True, all in all I couldn’t have been prouder of our performance. There were some really nice moments with the children.I specifically enjoyed interacting with the children after the performance. It was a way in which the children could ‘get back to kinder’, as well as sparking their play and imagination processes even more!

If we had our way, I would want to do it again! Heather and I are forming a children’s theatre company – who’s in? haha. I also have decided that my love for puppetry, children, health and exercise, education and performance has pushed me in the direction to become the HEALTHY HAROLD GIRL – ohh yeah!

However, I thought I would comment on something else than the play itself.
The biggest thing I learnt besides how to create a play from scratch was organisational and goal setting processes.
In the end we pulled it off amazingly, however in a real company setting I believe better goal setting, clear team member roles and communication processes could have made our process smoother. In our industry, these skills will be invaluable as almost everything is major group collaboration – be it devising another play, marketing the Sydney Opera House or programming the Big Day Out (hello dream jobs…)

On the other hand though, if we did have rigid roles defined, tight deadlines and specific goals we may have felt as though our ‘creative flow’ (thank you Csikszentmihalyi M, 1996!) jeopardized.

BUT, the main aim of this subject was to learn how to collaboratively produce a piece of work. We pulled it off with flying colours as an amazing group.

In the end :

It is amazing how much you can accomplish when it doesn’t matter who gets the credit.. (unknown)

Reference:

Jan Deans, Robert Brown, Sarah Young.The possum story: Reflections of an early childhood drama teacher. Australian Journal of Early Childhood Volume 32 No 4 December 2007, pp. 1-6.

Csikszentmihalyi M, 1996. Creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. Harper Colins, New York