The drama begins in the classroom where the children meet Arthur, assistant and helper at Uncle’s Story Shop. Arthur arrives to take them to the shop for their scheduled story time, where they see him open up for the very first time and prepare for the day. Uncle arrives and asks the children for help with the various story making tasks he has to do for his customers and to also keep an eye on Arthur to see if they think he would be ready to take over the running of the shop for Uncle soon as he is thinking of retiring. During the first part of the drama the children are involved in sharing what stories they like, helping to make a story bag of objects for a poorly customer and creating an original funny story together to save a jesters life from a grumpy king. Once the customers have been dealt with the class are invited to hear Uncle tell his favourite story and to act it out with him.
After a short break the drama continues, again starting in the classroom. Arthur arrives to tell the children that something terrible has happened. Overnight everything has been taken from the shop and the shelves are empty. The children arrive to find Uncle trying to make sense of what has happened and fix things. He eventually decides to close the shop, forever, having nothing left to use to tell his made up stories. Arthur asks the children about what might have occurred and collects their responses about what he could do. After finding a case with coloured pencils and paper he asks the children for their ideas of what new things he could put in the shop. After convincing Uncle to try out Arthur’s idea the class will work in two groups to draw these new things, make up a story with them and eventually populate the empty shelves of the shop with them. Uncle then decides it might be worth carrying on and hands the key and the shop over to Arthur so that he can run it now, after thanking the the children for all help in the shop.
The first part of the drama is approximately one hour and then after a break (normal playtime or a five minute break) the drama will be approximately thirty minutes.
