One Seed Child — Teaching Module

Production Notes

Module prepared by Chuck and Lola Wilcox and Cherie Karo Schwartz. Extensive Training and Production Notes Included.

This version of One Seed Child is designed as a teaching module. Each scene includes preparation notes covering Developmental Competencies, recommended Theatre Games, and detailed staging instructions. Performing a final version is encouraged; different scenes may be performed by different player groups.

Casting: No male/female type casting. Any player can play any role. Role changes by the day — each individual’s role for the day is selected by drawing a name, number, or colored paper/stone from a hat or small box. The challenge is to play any role that the person draws each time.

Stage and Staging: Bare stage, rectangular center playing space, audience seated on floor on all sides. All scenery and props are mimed. The Musician sits in the middle of the children and, as Boat Handler, travels through them. Players begin the play scattered and sitting separately among the children.

The Five Developmental Theatre Competencies:

• Physical Expression (includes Movement, Mime, Rhythm)
• Vocal Expression (includes Articulation, Finding your Voice, Storymaking)
• Context Awareness (includes Observation, Connection)
• Risk Capacity and Management (includes Risk Assessment)
• Resilience

Script

The full script of One Seed Child is found in the One Seed Child standalone entry (one-seed-child.mdx). This module entry layers scene-by-scene preparation notes, developmental competency focus, and theatre game suggestions on top of that script.

Preparation Scene 1: Home

General Knowledge: Wayfarer’s Journey: Home section.

Developmental Competencies and Theatre Games in This Scene:

• Physical Expression: Physical characterization, Mime sections (do approximations of the mime that Players will be doing in performance); Creating Environments: Defining Physical Objects
• Vocal Expression: Warm Up (Movement), could choose a focus on Articulation, Listening
• Context Awareness: Scene Painting, Pass a Mimed Object
• Risk Capacity and Management: The risk in Scene 1 is leaving the safety of the cave. The cooperative Barrier Confrontation theatre game introduces this idea.
• Resilience: How do Parent One and Parent Two cope daily with their situation?

Instructions: Work in pairs or small groups. Each actor takes a role from the hat. Working as a group they quickly prepare Scene 1. The cave, the door, the bags and nets, the lake, the seed — all are mimed. Each group may determine their own size, shape, and placement for each object. When all groups are ready, they perform Scene 1 for each other.

Preparation Scene 2: Call — Warrior

General Knowledge: Archetypes: Warrior. Wayfarer’s Journey: Call section.

Developmental Competencies and Theatre Games in This Scene:

• Physical Expression: Physical characterization, Mime: Warrior walk, weapons
• Vocal Expression: Finding a Voice — how does a Warrior speak? How does a Fool? How does a Seed Child?
• Context Awareness: Body Language, Meetings
• Risk Capacity and Management: Warrior’s risk is the dragon’s treasure. Whose risk is greater — the Warrior’s or the Parents’?
• Resilience: The Parents have been managing their fear for a long time. How does the arrival of the Warrior change their options?

Preparation Scene 3: Gate In — Crossing the Lake

General Knowledge: Wayfarer’s Journey: Gate In section. The Gate In begins the Wayfarer’s Journey in earnest.

Developmental Competencies and Theatre Games in This Scene:

• Physical Expression: The Boat Handler uses a traditional heel-to-toe glide step. Practice this step before the scene. Mime: Creating Environments — the boat, the lake, the island, the shore.
• Vocal Expression: The audience is the lake water; they make ocean sounds cued by the Musician.
• Context Awareness: How does the weight distribution in the boat change as each Player steps in? The whole group works to show the same physical reality.

Note on Boat Handler: The Musician transitions to Boat Handler for this scene. The boat is long and narrow but goes undescribed so the audience can imagine a boat of their choosing. After crossing, the Boat Handler poles the boat away and returns to being the Musician.

Preparation Scene 4: Road of Trials — Fool

General Knowledge: Archetypes: Fool. Wayfarer’s Journey: Road of Trials section.

Developmental Competencies and Theatre Games in This Scene:

• Physical Expression: Fool’s walk and physicality is different from everyone else’s. Explore: what does a Fool’s body look like? How is it different from the Warrior’s?
• Vocal Expression: Storymaking — the Fool tells a fragmentary story of identity across the playing space.
• Risk Capacity and Management: Fool asks to join the journey. Is that a risk?
• Context Awareness: Fool interacts with every character differently. What does Fool notice that others don’t?

Preparation Scene 5: Road of Trials — Crossing the River

General Knowledge: Wayfarer’s Journey: Road of Trials continues.

Developmental Competencies and Theatre Games in This Scene:

• Physical Expression: The river crossing requires the whole group to track an imaginary thread from one side of the audience to the other, and then a rope bridge. Mime: Action-Reaction.
• Vocal Expression: Children blow as gentle breezes to help Seed Child cross. The Musician cues this.
• Context Awareness: The entire group must remember where the thread/rope is at all times throughout the scene.

Preparation Scene 6: Road of Trials — Keeper

General Knowledge: Archetypes: Keeper (Guardian). Wayfarer’s Journey: Road of Trials continues.

Developmental Competencies and Theatre Games in This Scene:

• Physical Expression: Keeper has been here a long time and is hiding as a stone. How does that show in the body?
• Vocal Expression: Keeper tells a story in high narrative style.
• Risk Capacity and Management: Keeper’s fear is well-established. What does it take for Seed Child’s words to reach Keeper?
• Resilience: Keeper has been managing fear alone for a long time. How does joining the group change Keeper?

Preparation Scene 7: Nigredo

General Knowledge: Wayfarer’s Journey: Nigredo. The Nigredo is the transformation point — the moment of dissolution before rebirth.

Developmental Competencies and Theatre Games in This Scene:

• Physical Expression: The forest is made of children with raised arms. The group separates in the forest; each character must find their own physical expression of being lost.
• Vocal Expression: Calling out for each other — how does the voice change when afraid and alone versus when found?
• Resilience: Being lost and alone is the Nigredo. Each character demonstrates their own response to this crisis.

Note: Seed Child is found in a child’s hair in the audience. Keeper arrives last, discovers Seed Child is gone from the hat. All look for Seed Child.

Preparation Scene 8: Gate Out

General Knowledge: Wayfarer’s Journey: Gate Out section. The Gate Out ends the transformation.

Developmental Competencies and Theatre Games in This Scene:

• Physical Expression: The dragon is made of the bodies of multiple Players. How does each Player move when they are part of the dragon? The dragon is defeated from inside by Seed Child’s needle.
• Risk Capacity and Management: Warrior acts alone in the dark — that’s the mistake. How does the group’s separation at the beginning of this scene lead to each character being swallowed?

Note on Dragon Formation: Warrior rises first and tiptoes to the cave mouth, mimes fighting the dragon, and is swallowed up. Fool wakes, sees Warrior gone, wakes Keeper, and they rush to the cave mouth (Fool pushing Keeper) and are swallowed up. The dragon — made of the bodies of three players — creeps from the cave and engulfs Parent One and Parent Two, who become the wings of the dragon.

Preparation Scene 9: Return

General Knowledge: Wayfarer’s Journey: Return section.

Developmental Competencies and Theatre Games in This Scene:

• Physical Expression: How do the characters’ bodies change after the transformation? Each should be slightly different from how they were before.
• Vocal Expression: Declarations of gratitude and pledge — these lines matter. Each character must mean them.
• Resilience: The group has survived and transformed. What does the Return look like physically?

Note: All follow Seed Child out through the audience in single file using Warrior’s walk modified to fit each character.

Facilitator Notes

Post-Module Evaluation Questions:

• What was the hardest role for you to play? What did you discover about that character?
• Which scene was most challenging physically? What mime skill did you develop?
• Where did you find yourself on the Wayfarer’s Journey this week? (This question invites personal reflection using the Journey as a map.)
• Seed Child is the tiniest character but the leader of the group. What made the group trust Seed Child?
• If you could add a scene, what would happen in it?

On the Boat Crossing: In many hundreds of drawings sent by their teachers, every child who watched this play draws a lake across the page or colors the whole page blue with the figures in the middle. Every page shows a different boat. Because the boat is never described, each child draws their imagined idea of a boat. This observation opened the door to Developmental Theatre: Fearless Creativity.