Around the show Mahaut, Girl of wood, De Caelis is offering a series of educational activities to discover the world of the show.

For primary and secondary school pupils, music schools and conservatoires.
Speakers: Francesca Congiu, opera artist and puppeteer; Anouch Paré, playwright; Laurence Brisset, artistic director of De Caelis
Laurence Brisset, artistic director of De Caelis, singing teacher at the CRR de Saint-Maur and musical director of the project; Jean-Lou Descamps, musicians.

Meetings
Open rehearsals
All rehearsals, from the first readings to the dress rehearsal, can be open to groups, so that they can watch the various stages of creation. The only essential condition is that you inform the entire team in advance.

Meetings with the artists
Encounters with an artist who talks about his craft and singing, playing/singing a few extracts, and explaining masks and puppets.

Discovering medieval music

Discover the medieval world and imagination by listening to and exploring some of the works in detail. Examples played and sung live or recorded.
Discover the period instrumentarium: organetto, medieval fiddles, guiterne, flutes.
Possibility of having amateur musicians and singers/choristers work on extracts.
The works worked on could be performed on stage around the time of the show, as a curtain raiser for example.

Discovery and practical workshops

Voice games
Exploring and discovering the different registers of the spoken and sung voice, high, low, medium, discovering dynamics and timbres, different ways of putting your voice down.
Hand games
One or two puppets from the show will come and talk to the children about the show they will be seeing. Quickly make a small paper puppet. Playing with small puppets, exploring their different movement possibilities (walking, sitting, looking…) and then trying to get them to talk little by little.
Verbal juggling
A jugglers’ workshop, for an old-fashioned “shout-out”. Until the 12th century, “jugglers” were itinerant professional artists who sang or recited literary works or poetry, composed by troubadours and trouvères, in palaces, stately courts, public squares, streets, fairs and markets.

Creative workshops

Writing workshop based on the work of Anouch Paré
Construction of scenes and dialogues. Discover Anouch Paré’s writing: her poetic and sensory world, the journey of initiation, the trials to be endured, the moral of the story. Specificity of writing for puppets, archetypes, representations of reality, possible imaginary fields.
Musical creation workshop
Musical creation workshops can be devised and run by a teacher who has previously worked with De Caelis (for all types of audience, not necessarily musicians). An opportunity to give free rein to your imagination through sound.
Creating a short text + music piece
These two types of creative workshop combined can result in the setting to music of the text written in the writing workshops, leading to the creation of a short musical theatre piece that can be performed as the opening act of one of the sessions.