Student reaction

Last week we read the  draft of the play and discussed it.  In general the students liked it, some scenes more than others, nothing different than any other project I have devised with students,  but I also picked up from one student who I trust,  that some students felt the draft didn't necessarily reflect the particular work the students had done.  This lead to an overall discussion and my further reflection on the devising process.  There are as many ways to create devised theatre as there are people involved in it.  Similarly there are as many forms that devised work can take as there are people involved.  In summary, the particular form I used for this project was to tell the story/history of the Hagia Sophia to my students and express why it had such a strong impact on me.  I told them that since my particular art form was theatre I felt compelled to try and create a theatrical response to all I saw, thought about and felt.  And further, that since I worked with young people, I wanted them to be part of the project.  We then worked with themes and they built scenes and movement pieces based on those themes.  We then met for a month and discussed story ideas.  Then, I took all of that, plus mixed with my own research, I wrote a draft of a play, which they then had before them.  I expressed that if I sat down and wrote a play about the Hagia Sophia without their input it would have looked very, very different.  That indeed this play was the way it was because of their input and involvement.  They seemed satisfied with this.  But they were happy that I kept things open for additions as we continue our rehearsal process.
We then continued this week with casting the play.  In some devised pieces in the past, casting was natural in that kids performed in scenes they created.  But because this was not a scene by scene creation, but rather was conceived as a complete play, there were no scenes fully developed by students.  I decided to use a more traditional casting process (which I use for already written plays). I asked students to indicate their schedule (available days for rehearsal),  and the parts they were interested in.  Then we moved to actual auditions.  I had sides from the script available and had the students read from those sides in groups or individually depending on the parts they were interested in.  The nice thing is I already have seen them in their scene creations through the past few months and have some indication of how they move, (which is crucial and often difficult to ascertain in an audition settinging) but I wanted to hear their voices on the large stage. Our auditorium holds 950 seats and can swallow young voices, so it is essential key roles have strong voices.  I will cast the play this weekend and we will spend the last week before the winter break rehearsing what we can. 
The shadow expert I got a grant for (courtesy of the Berkeley Public Education Foundation), Christine Marie, is also starting this week.  I am anxious to see how we can incorporate shadow work into this project.  We have her for a total of 10 hours.