For primary school groups 1-8:
The Lesbrief consists of: preparatory lessons, processing lessons and craft assignments. Here, pupils discover for themselves the possibilities of light, shadow and animation.
The Digiboard page provides background information and prepares students for the performance with doing and listening tasks.
The teaching material focuses on three aspects of the performance:
Content: The storyline and the meaning of the story. Learning aspects: stimulating the imagination, empathy, recognising a storyline, imagination.
Form: Animation, shadow and puppetry and music (audiovisual art, musical theatre).
Technology: Acquire knowledge about how light and shadow work (ties in with nature & technology).
Discipline: Audiovisual art, musical theatre, cultural heritage.
Core objective: Orientation to yourself and the world and artistic orientation.
You are going to watch a performance performed by 3 people; two actors and a musician. Together they are Lichtbende.
They have devised the performance, created the images and composed the music.
The performance takes place in a dark room. Above two tables are two huge lampshades. On the lampshades, you can see shadows and light images. At the tables sit the actors who make the images emerge.
Shadow theatre is the oldest form of storytelling using moving projection images, a form of animation.
Between the tables sits the musician. He makes live music to match the images.
In the performance “Fly me to the Moon”, the music exactly matches the images shown on the lampshades. Together, they make the story.
See how this is done in the following video.
Wilco Oomkes makes the music to the show. He does so with an accordion. In this film, he explains how the accordion works and is used.
In the TV programme Op de Planken, the makers of Fly me to the Moon tell how the show was made
Listen to the pieces of music and try to think which mood belongs to which music and which figure goes with it. Now everything is mixed up.
lively – rushed
threatening – exciting
happy – happy
the hunting wolves
the love couple
the flower-courier
dreamy – longing
chaos – clinking
playful – cheerful
the merry little fly
the infatuated fool
the swarm of flies
alien – spatial
chaos – clink
pathetic – sad
the caring little vase
the sad little fly
the spirits
Lesson note Lesson 2
Lesson note Lesson 4
For those who don’t know how flies grow and change! This film tells it all. From egg to maggot and from cocoon to fly.
Teaching note: Background information for the teacher
‘Fly me to the Moon’ is a mythological story inspired by Joost van den Vondel’s “Lucifer”. This story forms a second storyline in the show alongside that of the flies.
In this video, Bas Jongenelen explains what Lucifer is about.
Very long ago, people made images in rocks and caves. All these images had a static character. When fire was invented, it was not difficult to make a shadow move on a wall. Moving an object or a pair of hands in front of the fire or a candle created moving shadows. The shadow play had been invented.
The oldest forms of shadow play come from Asia.
In Indonesia, people used wajang puppets that they made move in front of a fire. This ancient Javanese shadow play is called Wajang Kulit, which literally means “leather puppets”. They were handmade from buffalo or goat skin, puppets with movable arms on sticks. These puppets have highly stylised human forms.
The dalang is the puppeteer. He also sings and gives signals to the orchestra. He is also the speaker for all the characters. He must be able to imitate all kinds of voices; from the distinguished language of royalty to the peasant language of rural people.
Turkish shadow play, Karagöz and Hacivat, are made of colourfully painted, transparent leather and perforated. They are played according to a centuries-old theatre tradition. The main figures are the hunchback Karagöz and his antagonist and friend Hacivat. Unlike the other figures in Turkish shadow play, Karagöz is moved with two sticks. One stick sticks into a hole in his shoulder, the second is attached to his hand. And for good reason, as he swats it vigorously.
Karagöz has gypsy features; his name means “black-eyed”. He has a black beard and wears a turban. Karagöz is impulsive and undeveloped, unlike Hacivat. What they share is poverty. Hacivat expresses himself in lofty language and shows that he knows Islamic classics well. He is often made fun of by his companion.
Lotte Reiniger (1899-1981) was a German film director and the leading pioneer of silhouette animation. Her style of cut-out paper silhouettes that she filmed in sequence using stop-motion technique to create the manner of movement. Her best-known film is “The Adventures of Prince Achmed” from 1926. Reiniger is also known for inventing the first form of multi-lane camera. She made more than 40 films, all using her invention.
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