11/06/13

Lesson 1

Devising skills

What devising skills did we discuss today?
We said that some devising skills, are creativity, knowing you target audience, being open minded to new ideas, and finally to not be afraid to put your ideas forward. We said these skills were important as they will make your piece really interesting and captivating for the audience members.

Which of these skills are you most confident in using?

I think I am most confident in ‘being open to other ideas’ because I like to see all the different ways we could interpret our stimulus, because I want our scene/play to be the best it can possibly be.

Children's Theatre 

Why is theatre for children so valuable?
I think theatre is important to children as it stimulates their imagination, and promotes creative thinking. It can also inspire children to get involved in the arts.

Please go on the following websites and do some research on what both companies do. http://www.polkatheatre.com/     https://www.unicorntheatre.com/

• Who are they?

They are both theatre companies.

• Who do they make work for?

They specialise in making theatre and workshops for babies, young children, and pre-teens.

• What's on at the moment?

Polka:  The Bockety world of Henry Bucket, Circles in the sand, Puss in boots, Dot squiggle and rest, STATIK, Gorilla.

Unicorn: One little word, The big wild Rumpus,

• How might these companies help us with the work we are devising?

These companies will help us when devising as we will be able to take inspiration from their work, and find out what makes children enjoy theatre shows. Also different ways to tell stories to make the children stay interested.

Log questions:

What activities did we do today?

In todays lesson, we started off discussing about the book ‘An Awesome Book’, as a class, and why we really liked the book. We then spread out in the class, to find our own space, and thought about the first bit of theatre we saw. We did this, as we could remember why we enjoyed that piece of theatre, and then later on hopefully apply in to our own work. Then we had to think about how we imagine our adaption of ‘An Awesome Book’ would look like and share it with the class. In the next half of the lesson we got in groups of 5, and created a short scene based off of, the ten pages of ‘An Awesome Book’ we were given.

What ideas did you/your group come up with? 

In our group some of the ideas we came up with, was to have one person asleep, and for his dream to come to life, and all his toys would be in the dream with him. We also thought to have all the other characters in his dream transport him in to different worlds. Another idea we had, was to use some music in some parts of the scene. Also, that in the scene, him and his toys would keep going in to different worlds.

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

We decided that we would start this scene off with Tim falling asleep, because we thought it would make it easy to understand that he was dreaming especially for small children, also because we could then end the scene we it started as we felt it would make it flow nicely. We decided to develop the idea of his toys, coming to life in this dream. We thought this would work, because the idea of all you toys coming to life is very exciting for little children, as movies like ‘Toy Story’ is very popular. So we chose to keep that idea that him and his toys would keep going in to different worlds. We kept this because we felt it would keep the children’s attention as there was always something new and exciting happening on stage, and it would encourage them to use their imagination.

Why did you reject some of the ideas?

We rejected some of the ideas, because we did not really have enough time to properly choreograph complicated physical theatre, which is why we didn’t have the toys transport Tim in to a new world. Also we didn’t want it to be too complicated, that the children didn’t understand the story. Finally we decided that the music was vital, and it would probably go wrong, because it would need to  be used for a really short time, in one of the different ‘Worlds’ Tim and his toys went to in his dream.

What acting skills/performance skills are you using? EXPLAIN WHY these are suitable for the piece and the target audience. 

Some of the acting skills I was using were characterisation, physical theatre, and projection. This was also suitable of the target audience, because the characters would have made it clear to the children what was going on in the scene. Hopefully it also made the scene more exciting to watch, so the children would not have lost interest. Physical theatre was suitable because children enjoy physical theatre as it’s a form of communicating with them if they don’t understand loads of words yet. Finally projecting is very important because I have very  little words to say, they need to be clear and loud as there might be a lot of noise in theatre as hopefully the children will be very excited.