Acting Up! - Early Years Events and Productions in Ireland
Acting Up! was established in 2008 as an early years arts event consultancy
Director: Cliodhna Noonan - Email here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gOjMShQQ08
Cliodhna Noonan is artistic director of Acting Up! – a consultancy for early years events and productions which was set up in 2008 with a view to establishing partnerships in Cork and Ireland that would inform policy on early years arts programmes. To date, Acting Up! has produced two brochures documenting the rise in awareness of the need for such activity in both the early childhood and the professional arts sectors. Rainbow’s Gold and From Babble to Speech. These documents were funded by the Arts Council, an Chomhairle Ealaion. And are available to download in pdf format from www.actinguparts.com
Cliodhna is a language graduate of UCC (BA Italian and German 1993) and has worked extensively in theatre both in Ireland and abroad. She was an active member and workshop leader on many European projects with Boomerang Theatre in Cork and also worked in administration at the Gate Theatre for Director Michael Colgan. She has worked for many years with Balbriggan VTOS as a drama tutor with adults returning to work and as a private drama tutor with the Romanian state theatre Teatrul Ion Creanga. She also devised and performed her first early years show, Pantoful with young Romanian director Corina Chiran, at this theatre in 2009.
Most recently Cliodhna has devised and performed a show for very young babies (0-9months) in Cairo, Egypt. The performance is based on the Romanian legend of the Ursitoarea, a fairy that augurs new-born babies well on their journey through life. The show has been accepted by the 2 most important children’s bookstores in Cairo (Diwan and Al-Balsam) to perform as a storytelling event on a regular basis from September 2010.
Currently living in Cairo, Cliodhna leads regular nursery songs and stories sessions at these bookstores for babies and mothers/carers together. They have proven a huge success, especially among Egyptian families wishing to invest in a new form of stimulation for the next generation. Cliodhna uses the books from the bookstore to read to the babies on a particular theme (eg animals/monsters/princesses/oceans etc.) and mixes this activity with singing early action songs and playing along to the rhythm of a piece of music with baby percussion instruments with the idea that babies respond to the rhythm of language even if they cannot repeat the words themselves yet. The babies are so young that the carers/mothers/parents have to engage in this activity with them and this is a key attraction of the proposed session. The project that began in one store in one area of Cairo earlier this year (2010) will spread to 4 different parts of the city from September 2010.
For further information please contact Cliodhna by email here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gOjMShQQ08