THE BFG STUDY GUIDE

By Gina Leigh www.ginaleigh.net

THE CAST

Ben Dibble………………………………......…………...Danie l/Bloodbottle r/Head Te ac he r/He ad o f Army Maggie Lakis………………………………….……………………………………………………………...…...S ophie Miriam A. Hyman………Re becca /Gizzardgulper/Rebec ca (Dreamer)/Unde rmaid/Quee n of Sw eden J ared Mic hae l De lane y……….……S am/Bonecrunc her/Classmate /S am S imkins/He ad of Air Forc e Kala Mose s Baxte r………………………………………...……….Kathe rine /Meatdrippe r/Classmate /Mary J eb Kre ager…………………..……….…….Guy/Fle shlumpeate r/Classmate /Ronald Simkins/Mr. Tibbs Catharine K. S lusar…………………….….…….Mum/Childc he w er/Miss P lumridge /Que e n of Eng land P e te r P ryor………………………………………………………………………………….….………..Dad/The BFG

Welcome!

This study guide is jam-packed with information, games, and activities. Whether you have already seen The BFG at the Arden Theatre, read the book by Roald Dahl, or are

preparing to see the show with your class, this study guide will teach you everything you need to know about The BFG. Have fun!

The BFG Study Guide Table of Contents

· SOPHIE’S ROOM 4 o About The Play 5 o Meet the Author 6 o Meet the Director 7

· GIANT COUNTRY 8 o Meet the Puppet Designer 9 o Draw Your Own Giants 10 o Giant Folklore Facts 11

· DREAM COUNTRY 12 o Invent Your Own Words 13 o Write Your Own Phizzwizard 14-15

· BUCKINGHAM PALACE 16 o Have a Royal Tea Party 17-18 o Find Out More 19

SOPHIE’S ROOM

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Summary of the Play It is Sophie’s birthday. Her friends are visiting and they decide to act out Sophie’s fa-vorite book, The BFG. Here is the story: One night, during “the witching hour,” an orphan named Sophie is snatched out of her bedroom by a giant, and whisked away to Giant Coun-try. Luckily, this is the BFG (Big Friendly Giant) and not the other terrible, unfriendly Gi-

ants. The BFG catches dreams from Dream Country and blows them through his trumpet into the minds of sleeping children. The other giants eat children! The BFG eats only disgusting

Snozzcumbers (big vegetables), and drinks only fizzy Frobscottle. Sophie and the BFG hatch a plan to save the children from the other Giants. They mix up a dream about the giants and

send it to the Queen of England. When the Queen awakens, she discovers Sophie in her room, and Sophie tells her the dream was true. When the Queen meets the BFG, she sends

the Air Force and the Army to round up the giants and drop them in a huge hole, where they have nothing to eat forever after- except for Snozzcumbers. The BFG and Sophie are

given places to live next to the Queen’s palace, and live happily ever after.

Fun Fact Before The BFG was written, the

character was mentioned in Roald Dahl’s earlier book, Danny, the Cham-pion of the World. Danny’s father tells him a bedtime story featuring The BFG.

Dahl was born in Wales on Sept. 13, 1916 to Norwegian parents. He went to boarding school and spent vacations with family in Norway. Dahl was a pilot in the Royal Air Force of the UK during WWII. His first story, which launched his writing career in 1942, was about his plane crash in 1941. He was married from 1953 to 1983 to Acad-emy Award-winning actress Patricia Neal. They had five children: Olivia, Tessa, Theo, Ophelia, and Lucy. Their home was called Gipsy House, in Buckinghamshire, Eng-land. Dahl’s first childrens’ book was The Gremlins, fol-lowed by books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and Matilda. He wrote The

BFG in 1982. Dahl wrote several screenplays, including adapting his own work for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. He also wrote over 60 short stories for adults. Dahl died in 1990 at age 74. Today, the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre carry on his legacy.

Roald Dahl’s Tips For Writers

“As you write your own stories, I would keep these three things in mind.” -RD

* 1. Don’t ever bore your reader. * 2. Don’t worry if you don’t have the whole story worked out in your head before you start. The story will grow as you write if you use your imagination. *3. Give yourself enough time to write. Work on your story at home. Lie in bed and think about how your story could develop. Good ideas are very hard to come by. I couldn’t write anything worth reading in an hour or class period.

-www.roalddahl.com

Meet the Author, Roald Dahl

Meet The Director, Whit MacLaughlin

What were some

surprises that came up during

The BFG?

There’s a page in the script that

says the giants do a war dance.

What we came up with was a

cross between the Wu Tang

Clan and a ceremony con-

ducted by the New Zea-

land rugby team The All

Blacks, it is a Maori ritual

called the Haka that they per-

form before each game. An actor

would do the dance, and some-

one would say, let’s try the Haka.

So we put it (The Haka)up on

YouTube and watched it, and

said, Let’s combine the two

things. That was really fun.

Can you tell me about working

with the designers?

It’s the director’s job to bring all

of that together, The play is big-

ger than it seems to be. We

needed a set that is versatile

enough to become all the differ-

ent places , but stay itself. I had

to conceive of a whole concept of

a play that works on all levels,

then guide it into an

ex-

pression of that con-

cept.

What is a typical rehearsal like?

It was all about trying to get a

page up on the stage. What

people say is only a part of

what happens in the play.

It’s very technical- we have

to figure out how puppets and

masks are going to work. Figuring

out shifts between time and

place. Character, how lights are

going to work, sound. The sound

designer composed a whole

score. What went into it? A whole lot.

Why did you want to direct The BFG?

The BFG has unique challenges.

One was to bring all these giants,

and shifts in scale, to the stage.

There are two versions of the

script- one with the birthday

party and one without and I de-

cided we needed the

party. It was a transi-tion from the real

world to the fantastic world of the story.

Do you enjoy directing shows for kids?

I do. I direct for the child in eve-ryone. I don’t imagine there’s a separate theatre you make for

kids. I’m working on a play right now about a girl born with a kan-garoo pouch. People treat her as kind of a freak. She gets mad and steals their voices. She steals all the voices in the world. How do you do that? I find that kind of

challenge really fun.

GIANT COUNTRY

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Meet the Puppet Designer, Aaron Cromie

How do the puppets help tell the

story?

We are able to explore the

roles of giants by making the

giants so big and people so

small- it helps us to see clearly.

They help the actors to move

around the stage in

interesting and creative ways.

Puppets can appear and reappear

in places people couldn’t. Big

giant monsters are scarier than

regular people! People get the

sense of the power of how big

they are.

What do you take into

consideration when designing on

different scales (large and small)?

The most important thing is to

imagine seeing what the audience

sees. If we want to make a giant,

we have to imagine ourselves the

size of a tiny puppet. What is it

like to see a person a

dozen feet tall? We have

to imagine ourselves in

their place.

How do you decide which materials to use?

I find out what is lightweight, so

actors can use it easily. Papier

mache is very light. Insulation

foam, too. I had to find something

that would let me create big noses

and lips, these deep jaws and high

foreheads. I sculpt first from clay, then make a

permanent version from papier mache and foam.

How do you begin designing a

character? It started with reading the

book and imagining what the

monsters looked like. And there

were the original sketches by

Quentin Blake. I decided I wanted

to make them look less cartoony,

and more like “real monsters,”

with faces and hair that looked

scary. They had to be the right

combination of scary and funny.

The actors also use musical instru-ments in the play. How is a puppet

like an instrument?

It is like an instrument because it helps us to creatively express our feelings and emotions and convey

the message of the play. Like playing a song on a guitar, you

play through the puppets to make a beautiful story.

Draw Your Own Giants

What would the giants look like if YOU designed them?

BLOODBOTTLER BONECRUNCHER GIZZARDGULPER

MEATDRIPPER CHILDCHEWER FLESHLUMPEATER

DREAM COUNTRY

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Invent Your Own Words Here are parts of some of the made-up words found in The BFG. Connect different combi-

nations of prefixes (beginnings of words) with suffixes (ends of words) to create your own lan-guage. Then, give your words their own definitions. See if your friends can understand your

new language!

PREFIXES

SUFFIXES

Here’s one to get you started: 1. JABBELSCOTTLE (Verb) To walk sideways quickly, like a crab. “She JABBELSCOTTLED all the way home.” ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________

Delump Frob Whizz Snozz Crackety Mooch Footch Scudd Swogg Crod Sloshfunk Jabbel Piffle Glump Splatch Chidd Troggle Boggle Scrumdiddly Hip Snitch Telly Canny Dum Skump Rubb Frump Rot Scrump Fizz Slosh Squizz Crump Slime Squiff

-switch –ling –bunkum –dillies –umptious –some –lers –eling –usterous –able –ant –wise –ly –idgy –ing –scollop –kin –let -wiggler –flunking

–winkles –ster –scoddle –crimp –squiddly -tickling –splunkers –tibbles –bage –popper –squeak –scottle -bunking –squash –sy –bly –ful -ster

Write Your Own Phizzwizard Pick one of these kids‘ dreams, then use it to write your own phizzwizard- that is, a very good

dream! (Hint: Use the words that you invented in the previous activity.)

________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

BUCKINGHAM PALACE

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FINISH

Have a Royal Tea Party: Recipes

Your class can have a Royal Tea Party, just like Sophie and The BFG had with the Queen of England.

FROBSCOTTLE 1. You will need: A 2-liter bottle of Sprite or another green, lemon- lime soda A sheet of construction paper, scissors, and tape White glue Glitter Markers, colored pencils or crayons 2. Remove the label from the soda bottle. Trace its shape on the con-struction paper. Cut it out. Now you have a new label. Decorate it with picture of giants, or whatever you would like. Leave the middle space open. With the white glue, carefully write the word FROBSCOTTLE in the center of your label. Pour glitter over the glue. Pour the ex-cess glitter back into its container. Let your label dry. Then, tape it onto the soda bottle. Now you have a bottle of

MUD-AND-DIRT WITH SNOZZCUMBERS 1. You will need: Chocolate pudding Oreo cookies Gummy worms Marshmallows Liquid chocolate shell Purple jimmies Green pull-n-peel Twizzlers Toothpicks Large sandwich bag 2. Prepare the chocolate pudding. Put the Oreos in the sandwich bag and break them into pieces. Stir the Oreo pieces and the gummy worms into the pudding. This is Mud-and-Dirt. Set aside. 3. Put a marshmallow on a toothpick. Pour the chocolate shell over the marshmallow and im-mediately sprinkle with jimmies. Now you have a Snozzcumber. Make more Snozzcumbers and put them on top of your Mud-and-Dirt. Pull apart the green Twizzlers and use them as twist-ing, snaking vines between the Snozzcumbers.

Have A Royal Tea Party: Games

Dress Up Like Your Favorite Character

* Who is your favorite character from The BFG? Why? At the party, practice walking and talking like your character. Bring in a costume for

your character.

* Act out a scene from The BFG with your friends. Remember to walk, talk, and act like your character.

Read Your Phizzwizard Out Loud

* Read the story you wrote out loud to the rest of the party-goers.

OR:

* Get some of your friends together to be actors. Each actor should be one character. Rehearse (practice) your story a few times as a play. Present

your play to the rest of the party.

Discuss The Play * What was your favorite part of the play? Why? * What did you think about the set, costumes, lighting, sound, and puppets? * Was the play different than the book? * What surprised you in the play? * How were the actors like the characters?

FIND OUT MORE

* www.ardentheatre.org -Arden Theatre Company.

* The BFG by Roald Dahl, illustrations by Quentin Blake. © 1982. –The book that started it all.

* www.roalddahl.com –RD’s official website. (Go to the Glass Elevator. Click on “Interview with Roald Dahl.” Then, click on “Q11” to hear Dahl himself read aloud from The BFG.)

* www.roalddahlfans.com –RD’s biggest fansite.

* www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_(mythology) -Folklore and facts about giants.

BOOKS ABOUT GIANTS

* “A Book Of Giants” by Ruth Manning-Sanders

* Fairy tales like Jack and the Beanstalk

* “The Book of Giant Stories” by Harrison & Fox

The BFG Study Guide by Gina Leigh

www.ginaleigh.net