National Poetry Day

What a brilliant time we had celebrating National Poetry Day!

We arrived at West Acre Theatre in good time and went into the auditorium for introductions and then the different classes dispersed to various parts of the building for poetry learning.  Whitebeam were in the studio with Katherine to work through A Skip to Beat Bad Temper by Cynthia Mitchell. We had help with the words and practised lots of actions. After a break for a drink we continued with Kathryn to learn a poem about wind.

For this we had a person made out of tin foil which flew slowly through the air, drifting on the breeze (aided by us) as we each had lines of the poem to say.

After lunch we had 10 minutes in the auditorium to practise with lighting, then a run-around outside while the other classes practised. Back in the auditorium for the performances which were an amazing experience. We had red lights for the ‘temper’ and we felt like real actors (which, of course, we were!).

Rowan and Oak class did wonderful performances too.

Thank you so much to everyone at West Acre Theatre for their hard work, patience and and enthusiasm to make it such a memorable day.

A Skip to Beat Bad Temper - Cynthia Mitchell

An angry tiger in a cage
Will roar and roar with rage,
And gnash his teeth and lash his tail,
For that's how tigers rant and rail.
I keep my temper in a cage,
I hate it when it roars with rage,
I hate its teeth, I hate its tail,
So when it starts to rant and rail,
I tell my mum, I tell my dad,
I tell them why it's feeling bad,
And then I skip and skip and skip,
And lash my rope just like a whip
And when I skip because I'm cross,
My temper-tiger knows who's boss,
And when I've skipped and whipped like mad,
My temper-tiger's not so bad.
I have to keep it tame this way,
Or it will eat me up one day.