The Famous Five Theatre Trip

Some of our lower school pupils had the opportunity to visit Chichester Festival Theatre to take part in a workshop and see a performance of The Famous Five. In the workshop we got on stage with pupils from other schools and created scenes about friends going on adventures. We got to hear about how the Famous Five went from a novel written by Enid Blyton to a musical. We got to look at the script and how it tells everyone what they need to do, including the sound and light effects and where they need to be.

We explored backstage and saw all the props, the quick-change area and how the trees on the stage move and change. We learnt about how the costumes have to be adapted to allow the actors to move, change quickly and that the puppeteers wear dungarees to make sure their trousers or straps don't fall down as their hands are always busy with the puppets.

Pupils got to watch the performance and see all the things we had learnt in the morning in action. They spotted the different lighting effects, the giant cake they had seen back stage and the rabbit puppet made out of a sack.