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Over
130 Year 7 pupils from St. Marylebone CE School
worked with award winning novelist Roy Apps. He
focused on Degas’s ‘Miss La-La at the
Cirque Fernando’ during his masterclass.
Here, Roy shares some of his ideas:
“In
the development of powerful and truthful writing,
the importance of ’show don’t tell’
is paramount. But how do you get your characters
to ‘show’ emotions and feelings?
One way, of course, is to look at the way artists
work. They have to ‘show’. They don’t
use words. And where else is there such diversity
and breadth of artistic styles than in the National
Gallery? The Articulate Project offers a unique,
flexible framework in which students can explore
creating ‘word pictures’ as a way of
exploring and showing characters’ feelings
and emotions.
The Painting
One cold January day, I wondered round the Gallery,
finding paintings that ‘spoke’ to me
in some way: nice work if you can get it. I came
up with half a dozen or so. A couple of weeks later
I went back and looked at these paintings again.
Finally I chose ‘Miss La La at the Cirque
Fernando’ by Edgar Degas. I suppose it’s
a writers’ painting: it’s a work that
says ‘here are stories’; it asks questions,
but doesn’t give answers. Who is Miss La La?
How did she come to be here? Who is holding the
rope? Only the writer-in-us can imagine…
The Masterclasses
When it came to the Masterclasses, I was impressed
–and moved- by the way in which the students
quickly engaged with ‘Miss La La’ at
such a deep and personal level. View
Roy's Masterclasses.
It’s been a real privilege and a thrill to
be part of the National Gallery’s Articulate
Project.”
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