Being self employed in the Southern Hemisphere has caused me to regard January as a “Pulling in the horns” month.
Here in South Africa our school year starts in January. As John and I worked in the Schools for 30 years this was the month for our ‘breather’ whilst the children settled in, and we usually got booked from the middle of February onwards.
We took this opportunity to write new shows, me putting the shows together and writing the script and songs, and John thinking about the visuals and making props in his workshop.
Matriarch Music – the Art of Education – was based on the premise that Education is multi faceted and children deserve to learn through as many of the Arts as possible.
At Margaret MacMillan College of Education in Bradford in the late ‘60s, I had learned in the Drama classes the skill of the Theme Programme. Finding a theme to work with and then using movement, poems, prose and dramatic skills to make an interesting programme of about 30 – 40 minutes on any subject.
Later, as I started working in the schools here, I learned to add songs, rhythmic wording a la Orff, and the different sounds of varying instruments to enhance these shows.
John and I devised 40 different shows over our 30 years – most of them requested by the schools.
Although we did our last shows in the schools in 2019 – which seems like yesterday ! – the January lull is still very much in my system.
In the last 6 weeks of the school year, we worked 2 shows every morning. Packing the bakkie, driving to a school, unpacking the props and setting up. Performing a show – whether a Puppet Show or an Educational programme, packing up again, travelling to the next school, unpacking, doing the next show, repacking and travelling home then unpacking. John would even repack for the next day.
In between these school shows, on many days we would also sing for an Old Folks Home in the afternoon, and maybe do a Cabaret in the evening. On weekends we would tour the local shopping centres, singing an hour of Christmas songs, or doing a Puppet show, or sometimes both !!!!
Looking back at some diaries from the ‘90s we were doing between 2 and 5 shows a day in the run up to Christmas – small wonder we needed the break !!!!
