EXERCISES

At the theatre, on stage, we are ready to discover together our fantastic body! To understand the “body” of plants and animals, it is necessary first to play together by decomposing our body: head, shoulders, chest, arms, pelvis, knees, feet. Now, we create with our body the shapes of animals of various sizes and invite our companions to guess which animal we are performing. Moving through space as many animals, we will discover that there are many ways to use the body: walking, flying, jumping, sliding! Now let’s pause for a moment: let’s share what we have discovered, the fun and challenging moments, and discuss them together. There’s soft music: we can lie on the ground and draw the experience.

Through interactive projections, we discover nature and its dimensions: trees, bushes, and grass! Now we use our bodies: What are our roots? What is our trunk? And our branches? And our leaves? We become large and small, change features and discover the differences. Let’s learn to scale down and then grow large again to explore the world from different viewpoints. Let’s play together to become: trees, bushes, and grass and try to guess! Now we draw on a sheet the trees, bushes, and grass, and highlight the differences with colors.

We are in a magical, clean, and orderly space: it’s the house of science! Here many important discoveries are made, and now you will make some too. These are the microscopes; let’s observe them and find out how they work. How beautiful they are! Let’s draw them together!

Now we are ready for new discoveries: let’s open our plate and place it under the lenses of the stereo microscope. What do you see? But it’s a forest, how green it is! And how beautiful! But where are its inhabitants? Through the instrument, we explore the miniature forest in search of its inhabitants. We find insects and other animals! Let’s observe the structure of the plants!

Then we take our moss and with the spray bottle, we make it rain!

We take the Pasteur pipette and venture inside the forest by sucking up some drops of water. We drop a drop on the slide and turn on another magical instrument: the optical microscope.

Observe through its lenses and search for the smallest inhabitants of our smallest forest in the world.

Here they are finally. Many funny characters moving among the trees of the forest: Nematodes, Rotifers, Mites, and… who is this strange character! A teddy bear? It’s the Tardigrade! He is our superhero! One of the strongest and most resistant organisms in the world! Let’s observe his movements! What will his emotions be? And his thoughts? In the meantime, we continue to take some photos and use new digital tools: the cameras and the recorder, so we can photograph and interview our companions who are discovering a microcosm through the use of the microscope, and they tell us their discoveries! Then we will bring everything to class and discuss the discoveries and emotions experienced in observing the microworld.

First of all, let’s tell each other a little about the path taken. The new technologies will help us. The scenic space becomes immersive, we walk inside the moss, and we feel part of the smallest forest in the world. Here appear in the background our new friends: Nematodes, Rotifers, and many others. Let’s enlarge them and shrink them, let’s play with the sizes. Let’s imitate their movement and create interactions among us. Now it’s the turn of the Tardigrade, our superhero, we imitate him and in turn, we tell an invented story about his superpowers and discover why he was sent into space. We draw our friends and create a new community.

Now with the Kinect, a girl recreates the movement of the Tardigrade, and everyone imitates her. Then we invent new creatures, who are they? How do they move? In turn, all the children interact with the Kinect, and their image is projected on the backdrop. But what’s happening? The projected image becomes large, small, stretches, and the face changes. But are we monsters! What powers do we have? Maybe we are the aliens that the Tardigrade met in Space? I get it! We are neither monsters nor aliens: we are us, seen from the point of view of the tardigrade. He too can see us through the lenses of the microscope?

The “Pixels and Performing Arts” project is a collaboration between the theatre companies LIMFJORDSTEATRET (Denmark) and Kyberteatro (Sardinia, Italy). We have collaborated with local schools and nurseries. The project aims to replace more traditional learning with participatory methods to ensure equal opportunities for all children. Through the methods of performing arts, the project exchanges innovative approaches to adapt to the digitalized world.