Artist Christina Watt speaks to elementary school students at Lady Evelyn Alternative elementary school.
The National Arts Centre is encouraging families to spend Family Day surrounded by arts and crafts, theatre, dance, and homemade treats – and all for free.
“We just wanted to swing open the doors and invite the public in and really give a chance to be creative in this space,” says Karen Gilodo, education and outreach co-ordinator for the NAC’s English Theatre.
The Feb. 20 activities are geared towards children five and up, says Gilodo, but stresses it is really for any age.
From noon to 4 p.m. families are welcome to spend part of the last day of Winterlude roaming the public spaces of the centre.
A new three-minute play pilot project will have members of the public performing scripts written by children. Grade 3 and 4 students at the Lady Evelyn Alternative elementary school are working with professional actor and University of Ottawa professor Kristina Watt in developing the scripts.
“We are sort of branching out in terms of our educational outreach in trying to get schools involved. This is the first time. The event is only two years old but we are hoping that next year we will have other schools participating in this way,” says Gilodo.
Watt says she was given four sessions with a about 20 students who are about nine years old.
Watt organized the sessions to link to the theme of creation by having students take an aspect of nature, whether it is a rock or a butterfly, and write their own story of its origins.
“The exercise is just to let the imagination fly,” says Watt.
Students are producing plays in pairs, for a total of about 10 scripts.
Watt’s role is to gather the raw material and “wonderful chaos” to help shape the students’ stories into something that can be communicated to an audience.
“Nine year olds, they take it and run. My job sometimes is just getting the ball rolling. At that age they’re insatiable,” says Watt.
The day is themed around the play Creation, where children will engage with creation stories from around the world and themes of environmentalism.
There will also be two matinee performances of the play, one at 11 a.m. and another at 3 p.m. Though the play is not free, families don’t need to see it to participate.
“One thing we are really excited about is we will have a large scale maze built in one of our main lobbies,” says Gilodo.
The idea for the maze came from eight-year-old Louis Brault, the son of one of Gilodo’s colleagues.
“As they work through the maze there will be some environmental questions to prompt them into which direction they might go in the maze,” says Gilodo, working with the theme in an educational way.
Ottawa resident Nancy Gauvin says she would like to bring her daughter Emma to the event.
“It would be a good thing to go to. She gets to interact with other children her age, she gets to participate in things that she doesn’t do all the time,” says Gauvin.
Gauvin says involving children in the arts is good because “it helps with their creativity and I think it just makes them a rounded person.”
Last year, the NAC expected 500 people to come through their doors and had about 2,000. Gilodo says she expects more this year.
According to Gilodo, many English Theatre volunteers as well as students from local high schools and universities will be lending a hand.
“We are just really excited about this year. We are learning from last year. It was a great, great experience last year. We hope lots of families come down and check it out.”