Free teacher guide · Concert and performance making
Make the children the spectacle.
A school concert does not need childish repertoire, choreography pasted onto a song or a warehouse of costumes. Start with material that has wit, music and something to say. Give students a strong frame, then let voice, movement, character and ensemble choices reveal it.
The central idea
A concert is not a playlist with costumes. It is a piece of theatre.
01 · Repertoire
Keep the intelligence. Change the way in.
Children can perform sophisticated work. Cole Porter, the Beatles, Sondheim and the best musical theatre give them melody, character, comedy and genuine emotional weight. The teacher’s job is not to flatten the material. It is to find the child-sized dramatic question inside it.
Hey, Old Friend
Make the song about recognition: the friend who remembers an earlier version of you.
Side by Side
Adapt the number for a school ensemble and ask who keeps showing up beside us.
Kids!
Let children play the exasperated adults. A clear role reversal does most of the staging.
The practical adaptation: establish the situation, distribute the text, create ensemble responses, clarify who is speaking to whom and give the song a definite stage picture. The musical and dramatic intelligence stays intact.
02 · Movement
Dance can begin with something people already do.
A basketball bounce, a wave across the playground, tying a shoelace, pulling on a jumper or steering an imaginary car already contains rhythm, direction and intention. Students do not need to invent “dance moves” from nowhere. They collect ordinary actions and learn how choreographers transform them.
Repeat
A recognisable action becomes material when the audience sees it return.
Reorder
Change the sequence and an ordinary set of actions begins to acquire meaning.
Layer
Add unison, canon, partner work, stillness, sound or a second action.
Shape
Alter tempo, level, size, direction, eye focus and distance between performers.
Choose 3 actions
→Shape them
→Arrange the group
→Repeat + refine
→Make the ending definite
03 · Production design
Limit the production to reveal the performance.
Begin with a shared base—often plain black—then add one or two details that make the idea readable. Penguins can be black and white with one orange accent. Lost Boys need texture, a sash or a cap, not a hired pirate outfit. An exaggerated parent may need only a blazer, glasses or a newspaper.
“One or two recognisable items are usually enough.”Use what families already have. Let every object earn its place.
04 · Dramaturgy and logistics
A beautiful repertoire list is not yet a runnable show.
- 1
Find the thought underneath
Name what the whole evening is exploring, not merely its theme-word.
- 2
Build an arc
Give the opening occasion, vary pace and scale, and save emotional or theatrical lift for the finish.
- 3
Use contrast
Place songs, skits, movement and whole-school numbers so each form refreshes the audience’s attention.
- 4
Design the traffic
Track exits, entrances, microphones, props, costume additions and the class that must be ready next.
- 5
Rehearse the joins
A concert is often won or lost in the silence between two items.
A working example
In My Life
A 90-minute whole-school revue of seventeen songs and skits, loosely tracing the arc from small child to grown-up: friendships, parents, teachers, scraped knees, old friends and the people who remain beside us.
The repertoire moves from the Beatles and Cole Porter to Oliver!, Matildaand Sondheim. A plain-black base and simple additions create a coherent visual world; skits punctuate the songs; whole-school material frames the evening.
- Shape
- Revue rather than plot
- Scale
- Prep–Year 6
- Material
- 17 songs and skits
- Design rule
- One base; a few readable details
- Ending
- Communal and reflective
The PaperBoats connection
A strong frame. Room for discovery.
This approach sits naturally beside Jon’s theatre-making with The PaperBoats. A clear “story engine” provides the vehicle: a repeatable structure strong enough to hold surprise, play, layered material and the useful disorder of making something new.
Explore. Choose. Shape. Test. Repeat. Perform.Students experience a condensed creative process—not the decoration of a predetermined routine.
Before adding anything
Seven questions for a clearer concert
- What is the evening actually about?
- Why is this song right for these children?
- Can the audience read the idea without the costume?
- What ordinary movement already belongs to this material?
- Where do students make genuine artistic decisions?
- Can the backstage traffic work in the hall we really have?
- Does the final image or sound feel like an ending?
Want students making performance in the room?
Extraordinary Kids turns the same thinking into a practical class incursion.