One-off workshop: Street market soundscape

With students in a circle, introduce the theme of the workshop, asking students for their ideas on the meaning of the term ‘soundscape’. Ask students for their thoughts and ideas on examples of soundscapes being used in TV shows, films, music videos and TV adverts.

A few ideas to get started could be:

• The futuristic sounds in the Star Wars films: light sabers, blaster guns and Ewoks. They were films that famously used lots of real-life sounds to create the space-age atmosphere
• The dinosaur and jungle sounds of the Jurassic Park films
• The sounds of gunfire, bombings and battle in war films such as Saving Private Ryan and Dunkirk
• The sea storm sound effects in Disney's The Little Mermaid

Creating sounds

With group in a circle, ask for volunteers to come to the front to demonstrate a percussion sound they can make with their body. These might be stamping feet, clapping hands, popping cheeks, slapping thighs, clicking fingers or rubbing hands together. Talk about the different sounds made and how these might be used in drama.

Give students a minute or two to try out a couple of these sounds, asking if they can imagine any being used to represent sounds heard in a busy market – the clattering of wobbly shopping trolleys, the trudging of busy feet, or the banging of pots and pans on market stalls, for example.

Next, ask students to think about the vocal sounds heard in a market. These could include stall holders calling out the price of their goods, children crying because they can't have an ice lolly, friends calling to each other, or people whistling, laughing, singing or arguing. Give students a couple of minutes to try these out. If using words, try to keep these to a minimum.

Working as a whole class group standing in a circle, ask students to each make just one chosen sound in turn. Tell students to start quietly, no more than a whisper, then with teacher as conductor, gradually bring the soundscape to a crescendo before gradually bringing the sound level back down again.

Characterisation activity

Staying in a circle, ask students for their thoughts about characters they might come across during a visit to a street market. Some ideas could be:

• A mum/dad half-dragging a bored child along the street
• A shopper struggling with too many heavy shopping bags
• A sneaky pickpocket stealing shoppers' purses and items from their bags
• Teenagers walking arm-in-arm or play fighting and mucking about

Working in groups of four to five, instruct students to create a short scene set in a busy market. If students are stuck for an idea here, they can use the following scenario:

An elderly person is slowly making their way through the busy market when a thief grabs their bag and runs away with it. A stall holder, who has been calling out the price of his fruit and veg, sees what has happened and shouts, ‘Stop, thief!’, before chasing after the culprit. In his hurry to escape, the thief nearly knocks over a mother and her crying child. The stall holder catches the thief and brings him back through the market where he hands the bag back to the elderly person. Students can create their own ending.

Things to think about here:

• What sort of personality will your character have and what sort of emotions will they be feeling? Your stallholder could be full of fun, cheeky, having a laugh with passersby and cracking jokes, while your mother could be miserable, losing patience with her child and looking tired.
• Think about body language, posture, the way your character walks and facial expressions.
• Think about how your character talks, are they loud or quietly spoken? What type of accent do they have?

Show examples of good work as time allows.

Creating the soundscape

Divide group into two halves: one half to enact the market scene, the other half to create the soundscape.

Students in the acting group should think back to the previous activity and choose a character to portray using mime. Students can group together into a mother and child pairing or a group of teenagers etc.

Thinking back to the previous making sounds activity, soundscape students should choose a sound or phrase from the market to repeat as part of the soundscape. They should form as large a circle as possible to create an acting space, then going round the circle, one student at a time and slowly and quietly at first, they start to create the soundscape. Actors walk into the acting space a few at a time, and using mime, portray their market character. Bring the noise level to a crescendo before having characters leave the acting space in the order they entered as the soundscape gradually dies away.

Swap groups around so everyone has a turn at both mime and soundscape.

End-of-workshop discussion

We finished our workshop by bringing everyone together to talk about all the activities. What parts did students like best? Did they feel the soundscape technique was an effective way to create an atmospheric scene?