Bullfrog Arts and the Stage Spectacular

Here in Leicester, Bullfrog Arts are well underway with Phase one of our Musical Mayhem project. This term’s themed workshops are all about the wonders of the stage musical. Our team of young people, all aged between 10 and 13 have been marvelled by such characters as Bob the Rockstar, Pippy Poppins (the younger sister of Mary) and Barry the Lion. This block of workshops runs for ten weeks and we’re well on our way to putting together our performance for the end of the month.

We’ve been running Musical Mayhem for a little over three years now and each season we try to take a different theme. Last year was time travellers, the year before, Carnival, and we’ve found a wining formula in introducing weekly characters and a song relating to each character. A few weeks before the performance we bring together all of the characters and songs into a story. The Stage Spectacular script is in it’s first draft and will be revealed and hopefully given the big ok by our young people next week.

All of our work is with looked after young people and we ensure that every aspect of each workshop is meticulously planned and aim to make the sessions as safe and ordered as possible whilst leaving room for fun, creativity and spontaneity. We’ve been surprised, as leaders, at our shift this season towards dance and drama. Working with a slightly older age group and new personalities we try to make sure that everyone’s tastes are catered for and this was the direction that they were angling for. And so we find ourselves choreographing dance routines to Singing in the Rain and knee knocking foot tapping routines to Supercalafragilistic.

Each session we base on a musical and we’ve looked at Mary Poppins, We Will Rock You, the Jungle Book and Singing in the Rain. We try to pick songs that are uplifting, inspiring, with suitable lyrics that give a positive message. The workshop leaders then take it in turns to create a character related to the musical who magically appears during the workshop. When the young people have worked out which musical we are referring to we push our seats together in rows and have a little home cinema moment where we watch the original clip on Youtube. This generally culminates in a hearty round of applause as we marvel the tap stepping of Gene Kelly and other musical heroes. We picnic together and reflect whilst munching on healthy snacks and then sing and dance ourselves.

This week we reveal our magic prop – our very own magic wardrobe. It just remains to be seen which character will emerge from behind its velveteen doors…..