Monday, March 14, 2011

Twits: Story Telling, Drawing and Theatre Project



The Twits is a humorous children's book written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake. It was written in 1979, and first published in 1980.
Mr. and Mrs. Twit are two ugly, smelly, nasty, stupid people who spend their lives playing nasty tricks on each other. They also enjoy being cruel to animals, which they do by luring birds to glue-smothered trees so they can be baked into bird pie, and tormenting their pet monkeys,Muggle-Wump and his family, by getting them to stand upside down, one on top of the other. They hate children, and Mrs. Twit often carries a walking stick in her right hand that she uses to hit children and animals.
One day, the arrival of the Roly-Poly Bird from Africa allows the monkeys and the surviving birds to get the revenge they have craved for years. They glue the carpet and furniture to the living room ceiling while the Twits are out. On the Twits' return, two ravens swoop over and drop glue from paintbrushes held in their claws onto the Twits' heads. When the Twits go indoors and see their furniture upside down, they stand on their heads, believing they are upside down, and because of the glue on their heads, they remain stuck that way. With the Twits out of the way, the Muggle-Wumps are able to return to their native Africa with the help of the Roly-Poly Bird. Eventually, the Twits' bodies collapse into themselves, until there is nothing left of them but their clothes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twits
Twits was a reading and drawing project conducted by me inside the classroom. Children drew wonderful and vivid images of trees on which Twits applied glue to hunt birds, they used to later eat up.
The class was a collaboration of story reading, drawing, followed by a theatre production.
The images were drawn by kids on a rough paper, followed by mounting the same images on the ceramic tiles.
The age group : 4 rth Standard. 
Trees

Mr. Twits
Mrs. Twits
Mrs. Twits
 Roly-Poly Bird
The bird pie, made by Twits
The bird pie, made by Twits
Twits home

 Twits catching the birds



 Twits making the the apple pie

Twits get stuck upside down as planned by the Roly-Poly Bird

The above mentioned project took 2 months to be culminated. The images were combined to make a mural once they were made. The project was process based and the images were drawn and edited as and when the story progressed. A group of students also acted out the play in the morning assembly at school.