Just wanted to share a rather amusing, but albeit faintly ridiculous game which I co-devised today… and in doing so illustrate the usefulness of
overtiredness and a willingness to risk and improvise.
I had been in line to potentially take over from someone who
had dropped out of the Most Mira Youth Arts Festival in Bosnia this year, but
on Friday I received an email sadly informing everyone that due to funding
problems the festival was being postponed.
This is always sad to hear, especially when it is something that is almost
unique. Most Mira have been running the
festival for 3 years, the focus of which is to bring children and teachers from
schools in communities divided by the war in the nineties and engages them in
arts activities for 10 days. A large
part of the work is also to train and mentor local Bosnian artists so that they
might continue the work themselves after the festival has finished. However, without going into the whys and
wherefores of the importance of this work or the lack of funding, Most Mira had
already planned a training day with Artswork on group dynamics and one-to-one
coaching in order to help us support our local artist mentees during the
festival and so they decided to go ahead with it anyway. Which is how I found myself in a workshop at 10am
on my only proper day off of a couple of weeks.
The workshop began with a brief chat about what we would be
doing followed by the Most Mira staff and the facilitator promptly standing up,
gathering their things and walking out of the room. Puzzled, we all looked at each other and then
noticed the instructions written on the flip chart,
‘YOU CAN OPEN ONLY ONE’
Eh?
Then we noticed two envelopes on the floor underneath. ‘Read what they say.’ someone suggested.
One said,
‘PLAY IT SAFE’
the other,
‘TAKE A RISK’
'Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice.
Pretty quickly and painlessly, we decided ‘Take a risk’ was the one we
wanted to go for, despite a brief thought that perhaps it was some kind of double bluff and 'Play it safe' might have been more interesting, it was opened and the contents revealed. We were instructed to split into small groups, choose a parcel from the selection on the table and prepare a creative response to its contents to present to the group.
My group, consisted of myself and two women who were part of the dance team. We were all feeling the Sunday morning vibe, so when we opened our parcel to find a sheet of stickers with illustrations of different kinds of eggs and the names of the species of bird written under them, the feeling of 'meh' followed by 'Oh fuck' was palpable. My head swimming with exhaustion, the only creative response I had at that moment was to curl up into a foetal shaped ball and hide, however, as today was apparently the Orthodox Easter Sunday an egg hunt was quickly suggested. We were pretty clear that we didn't want to 'present' anything and so determined to get the group to do something we could watch and with overtired hysteria prevailing, things got a little silly, especially when we started trying to subtly stick the egg stickers in out-of-the-way places with everyone else still working in the same room.
Nonetheless, down the rabbit hole we went and eventually this is the game we devised:
Part 1
1. Find an egg sticker and read the label of the type of bird it came from.
2. Stick the sticker on your forehead. (Egg on face)
3. Mime hatching out of the egg you found.
4. Take on the exact characteristics of the bird you are and continue moving around the room and interacting with each other.
Part 2
1. There should be one less sticker than there are players. The last person left without an egg sticker, becomes the Easter Bunny.
2. The Easter Bunny must hop and chase the birds to steal their eggs.
3. The Easter Bunny must return the eggs to the basket (empty sticker sheet)
4. The birds must try to protect their eggs as best they can, however once their egg is stolen they must then become a sad version of their bird and continue moving around the room mourning their loss.
5. The game is over when all the eggs have been returned to the basket.
I have to say watching this game was the most fun I've had on a Sunday morning for a very long time. The confusion of people asking each other 'But how does a Rufous-naped Wren behave?!', the sight of the poor Animator (and only man in the room) who had to become the Bunny and hop around trying to get stickers off the bird's foreheads and the poor mourning birds was too much to bear at times...
I personally can't think of a better way to spend my lie-in!
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