Following the Storias workshop, which involved making an accordion book about Olympe de Gouges, the teacher of the 4th and 5th grade class at Pierre et Marie Curie school (Saint-Nazaire) again approached Les Apprimeurs to come up with a workshop for the World Ocean Days on 10 and 11 June 2024.
The brief was to take account of the fact that the students would be presenting their project to kindergarten children and would therefore have to adapt to a younger audience.
The workshop took place over six sessions, between March 26 and June 7, during which the pupils created a kamishibai (Japanese paper theatre) depicting three episodes from the Odyssey of Ulysses and his companions: the island of the Cyclops, the island of Circe and the island of the Sirens.
Discover the kamishibaï
To familiarise the pupils with this medium, Les Apprimeurs read Gare au hibou to the class, then invited them to go behind the butai (the small wooden theatre) to try their hand at storytelling and understand the mechanism of the text and the illustration boards.
Rewriting the episodes
Divided into three groups, the class set about rewriting episodes from the epic of Ulysses. The students were asked to choose a dialogue format, so that everyone would have a role and the story would be lively for the younger audience. Each episode is divided into five stages. The teacher had her pupils work on the text between each workshop session.
Creation of marottes
Using silhouettes supplied by Les Apprimeurs, the pupils made stiff paper marottes, which they decorated with sequins and feathers, then attached to sticks. These elements highlight the characters in the dialogue and bring the illustrations to life.
Designing illustration panels: discovering the cyanotype
The Apprimeurs took advantage of this workshop to show people around this printing process, based on the principle of photography, which colours the illustrations blue: an appropriate colour for World Ocean Day! The students illustrated five panels per group/episode. They drew the sets in black on tracing paper, then laid the tracing on sheets pre-coated with a photosensitive mixture. The whole thing was slid and compressed under sheets of Plexiglas or glass and placed in the sun in the school playground. The leaves, which had turned grey, were then rinsed, at which point the patterns in white and the rest in blue appeared.
Finalising the illustration panels: sequin fair!
The students fixed their A4 cyanotypes onto larger butai-sized boards. The Apprimeurs then gave them free rein to “spice up” their illustrations: sequins, feathers, moving eyes, paint and glitter tape… any exaggeration was obviously strongly encouraged. At the end of the session, once the boards had dried, the class kamishibai was ready for the performances to come!
General rehearsal in the school playground
The final session of the workshop focused on acting, storytelling and articulation, with the illustrations scrolling and the marottes being handled. The pupils were able to discover the episodes illustrated and worked on by the other groups and get an overall view of the kamishibaï created collectively.
World Ocean Day: two days of performances on the beach
On 10 and 11 June 2024, the Pierre et Marie Curie school took over the beach, offering activities at a number of places. Pupils from the 4th and 5th year classes set up their table in front of the sea to welcome the kindergarten groups, and played their kamishibai several times over the two days. The test of the public and the noise outside enabled them to fine-tune their performance as they went along.
Enthusiastic pupils and a kamishibaï that lives on
During the two weeks following World Ocean Day, the pupils presented their creations to other classes in their school. They also had an exchange with an allophone class from a secondary school, whose pupils had created a kamishibaï themselves.
Overall, the pupils enjoyed working in groups and gained a better understanding of the story as they reappropriated it and performed it.
The kamishibaï and the cyanotype were two very welcome discoveries.
The story of Ulysses, although already known by some of the class, was better assimilated thanks to the rewriting and illustration phases, which required them to grasp the key information in the story.
The teacher was delighted with her pupils’ involvement in the workshop, noting that they had acquired skills in understanding and retelling history, vocabulary and general knowledge, as well as in the visual arts, group work and listening. It’s an experience she’d like to repeat, using other manufacturing and storytelling techniques.
