Lesson 2

What activities did we do today?

At the beginning of the lesson we had a workshop from Frantic Assembly which helped us develop our skills in physical theatre and also helped us work effectively as a class as we spent most of the time working with each other rather than being in separate groups. We spent the rest of the lesson focusing on our pieces and making it clear which section we were presenting, we also had to decide how we would involve the whole class in our piece as we came up with them in smaller groups.

What ideas did your group come up with?

Last lesson my group pretty much finished our piece, but this lesson we added in music as Benji brought in the guitar and we decided what kind of music would fit with our piece best to enhance it. We also decided that our idea, and Susanna's groups idea were very similar so we merged them together and we had both come up with the idea of a child saying what they dreamed of, and us becoming the characters in their dream.

Why have you chosen to develop some of the ideas further?

Our piece mainly focused on exploring different things little children dreamed about. So we added and rejected ideas on what characters we could do. We developed this idea by deciding on the atmosphere and also working on our spacing, although adding in the whole class helped because it was much easier to fill the space. The feel of our piece is very energetic and everything is very fast pace, so the changes between characters are swift and no one stops moving so that it contrast nicely with the next section.

What ideas did you reject?

At the beginning we planned to all be lined up behind Rory, who was the little boy speaking, and we'd all come out in canon as these different characters. However this idea is incredibly difficult to carry out with 25 students, so instead we had everyone scattered around as toys in a frozen position. We also adapted our lines so it fitted in with the next section. I say "Houston we have a problem, I've forgotten how to dream", which then brings the mood down as we become adults.

What performance skills are you using? Why are they suitable for your audience?

The main skills we use are music and physical theatre. We thought this would suit our audience because it's easier to understand compared to us speaking throughout the whole piece. Music and physical theatre work well together because it provides a rhythm for the movements and is another way of communicating the message of our piece without speaking.

An awesome book

I really loved how imaginative the book was and how creative the illustrations were. I think the simplicity of the book and how it only had a few words on each page made it more effective because you were getting a lot of information from the images rather than the text which adds to the creativity of it.

It's a good book for little peoples day because I think this book is a chance to surround children in a completely fantasy world and get their imagination going because nowadays thats less utilised as technology develops and we need to think less for ourselves.

Lesson 1

Devising skills:

The devising skills discussed in the lesson were improvisation, trial and error, discussion and responding to the stimulus. I am most confident discussing ideas for a piece rather than just improvising straight away. I find it easier to create more of a structure for the piece rather than go straight into it, although this can lead to too much time talking and failing to actually get the ideas on their feet. 

Children's theatre:

Childrens theatre is valuble because it can teach them things they dont learn at school such a morals. It also allows the children to express themselves creatively when getting involved in a play. It is much easier to teach and engage children as they are so eager and the lessons they learn through theatre and as a young child will stay with them throughout their lives.

Polka theatre:

The polka theatre is a theatre dedicated to children, where the put on plays for babies to teenagers, allowing them to experience theatre for free. They are a charity theatre, that allow children to read books, play in the playground, aswell as watch plays. At the moment they have a play called Puss in Boots on, which is based on the popular fairytale. Because this theatre only performs to children, they know exactly how to entertain them and keep them interested in the play. This will help us because we can use some of their ideas and incorporate it into our theatre piece to make it more exciting for the children. 

Unicorn Theatre:

At the moment they are showing a variety of children's plays including one called The Polar Bears Gone Wild about two polar bears who go on an adventure of a lifetime. At the unicorn they show plays for people of all ages, which will help us create a piece that is entertaining for the children but also has a message for our peers watching.

Log Questions:

In todays lesson we watched a reading of an awesome book and were given the section we'd be focusing on. We were then put into small groups and had to pick out the different characters, atmospheres and places in the book. Once we did that, we had to create a small piece in responce to it and any dialogue used had to rhyme. 

My group decided to focus on the section where it says some people have forgotten how to dream. We came up with ideas to become different characters that children could dream about. For example, Benji became a spy and started car wheeling around the stage. We also wanted to involve the audience, so we had a song from a popular childrens song and had eric, as the pirate, to sing a line and have the audience sing back to him and copy the actions. We thought this was a good idea because children get bored and distracted easily so by interacting them we're keeping them engaged. 

Some ideas we rejected because they made the piece too complicated. One of them was to have rory as the son and eric as the dad to come in half way through because he's forgotten how to dream. When trying out this idea, we felt it limited the development of the other characters, such as benji as a spy and me as a fairy; and these characters were much more fun for children. Its important to try out and reject ideas because from this idea we decided to keep rory as a little boy who would narate the piece and the rest of us would be different made up characters surrounding him. 

For our piece we are using rhyming and music in order to engage the children. Rhyming the dialogue makes it easier for the children to concentrate because it's more like a song and easy to listen to. Also, our use of a song, which comes from a popular children's show, means the children will feel involved and will be able to interact with us which will stop them from getting bored. We also physicalised a lot of the words being said. So when a character is announced, like an astronaut, we will all become astronauts to make it more visually interesting because obviously not all the children will be able to understand what we're saying.