SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER 2006

Mary was very busy throughout the term. On October 3rd at Crich Carr Primary school, Derbyshire, she premiered her new play, "FLORENCE". This was a play about Florence Nightingale and was especially commissioned by the school, which is just down the road from the village of Lee where Florence Nightingale lived as a child. The children dressed up as Victorian people and injured soldiers and after a short rehearsal at the beginning of the performance, Mary incorporated them in scenes from her play. Afterwards she performed another of her plays "The Secret" which also is about the Victorian times. The pupils expressed their pleasure to a reporter from the "Matlock Mercury" and "The Derbyshire Times"( who was present throughout the performances) with ten year old Jack Caulton saying "I wanted to find out what happened next all the way through."

APRIL-AUGUST 2006

In addition to her usual work in schools, Mary gave performances at the new Intake and Belle Vue Children’s Centre Doncaster when it was formally opened by Gervaise Phinn, taught drama workshops for the NSPCC at a Derbyhire centre and gave performances at the Oakham festival. Two training days for nursery teachers and staff were given at Doncaster.

JANUARY-APRIL 2006

Beginning on January 3rd until April 2006 Mary was working a regular 2-3 days each week in a variety of venues.  The work in most of these was mainly project based necessitating visiting the same venue several times. Some of this work was under the auspices of her organisation, Action Arts, details of which may be found on that website at:  www.actionarts.co.uk

In her capacity as The Travelling Storyteller, Mary was engaged by John Bailey at Townfield Family Centre Doncaster.  Mary visited 14 nurseries in the area which were situated in wide-ranging environments.  Her brief was to develop the listening and oral skills of the children and, in some of the centres, to encourage the mothers to play with their children.
Mary re-wrote the five plays in the “Miss Miggins” series to give each story a different learning aspect; from a very simple story with two characters to more complicated ones of three characters.  All the plays had audience participation throughout.  Mary was accompanied by Kate McKeown from the Townfield Family Centre. After the performance of the play, Kate helped the children make puppets and masks which were then used in drama activities with Mary.

On the recommendation of the Townfield Family Centre Mary was engaged to do similar work by the Family Centre at Mexborough and is also to present work at the new Intake and Belle Vue Children’s Centre at Intake, Doncaster, in May and June.  The new centre is to be officially opened on June 17th by Gervase Phinn.  On that day Mary will be teaching drama workshops for 7-11 year old children in the morning and incorporating them in the performance of one of her plays for the younger, pre-school children in the afternoon.

Other pre-school work has been given in three libraries in Hull, two nurseries in Grimsby and two special schools, one in Nottingham and one in Birmingham.
Other plays were also performed and workshops taught at both the special schools.

In February Mary was engaged to give performances followed by drama and creative writing workshops to year 1 children in five cluster schools in Derbyshire.  The theme of was that of Giants following a performance of “Jack and the Beanstalk” which the children had seen at the Lyceum Theatre in Sheffield.  The children targeted for this project had low literacy and communication skills and Mary’s brief was to help with this and generate enthusiasm in the children to learn.  Mary wrote a new play for this project called “The Friendly Giant”. Although the giant was frightening in appearance he was very kind and rescued three people who had fallen down a well making the local villagers realise that looks are no indicator as to what a person is really like.

An unusal and exciting engagement is to take place in June at the IT centre, Rainhill, Manchester.  After the prformance of one of her Greek plays, Mary is to teach Drama and Creative Writing to thirty children from three schools in Rainhill.  The writing will capture the atmosphere created in the drama and then be creatively composed on computers thus linking imaginative creative work with modern technology.

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