. The children took it in turns to be the narrator, shifting between narrator and character in a natural way. The space shifted too, flowing in an instant from river, orchard, to mountain, living in the imagination of both audience and actors in exactly the way a story does.  Songs and dance conjured the  cultural world. This project gave the children a real experience of the magic of theatre. So often school productions are about slick presentation, or stiffly trying to get it right.  I loved sitting in my special seat, and felt deeply touched to see one of my stories come to life.<\/p>\n