Our Planet

Text：Saeko Imai

The act of “acting = becoming something you are not” is a great chance to expand your imagination and discover a new part of yourself. And above all, standing in front of people and speaking out loud is nerve-wracking but fun! I think that is the best part of acting. The most important thing for me when practicing acting with the children was this sense of “fun!”. I also thought it was important to match their own image of the ocean with the story and lines of their role. Therefore, when deciding, I started by asking the children, “What do you want to be? After thinking about it for a while, they quickly came up with, “Fish! “A crab! “Mermaid in the sea” and “Mermaid in the sea “. Once they had an image of what they wanted to be, I asked her, “Where would you like to be? SU said, “I think I’m hungry under the sea.” Okay! I thought, “Now I can write a script!” So I listened to the other students’ images and quickly created a simple story and made it into a script. Let’s just try it! I handed out the script to everyone, and they seemed to be very happy to have their own script for the first time. As I mentioned earlier, there were changes in the members for the first four sessions, so it was a new story each time.

 

When they were given the script and knew their roles clearly, I felt a switch inside the children was turned on. I would like to introduce some episodes from the practice. SU had been wondering which team he would join. At the beginning, SU was on the Actors’ team with an uncertain look on his face, but when I asked but when I asked him if he wanted to be on the Actors’ Team, he always gave me a big, definite nod. As he took the script, his expression gradually changed, and with each practice, his face became more confident.
KO was in charge of opening and closing the curtains at last year’s theater project. She loves to dance and sing, and this year she felt it would be a shame if she was only in charge of the curtains, so she asked, “Let’s do a play together, KO! This year, we felt it was a shame for her to be in charge of curtains, so we asked, “Let’s do a play together!”. Her expressions were stale at the time, as if she were to say, “okay”. However, she practiced her lines at home and participated in every rehearsal with a proud expression on her face.

MO and M had a clear image of themselves as mermaids in the sea from the beginning, and they never deviated from that image when deciding their lines.
H decided to be a wizard in the sea. For him, rehearsing for the play was a time to explore the process of reconciling the image of a “wizard” (i.e. someone who makes medicines to cure people’s illnesses or makes poisons) with the real world. His expression was very serious and shining as he pursued how to match the image in his brain with the reality.
A played the role of the top batter, a fish, despite her constant hesitation.

R and AK showed up at the end of the class saying, “I want to join the actors’ team.” R had already decided to play the role of wakame (a seaweed) and AK the role of “cat under the sea”. AK didn’t seem to have chosen to follow the script from the beginning. In his mind, the cat under the sea was a gentle, strong creature that loved to help other creatures. And because he was really kind, he seemed to have developed a kind image of himself. The reason for this is that even though his lines were different every time, he always changed the phrasing of the lines “I love to help people” and “But sometimes I can’t help people, because I’m tired. I thought it was truly amazing that he could do that with ad-libs.
In this way, I created a script that matched my image, and continued to practice with a lot of vocal exercises.

 

A script from one day. AK and R joined the actors’ team afterwards.