Claire Whalley, from Badger Forest School, asked me if it might be possible for us to get Singing Hands to come to Cornwall. I asked the question and, at the time we were hoping for, Tracy was busy sailing round the Med so Suzanne suggested I join her on stage. I jumped at the chance! If you’ve never been to a Singing Hands show, then you might not know how much audience participation there is! Claire asked if Suzanne could come down by train and, when she arrived with boxes and boxes of props, we could see why that was never going to be possible!
We used the Keay Theatre in St. Austell, as it had good accessibility, and put on four shows.
On Friday 14th June, in the morning, we had a show for Nursery and Primary School children and performed songs such as ‘Elephants have wrinkles’, ‘I’ve got a grumpy face’ and ‘If you’re wearing red’. Makasong were on hand to pass round all the props and joined in for songs such as ‘Do Re Mi’, ‘Is this the way to Amarillo’ and ‘Don’t stop me now’. We also had an acapella performance of ‘The sun has got his hat on’ from St. Kew School. Sandy Hill School, led by Makaton tutor Eve Facey, joined Suzanne and some of the children from Doubletrees School to perform ‘Proud’.
In the afternoon, we moved some of the seats back and had a show for secondary age students and above. This included a lively Conga, ‘Dancing Queen’, ‘Dance Monkey’ and ‘A sky full of stars’, where the lights were turned down and we all waved stars and glowsticks. Different children from Doubletrees also performed ‘Proud’ with Suzanne.
In the evening, we had a Pop Party and moved the seats even further back. The first hour was filled with bangers such as ‘Green, green grass’, ‘Flowers’ and ‘Firework’ and everyone was invited up to dance with Suzanne. After a few nibbles and a drink, the second half of the evening was filled with Makasong doing a couple of songs and then they were joined by the Keur Arwodha Kemeneth Choirs from Penzance, St Austell and Redruth. We counted 39 people on stage! We performed four songs together and ‘Cornwall my Home’ went down well as did our rendition of ‘I’ve had the time of my life’.
On Saturday 15th, we did a ‘family’ show which was a mixture of nursery rhymes and bangers. It was the largest collection of Makaton tutors in one place; Ellie Whittaker, Eve Facey, Becca Hulbert, Jennie Pitchers, Hayley Worth, Sara Truelove, Alice Spencer, Suzanne and me. We took the opportunity to film a Makaton ‘sign of the week’ together. Suzanne also filmed some of Makasong teaching her some Cornish words; ‘teasy’, ‘mizzle’, ‘crib’ and ‘dreckly’.
We had the best time with Suzanne who was so generous with her time and spoke to everyone and had endless photos taken. For Claire and I, the aim to Get Cornwall Signing was a dream come true. So many people have asked if we can do something similar again, so watch this space! If you have a Makaton signing choir in your school, or setting, please get in touch.
Saskia