Children's Creativity in Youth Theatre

Every Wednesday evening I attend the two groups of Children's Youth Theatre at Motherwell Concert Hall. The "Shooting Stars" and "Superstars" which I believe to be fitting names after witnessing the creativity that shines from the children,

The past few weeks I have been, there are exercises that took place that encourage the participant's imagination to flourish by creating their own foreign world. This is an exercise the children love as we then act out each other's world with the child telling us what we see, hear, smell and feel. I was a dragon chasing the children in one world, and an angry teacher that makes a "beep-boop" sound until every child has completed their work in another. These types of exercises help to encourage their creativity as well as build their confidence.

In the older age group, last week we began looking at a 1st draft of the script for their summer theatre production "The Game of Life". This production is a glimpse into a future where technology has turned the world ugly, and humans are struggling to communicate after adapting to the growth of technology. The children worked in pairs to come up with a snippet of what they imagined the technology-filled world would look like. It was great to see them come up with ideas that they then presented to everyone at the end of class.

There was:

- humans that kept bumping into each other due to their eyes being diverted to their devices

- two best friends that only talked through text message as they believed face-to-face talking was too much effort

- a child refusing to spend time at the cinema, swimming pool etc with their mum as they are too busy at home on the computer. The only way the child would co-operate was if the mum confiscated all technology

and other great ideas that were then worked into the script for the "Game of Life". It was great to see how much control the children has over the story line and their ideas come to life.