The Day I Met The Prince Children’s Theatre Tour
Arts & Culture
After a roaring success of our project last year at USM, with the vital and gracious support from Khind Starfish Foundation, the 2nd year students from USM’s School of the Arts, under the tutelage of Dr. D. Muralitharan Pillai, this year during our July–Sept 2016 Semester Break, take the Children’s Theatrical production “The Day I Met The Prince” on tour. In our journey to reach and engage a larger group of society through the platform of theatre, our tour takes us to the Temple of Fine Arts Kuala Lumpur and Temple of Fine Arts Johor Bahru.Theatre, to us is twofold, it is a medium of communication, and serves as a platform of interaction between the actors and the audience. Therefore, in combining the life skills of drama with the actoraudience relationship, we aim to create a new holistic paradigm in engaging life skills to society, through the performers and the audience.Children’s theatre is an art form, which fulfils the creative needs of children, cultivating their interest in the arts and developing their life skills, while igniting the love for education in general through the aesthetics of the arts.We believe that by utilising the tools of drama in Children’s Theatre, which is essentially, a process of stimulating creativity, in engaging perceptions of the world and themselves. And most crucially, it acts as a scaffolding to stretch their creative imaginations in mapping a pathway to realise their dreams. We believe that we can, spark the imaginative process of creativity in a child. For when we, nurture creativity, we give birth to imagination, and when imagination blossoms, the fertile process of seeking knowledge is awakened. This in turn, we believe, in time, will move toward a world free from poverty.
Overview of Issue / Background
After a roaring success of our project last year at USM, with the vital and gracious support from Khind Starfish Foundation, the 2nd year students from USM’s School of the Arts, under the tutelage of Dr. D. Muralitharan Pillai, this year during our July–Sept 2016 Semester Break, take the Children’s Theatrical production “The Day I Met The Prince” on tour. In our journey to reach and engage a larger group of society through the platform of theatre, our tour takes us to the Temple of Fine Arts Kuala Lumpur and Temple of Fine Arts Johor Bahru.
Theatre, to us is twofold, it is a medium of communication, and serves as a platform of interaction between the actors and the audience. Therefore, in combining the life skills of drama with the actoraudience relationship, we aim to create a new holistic paradigm in engaging life skills to society, through the performers and the audience.
Children’s theatre is an art form, which fulfils the creative needs of children, cultivating their interest in the arts and developing their life skills, while igniting the love for education in general through the aesthetics of the arts.
We believe that by utilising the tools of drama in Children’s Theatre, which is essentially, a process of stimulating creativity, in engaging perceptions of the world and themselves. And most crucially, it acts as a scaffolding to stretch their creative imaginations in mapping a pathway to realise their dreams. We believe that we can, spark the imaginative process of creativity in a child. For when we, nurture creativity, we give birth to imagination, and when imagination blossoms, the fertile process of seeking knowledge is awakened. This in turn, we believe, in time, will move toward a world free from poverty.
Project Objectives (Vision & Mission)
This project aims at building these 3 criterions in the children :
1) Confidence
Confidence, safety becomes a natural asset; this then provides a platform to explore emotions, which then creates opportunities for self-development, in having the freedom to make their own choices.
2) Creativity and Imagination
Through the activity of role playing, we believe that Creativity and Imagination can set a person out of the cycle of poverty, as it will create a foundation to problem solve through various situations, providing pathways to different outcomes, in the hope of generating better living standards.
3) Independence
When children are independent, they are intrinsically motivated to explore their own reasoning in creating their own activity. We believe, when this process of independence is achieved, they will have the clarity of self-development in taking ownership to change their living standards.
Project Details (Activities and Tasks)
Total of 200 audience member for each show
The play consists of 7 actors, and in the course of the performance, 3 songs will be sung. Showing casing live music and effects throughout the performance, the production is accompanied by a pianist and 2 percussionists. High level of interaction between the actors and the audience. As an example, when the performance space doors open, the actors begin their interaction with welcoming the audience members into the performance space with a fact finding mission preparing the audience to move into a collaboration process with the actors in creating a rose from a piece of paper.
Itinerary of the show:
8.15pm-8.30pm - Entrance of the audience
8.30pm-8.50pm - The actors teach the audiences to make a rose.
8.50pm-10.00pm - Theatre Performance
10.00pm-10.15pm - Interaction and photo session with the casts
Expected Project Result & Outcomes
This grassroots project, in promoting arts education, brings about significant improvements in Children’s educational and social development. Children will be more confident, creative and independent. Their participation in the arts can also be instrumental in helping themselves, their families and communities in the aim to overcome poverty, and social exclusion in the long run.
0% of RM1.00 Goal
Project Information
| University name | : | Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) |
| Project leader name | : | Leong Wai Ming |
Section I
The Day I Met The Prince Children’s Theatre Tour
Children’s Theatre as our medium, in fostering arts education nationally, aim at bringing significant change in a child’s educational and social development. Our goal is for children to be more confident, creative and independent.
We have received financial sponsors besides Khind Starfish Foundation, were: Lim WH Architect and Penang State Tourism Development.
With the tremendous amount of efforts from the entire team and the mighty sponsorship, we humbly believe that this project is another huge success after the project that held in USM last year. 2 shows were fully sold out, while the other 3 shows were half-audience capacity. Generally, we had 380 capacities out of 500, which is 76% of our target audience.
|
Children |
Students |
Adults |
|
93 |
190 |
97 |
One of the obstacles we faced was the publicity of the show in Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru. While we were publicising the show, our ticket selling was quite bad because most of us were studying in Penang. Our promotion was limited to online social media, friends and family in Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru. In order to get more audience to our show, we went all out to send our poster and video to our friends and families.
Our goal in developing the confidence, creativity and independence of children was achieved in our opinion. Almost 70% of the children and students who watched our performance in Johor Bahru have never watched theatre performance in their life. According to our observation, they were independent enough to sit and watch the show by themselves; confident enough to react and interact with the audience; and creative enough to make their own rose by using their imagination. They were learning all these values while they were enjoying the play without distress.
Our audiences were from various races such as Malay, Chinese and Indian. They would be able to understand the language and the story very well since we adapted the story into Malaysian culture. Once they were able to understand the story, we would learn the core theme of the play, which is persistence in achieving goal in life. In order to achieve goals in life, creative thinking of solving a problem when they are achieving their goal is the best way. We believe that the children have been empowered indirectly throughout the play.
The statistics below indicate the number of audience who were favourable and unfavourable to the production. There were 376 members of the audience, who favoured the production, while 4 did not. No matter the category (children, students and adults) of the audience, the results indicate a successful event. Some audience members have set their sights and are looking forward to our future productions.
|
Total Number of Audience |
Favourable |
Unfavourable |
|
380 |
374 |
6 |
This project successfully brought happiness to the audiences. The songs, scenic design, lighting design and acting created an ideal atmosphere, which led them out from their distress life temporary. Even though the duration is short, they were experiencing pure happiness by interacting with the actors. It would be the short-term happiness as well as long-term happiness as this meaning event has stayed in their heart forever.
The production team has shrunk from 5 people to 3 people after the previous project. Even though we were lack of manpower, we were able to manage it all by ourselves. Our thinking has changed completely. Our persistence and belief brought us this far as the management team is responsible on our job, represent themselves in their role and respect the entire team. These qualities have been entrusted in the students under the supervision of our director, Dr. D. Muralitharan Pillai. We are now confident that there is a possibility in impossibility in any matter.
In short, we believe this project, acts as a conduit for children as well as adults/students to explore multitudes of experiences more than what meets the eyes; reaching for the stars, the world brought into the palm of a child.
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