School Camps and Performances Galore

Education Milne Bay has been in camp season. This means that schools from all over PNG come and spend some time in Milne Bay, learning about the environment, being taught new skills, and generally having a good time. One important activity is the School Camp Night, where the school camp ‘teams’ each have to prepare a piece to perform in front of their peers. What better time than this to have the Wanigili Theatre Group perform as well?



Over the 4 solid weeks of school camps there were five different school camps, and the group performed at all of them. For the first performance they decided to give some improvisation and theatre sports games a try (a brave decision for the groups’ second public performance). Anyone familiar with impro may know Emotional Replay (a game where an improvised scene is replayed in different emotions), Death in a Minute (where the scene goes for exactly a minute and someone needs to ‘die’ within that time) and the Small Voice Game (where the actors interact with a small, unseen character voiced by someone off stage). The group performed these games and others in front of an audience made up of Grade 6 and 7’s. And they performed again with some Grade 8 students, actually getting volunteers from the audience to help them in some of the scenes.



They also tried their hand at creating small, educational pieces to present at the camps. Inspired by International Children’s Day the group collectively created pieces on school fees and girls’ education, bullying, peer pressure and violence towards children. All of these pieces were received well and with enthusiasm. At each performance there was a clear point delivered, the students learnt something and were inspired to perform their own pieces, and everyone had fun! These pieces will be documented and kept for future use, perhaps in schools or village education programs.