A participatory film produced for Village Art by young people from the village of Skelton in East Cleveland who are rehearsing and preparing to put on a theatrical production for the local community. In the second part of the film the production itself on stage inside Skelton Civic Hall. In a school sports hall pupils rehearing for a play, some wear decorative headwear in the shape of high-rise buildings. They are given instruction and advise by a woman, possibly a teacher. At night on the...

A participatory film produced for Village Art by young people from the village of Skelton in East Cleveland who are rehearsing and preparing to put on a theatrical production for the local community. In the second part of the film the production itself on stage inside Skelton Civic Hall. In a school sports hall pupils rehearing for a play, some wear decorative headwear in the shape of high-rise buildings. They are given instruction and advise by a woman, possibly a teacher. At night on the steps outside Skelton Civic Hall two girls in control of the camera ask questions of several boys about the parts they are playing in the upcoming production. Inside the darked hall a woman addresses an audience about the theatrical workshops she has been involved in with school in the area and what they are going to see is the ‘unpolished’ outcome of these sessions. Now dressed as an octopus she becomes part of the first performance put on children from Whitecliffe Primary School entitled ‘A Very Fishy Tale.’ The young children play various small fishes who learned how to behave in the sea by their teacher and to stay together as a shoal. The performance comes to an end with them singing a song. Each of the children wear costumes and use props they have made themselves. A second play put on by older children entitled ‘The Country of Dreams and Nightmares’ with the children pretending to travel to an imaginary land. Again, they wear costumes and work with homemade props to tell their story. After an interval in which the stage is re-dressed a third production featuring the older children seen previously rehearsing who tell a story about a girl who travels with a scientist into the past to study architecture. Wearing the decorative headdresses seen earlier some of the performers come on stage to play as either a 19th century cityscape, a five-star hotel, a cottage from the story of Red Riding Hood and the pyramids of Egypt. As well as wearing said headdress the children also perform with various hand puppets. Another woman comes on stage and introduces a fourth production entitled ‘A Wish Come True’. A young girl called Katie doesn’t want to become a model as her mother wants her to be and wants to be able to eat sweets and fast food like her friends. A fairy godmother grants her a wish and she ask’s to be abducted by aliens so that she can go and eat what she wants. Both Katie’s mother and the fairy godmother are life-sized puppets-controlled pupils. An alien appears, also a life-sized puppet controlled by two children, who takes Katie away. To Geri Halliwell’s ‘Look at Me’ a dance sequence featuring the life-sized puppets of Katie’s mother and the fairy godmother. The play ends with Katie running away, meeting her true love Bobi in a local McDonalds and getting married with the ceremony being performed with hand-puppets. The performance and film come to an end with the cast coming to take a bow to the applause of the audience.