Learning Resource

The Way Back Home, written and illustrated by Oliver Jeffers, is published by HarperCollins

Music by Joanna LeeLibretto by Rory Mullarkey after the book by Oliver Jeffers

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This resource pack is designed to introduce children to The Way Back Home opera. The information and activities explore the musical, dramatic and design elements of The Way Back Home, helping prepare for your visit as well as providing ideas for follow up activities.

The activities are designed to support National Curriculum KS1 and KS2 Music, English, Science, Art and Design, and could be used in the classroom or at home.

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A story can be told with images, with words, with music.In an opera the story is told by all three.

Many of you will already know the story of The Way Back Home but for those of you who don’t, it is the story of a Boy who went to the moon and met a Martian.

The opera is performed by six singers, an actor and an orchestra of seven musicians.

In the original book Oliver Jeffers drew the pictures and wrote the words. In our opera the writer, Rory, has expanded the story and added more words for the characters to sing.

We felt sorry for the Penguin so we have given him a bigger role than in the book. We also created the Gizmos to help tell the story. The Gizmos make all the sounds in the world and love flying aeroplanes in their spare time.

The Way Back Home – Rory Mullarkey 3

Prologue: The Gizmos reveal their secret

Four Gizmos fly and land a 1941 Supermarine Spitfire Mark Two.

bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzbzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

whooooooooooosh

bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzbzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

whooooooooooosh

blump

blump

blump

spluttersplutterspluttersplutter

spluttersplutter

splut

splut

spl

STOP!

One jumps out and notices the audience.

oh

what?

And another.

oh

what?

And another.

oh

Rory uses lots of words that sound like the noises they describe, like the creak of a door and the slam as the door shuts. These words are called onomatopoeia.

The words in an opera are called the libretto. Here is an extract.

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Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Oliver Jeffers says he sometimes starts with an idea that is the beginning of a story but doesn’t know how it might develop. Sometimes he has an idea for the end of a story and has to imagine what happens before that. He gets ideas from his own life, from the things he sees and hears in the world around him. He makes lots of drawings in his sketchbook of the different ideas he has for his story. Some ideas never make it beyond the sketchbook. This process of coming up with ideas and deciding which to use and which not to, is part of the creative process for writing a book and writing an opera.

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Write a Poem

Imagine you are flying in an aeroplane or in a space ship. Write out some onomatopoeic words to describe the sounds you might hear. Try writing them like Rory has done, thinking about the rhythm of how you might say them:

whoooooooooosh

Blip Blip

Blip Blip Blip

Write a poem (as a group or on your own) about flying an aeroplane or a space ship, using lots of onomatopoeic words. Think about how you might write it out on the page or use repetition to emphasise a particular word or phrase.

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Developing a CharacterOliver Jeffers draws the Boy and the Martian with large heads, very thin lines for legs and no feet. Notice that he often only draws two dots for eyes, a line for a nose but no mouth. Yet with this little amount of visual information, we get a good sense of who they are. In the opera, we have made our own interpretation of each of the characters and brought them to life so they move and sing.

Choose each character in turn (the Boy, Martian and Penguin) and walk around the room, in character, thinking about how each character might move and how they might encounter the world around them.

Choose your favourite character from the story. Invite one person to sit or stand - in character - in front of the rest of the class. Ask the class to take it in turns to ask direct questions about them. These can be questions that arise directly from the story or from your imagination. The person answering has to answer the questions in character.

Developing a StoryWrite an adventure story using the same three characters as in the book. Perhaps your story starts in the same way as The Way Back Home but instead of finding an aeroplane in the cupboard, think of something else the Boy might find, that leads him off on another adventure. Or perhaps in your version of the story, the Penguin goes up to the Moon with the Boy, but then what happens? Or your story could begin where the story in the book ends. What might happen next?

Exploring The CharactersDraw the three main characters – the Boy, the Martian, the Penguin – either copying Oliver Jeffers’s style or using your own imagination.

Write a list of nouns and a list of adjectives by the side of your drawings to describe each of the characters.

Start with information about each character that you are given in the book, and then use your own imagination to add more detail to their characters.

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A person who writes music is called a composer. Our composer is called Joanna.

Joanna’s adventures in music began with piano lessons at the age of five. Instead of playing the notes as written on the music in front of her, she preferred to create her own versions, playing the music higher, faster or louder, or creating a new piece of music altogether.

She was also fascinated by the notes and how to arrange them to make sound so she decided to become a composer. Every day she mixes together different musical ingredients to create stories told through music.

Joanna chose to write an opera based on Oliver Jeffers’s book The Way Back Home because it includes lots of fun things to explore in music – flying the aeroplane, the movements of a penguin, swimming in the sea, echoes in space and the creak of a door.

mf

gliss.

ff

mf

gliss.

ff

mf

gliss.

ff

mf

gliss.

ff

mf

f

p

p

p

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The score is the name we give to the words and music when they are written down.

In Western music the notes have traditionally been written as round dots on a five line stave, though some composers have dreamed up more creative ways of notating the sounds they want to be played.

The Way Back Home

PERFORMANCE NOTES

General When a bar appears between double bar lines, it should not be conducted. The singers may freely dictate the tempo at will here; the rhythm is flexible. Vocal Key

For the Gizmos, from Bar 313, pseudo beatboxing is requested – the vocal line should be as percussive as possible here. Examples: Bar 315

The ‘mm’ mimics a bass drum sound – a sturdy low sung tone with glottal stop & accent. The ‘sw’ and ‘ss’ mimic a cymbal – a forced whisper or hiss. Bar 325

The ‘tuh-kuh’ mimics scratching – a percussive spoken tone, rotating between sound articulated at the front & back of the mouth.

Look at the page from the score. Notice how Joanna has written the spoken words as notes and how she describes what sounds she wants the singers to make. Discuss what you notice.

Look at the key Joanna has created and use it to decode the examples of bar 315 and bar 325 above.

Try using some of the symbols Joanna created to notate your name. Choose a different symbol from the vocal key for each syllable and use as many different sounds as you can.

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There are lots of amazing and unusual sounds in Joanna’s score. She has had to create new ways of writing the music down and has provided a key to explain how each sound is made.

There are seven musicians in the opera. They play ten instruments – violin, viola, double bass, flute, piccolo, clarinet, bass clarinet, piano, celeste and toy piano as well as 33 different percussion instruments!

Joanna uses some percussion you may recognise like drums, and some more unusual ones like ping-pong balls, pots and pans and exploding balloons!

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Look at the different instruments – how many can you name?

Which ones look (or perhaps sound) similar? Can you group them together in their musical families: string, woodwind, brass, percussion.

What instruments are missing from these families? Why do you think Joanna chose to use these particular instruments to tell the story?

Instruments from the percussion family create sound when they are hit, scraped or shaken.

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Add some percussion instruments for the Boy and the Martian to play.

Make a list of all the percussion instruments you heard or saw in the performance.

Collect lots of objects of different sizes, shapes and materials from your kitchen. (Don’t use anything electrical or sharp like knives!) Investigate how each object makes a sound. Can you make a variety of sounds from one object by changing the way you ‘play’ it? How many different sounds can you make?

Compose your own piece of music, using your ‘found’ percussion instruments. Create your own music to describe a scene from the story.

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ListenListen to the sound clips of The Way Back Home.

Meet the Gizmos:What do Gizmos do? How many Gizmos can you hear singing? What instruments can you hear playing at the beginning before the singers start to sing?

Listen to the aeroplane flying in the sky: What onomatopoeic words can you hear describing the sounds of the aeroplane? Can you hear the engine starting up and the plane taking off? What happens to the plane at the end of the clip?

DrawCan you make a drawing of the sounds you hear? Think about what colours and shapes might suit the sounds.

SingJoanna has written a version of a song from the opera of The Way Back Home, that anyone can sing.

Download the wordsDownload the sheet music (for singers and piano)Listen to the audio recording of the song to help learn the melodyListen to the recording of the piano accompaniment and sing along to it

A conductor keeps all the musicians and singers playing and

singing together. They follow the conductor’s hands and arms

to keep in time. When you watch The Way Back Home, notice

how the conductor uses his hands and arms.

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Have a go at being a conductor with some friends. Try getting them to clap or make simple sounds together, starting together, getting louder or quieter and stopping together. Remember, you can only use your hands and arms, no words.

A director decides how to tell the story on stage with the performers.

They work with a designer to create what you see on stage – the

costumes, the backdrops and the props (the objects the characters

hold or move, like the glass of milkshake or the popcorn). There is also

a lighting designer who works out how many lights there are and what

colour they should be.

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Take a scene from the book and explore how you might stage it. For example, if you were directing the scene where the Boy is flying the aeroplane, how can you make the flying as realistic as possible? How could you use props and scenery to make it seem like the Boy and the plane are flying?

This is a model of the stage for our opera.

The model has to include all the details of what the finished stage will look like. It also helps the director work out where the singers will stand and move in each scene.

When the designer is happy with how the model looks, it is sent off to the construction team who build the full scale set.

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Use a shoebox to create your own model theatre. Make your own backdrops out of cardboard and decorate them by painting or drawing images or cutting out pictures from a magazine and sticking them onto cardboard. Oliver Jeffers uses watercolours to paint the pictures in his book. Try creating your own watercolour backdrops. Add water to your paint to create washes of colour and experiment with texture. Print and cut out the characters on page 17. Glue wood sticks to the characters and props to help move them around your model theatre.

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Aerial view of the model box for The Way Back Home

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The Boy and the Martian fly to the moon. The moon is 238,855 miles from earth and it orbits the earth every 27.3 days. The first person to land on the moon was American astronaut Neil Armstrong. That was in 1969. Since then only twelve people have walked on the moon although many more have flown in space.

Soon it might be possible for you to go on holiday to the moon. Imagine you are there and write a postcard to send to your friend back on earth. Describe what it looks like and how it compares to earth.

Create a moon factfile containing lots of interesting facts about the moon.

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What you see on stage is only part of the process of creating an opera. In The Way Back Home there are 6 singers, 1 actor, 7 musicians and 1 conductor who are visible at every performance. But behind the scenes, there are lots of other people who are involved in making and running the show, from the director and designer to the props maker, the person that operates the lights, and the team who move the set around.

At the London Coliseum, the 2,400 seat theatre that is home to the English National Opera, there are hundreds of people involved in every show. Learn more about the process of making an opera and some of the interesting jobs people at ENO do in these short films.

Behind the Scenes

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The Sound Engineer

The Prop Maker

The Milliner

The Stage Manager

Write a review of The Way Back Home opera or

draw or write a message for the Boy, Penguin or Martian.

You can post it in The Way Back Home post box at the Young Vic or send it to us at ENO.

ENO Baylis, London Coliseum, St Martin’s Lane, London, WC2N 4ES

Baylis@eno.org