I’m Anna Grace and I am 14 years old and part of Craic youth theatre! It’s great fun ad I have made loads of new friends. Panto has just finished and I have never felt such a sense of accomplishment. Before I came to Craic in October I had never stood up in front of a crowd of strangers to perform and would never think of doing it but now I do it with ease. Today in the workshop we started out like normal, sign in, chat for a few minutes and catch up on the week and then John (One of our mentors. Mad as bag frogs but is mother hen of Craic.) leads us into the auditorium. We all got in and settled down while John, Sarah-Jane, Claire, Tony talked us through what we were doing today. We started off with a dance off; we were split into two groups and went to either side of the stage. With the assistance from Sarah-Jane and Claire we got into the swing of dancing in no time. Then we split up into eight groups and were told to come up with a “Hakka.” It was funny to watch each of our groups come up with things realistic with a side of crazy. We got to know some of the new members and tried to make them feel as welcome as possible during this activity. After that John suddenly put on a very serious look and got four volunteers to do something that will be hard and challenging for us to do. Blánaid, Michaela and Michael were picked along with me. The rest of the group left, leaving us four and the staff. We were given a back ground story on the Magdalene laundries. The thought of it genuinely sickened me. Then the dreaded tomato soup was marched in… When the others came in there was a dim light on us. Blánaid and Michaela were in the back in their psychotic world like two sedated victims of the very disturbing reality. Whereas I was sitting with a bucket of water and a rag cleaning the floor. The audience were respectful and quiet which really helped me imagine myself in the situation of a young girl being forced to be so submissive to anyone. Then Michael came in and dramatically poured a drop of tomato soup on the floor, which I very tiredly tried to mop up as it splattered from the floor onto my hands. I had to imagine what would I feel like to be in the situation of a girl who had been cleaning from extremely early hours then have someone spoil the work I had been doing and yet not being able to be angry or even make eye contact. He continued to do this but no matter where he did it I followed. I could almost feel what the girls must have felt when they were doing this, how tired they were, how beaten they were and how downtrodden they were. When we were finished, everyone else was in deep thought about the scene and were asked questions about how it made us feel and if this type of drama should be open to the public so we developed some debating skills and learned a lot of history in a way that was engaging, realistic and interesting for our audience. Each actor gave our opinions about what had been happening and each of our opinions was valued. We then threw around some ideas for what out next project is going to be and we definitely had some crazy thoughts, But in Craic Theatre, every crazy thought can easily become reality. I will give you NO spoilers! Bye!