New Victory Arts Break: Australia — Create

We spent Week 1: Discover with Slingsby Theatre Company learning about Jacqy Phillips, Australian animals, Acknowledgements of Country and teatime! This week, we visit Slingsby’s “Hall of Possibility” to learn how they make theater, and then we’ll make our own shadow adventure story.

Stay up to date on Arts Break and other arts-based activities! Sign up for New Victory email.

What is a Hall of Possibility? It’s a rehearsal room! It is a place where artists, friends and creative inspiration come together to invent new stories to tell on stage. Watch this video to see how Jacqy Phillips, Andy Packer and other Slingsby members dream up worlds together through playing with shadow, puppetry, music, light and story.

Let’s play around with some of the things we learned!

There are so many ways to reimagine your space and transform it into a space of possibilities. You can make a whole new world using a simple tool—light!

Step One: Find a small piece of cardboard like this:

Step Two: Grab a pencil and draw an outline of any object, place or character. Since you will be using it to create shadows, only the outline will be visible. You can use one of these outlines as inspiration, print and trace them or make any shape you’d like!

Step Three: Grab a flashlight (or even a phone light!) and experiment with creating shadow creatures.

Step Four: Grab your New Victory Notebook and open it up to a blank page. It’s time to try out some shadow world magic! To set the scene, add some designs to your backdrop to create a new world for your creatures to live in.

25 – 30 minutes, Ages 5 – 11

Once you have created your own shadow worlds, join New Victory Teaching Artist Renata Townsend as she shows you how to use shadow animals to make an animal adventure story.

Here is a template to create your own animal adventure story.

Check out these three other ways to add to your shadowy fun!

• Add another element with some spoooooky sounds from staff member Siobhan Santini Pellot and her husband Jesus.
• Our Australian friends, Patch Theater, created some fun shadow activities.
• Throwback to a previous New Victory Arts Break with this video from New Victory Teaching Artist Sam Jay Gold. He’ll show you how to make your very own world using the magic of shadow and scale.

You’ve seen into Slingsby’s Hall of Possibility and created a shadow show inspired by their artistry! Check out one of the last shows that Slingsby created and notice how they use shadow, light and puppetry.

Join us next week as you continue creating your own stories and art. New Victory Teaching Artist Ugo Anyanwu will invite you to make up your own imaginary world and create the characters in it.

New Victory Arts Break Supporters

New Victory Arts Break is funded, in part, by the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.