It was a good school...

On yesterday's sunny Friday afternoon Michael from Theatre Centre and I went to Hackney in East London to visit Gayhurst School, who we hope will be working with us as we prepare the production. We met a lively and enthusiastic group who had volunteered to stay in school a bit longer (and on a sunny Friday!) to find out what we were up to. We'd not expected so many keen takers - about twenty mainly nine to eleven year olds, although with a couple of younger sisters and brothers.

Michael explained about our planned adaptation of the book, which some of the group had already read. Indeed a couple of Eva Ibbotson fans appeared to have read everything she had written, which was great to hear. We looked at an extract from a documentary about the Amazon [link] which showed both indigenous peoples and those involved in using the land for other purposes. Quite a few of the group already had strong feelings about the environmental questions raised by the video.

We then said that I would be going to visit a school in Brazil - although in Rio, which is as far from the Amazon as Hackney is from Moscow! Michael deftly filmed the group asking questions they would like to ask their contemporaries in Brazil: what music do you listen to? Is it the same as your parents? Do you wear uniform? What do you study? What times do you go to school There was a lot of interest in whether the Rio children have slang, some of the Gayhurst pupils being noticeably proficient in backslang.

And then Michael took his children and their friends off to capoeira (appropriately enough).