9/07/15 (Evaluation)

What did you think about the overall performance?

Overall, I enjoyed the performance even though I was in it, the energy was immaculate and we all worked really well as a group. The performance was successful which I was proud about.

Was it suitable for the target audience?

Yes, we adapted the stimulus to make it suitable for little children. Our use of songs made the piece better because children love songs especially ones that are catchy and simple, following on us dancing brought more excitement and energy towards the children because they almost fed of our energy. Also we emphasised each movement because with young children, for them to analyse anything at the same pace older people do it needs to be more emphasised. 

Which piece of our show worked the best and why?

In my opinion, I found that the sequences we did in lines were very effective because they were in sync and was quite contrasting to the rest of our piece, which would of intrigued the audience because the rest of our piece was cheerful and active, and they would of been curious as to why there was a sudden change in ambience. 

Which devising skills were used to make the piece?

We used practising how to work as a collective, we did this by having a lot of group talks discussing individual strengths and weaknesses, so we can understand each other better and build up to be a great cast. Towards the end of the devising process, we had to collaborate with other groups which really helped us get out of our comfort zone since we were forced to work with people we weren't normally used to working with and creating ideas together.

What character(s) did you play and how had these been developed?

In order to be a doll, I had to change my whole stance since dolls are very stiff toys, I had to try to portray that without losing the physicality of a human.

What have you learnt about devising?

From devising I have learnt that a lot of research is needed in order to understand the task set and help you develop and create ideas. I underestimated how much research goes into developing a piece and how much it helps.

What could have been developed further and why?

I felt that the whole piece lacked in energy, the ambience was very drained and I felt as if the rehearsal process was better than the actual performance. Also I think we should work more on projecting our voices in a large space because I found it even on stage it was hard to hear the lines.

2/7/15

Log questions:

What activities did we do today?

What ideas did you/your group come up with? 

We didn't come up with any ideas this week as we were rehearsing. We were refining the scenes that weren't complete.

Why have you chosen some of these ideas to develop further? You need to EXPLAIN WHY?

 Some of the sciences weren't ready yet so we went over them to improve them.

Why did you reject some of the ideas? You need to EXPLAIN WHY?

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

All of them because we were rehearsing.

25/06/15

What activities did we do today?

What ideas did you/your group come up with?
Today was the day we had to finish our whole 10 minute performance, we had to link the rest of the other 4 groups piece to ours, as my groups piece was the starting of the performance. It made it easier to clump together our ideas as most of the groups had the same ideas as one another. For example Rory's group was similar to ours so we combined it with the piece we'd created the week before, we did this by taking pieces of his groups original scene and placing them in areas of our scene where we felt it was suitable. We then worked on getting everyone on stage with us without affecting the feel of our piece so we decided to make everyone toys to create an atmosphere of a child's, then during the physical theatre bits it allowed everyone to move and made the stage very busy for example when we had the fish on stage everyone turned into fish swimming around and it nicely allowed a smooth transition to everyone else's pieces.

Why have you chosen some of these ideas to develop further? You need to EXPLAIN WHY?
One of the ending group piece's we developed (Roseby's group) 4 of them were lined up next to each other doing different movements, we decided to make a row of 4 lines behind them and copy their exact movements we did that for a count of 4 and in the time of the music we headed to the back so it was a circle of us doing it, we thought of this because all of us could be involved and it could show the atmosphere more if a load of us are doing big movements.

Why did you reject some of the ideas? You need to EXPLAIN WHY?

We rejected some ideas because we thought they weren't any use anymore as it wouldn't all link together and we also thought of new ideas to make the piece better so that was an advantage working all together.

What acting skills/performance skills are you using? EXPLAIN WHY these are suitable for the piece and the target audience.
We used physical theatre which is more interesting to see than a whole script of words that most of the little children won't understand or be bothered by, we also used two songs in our performance for the little kids to be involved in, we used this to be interactive with the audience to make it more exciting for them and definatley fun.

18/06/15

What activities did we do today?
Today was very different as Frantic Assembly came to visit us and we did a physical activity with them for 2 hours, which was amazing i felt this warmed us up and also gave us a bigger insight of how to use physical theatre in different ways.

What ideas did you/your group come up with?
We had the same initial thoughts as we did last time, but we then started to merge another group into our piece we devised, their piece fitted in to ours perfectly as they had some of the same ideas as us, so it was easier for us to join our groups ideas with theirs. Some of the ideas we came up with was that, as they have a boy in bed as well, their boy ( played by Matteo) should be in bed with Tim. Following on, we taught the other group some of the actions we did and we wanted them to join in, we then merged their piece into ours, when Tim mentions about swimming with sea creatures and then their group started saying what they wanted to be- which my group then started learning the actions and directions they wanted us to do. we ended at the same ending my group originally had  but this time, Matteo and Tim walked off together waving at each of the dolls. 

Why have you chosen some of these ideas to develop further? You need to EXPLAIN WHY?
We chose to develop ideas further so it could all make sense and link perfectly for example we had the same idea of being an astronaut and being in space, so we decided all of us should run to the middle, where the bed was and say ''321....BLAST OFF!'' together.

Why did you reject some of the ideas? You need to EXPLAIN WHY?
Some of the ideas we had to ditch, because it didn't make sense, such as the other groups starting line they were going to use didn't make sense to what previously happened, so we changed the lines and we also had to alter some of our positions so that everyone could get involved and be seen.  

What acting skills/performance skills are you using? EXPLAIN WHY these are suitable for the piece and the target audience.
We used little bits of physical theatre and we also used communication and listening even though it was very hard, because all of us wanted to be heard we managed to do it at the end of the day and we were pleased with the piece we devised together.As we originally had, we emphasised on our movements and words so it comes across more exciting and intriguing for our target audience which are little children

Children's Theatre

Polka theatre

What do they do?
Polka theatre is one of the few theatre's in the UK that is dedicated to presenting work  for young viewers. Over 90,000 people go to the polka theatre each year.

Who do they make their work for?
They make work for the ages  0 to 14  and do shows from powerful dramas to hilarious family shows.

What's on at the moment?

• Circle in the sand
• Puss in boots
• Dot, Squiggle and rest
• STATIk
• World of stories and music
• Gorilla

http://www.polkatheatre.com/whats-on

Unicorn theatre

What do they do?

The unicorn Theatre is the UK's leading professional theatre for young audiences, They serve over 60,000 children and their parents or carers every year both on and off stage through workshops and performances.

Who  do they make their work for?

Young people of all ages.

What's on at the moment?

• One little world
• Ancient Mechanicals
• Southbank stories
• Breaking the ice
• Martyr
• Raw

https://www.unicorntheatre.com/whatson

How might these places help us devise our work?

We could witness how they preform to their target audiences since ours is similar to theirs and expand from what we've got from that to make our piece more child- friendly. Nevertheless, we could look at how they portray certain elements for children, for example how they preform to different age groups.We can use some of their pieces as inspiration for our own.

11/06/15

Devising skills

What devising skills did we discuss today?

Today we used improvisation, physical theatre and creativity.

Which of these skills are you most confident in using?

Physical theatre because I'm confident of how to use my body in abstract ways.

Children's Theatre 

Our piece is for a very specific audience. Why is theatre for children so valuable?

Theatre for children is valuable because it allows them to see how everyday things in the world, that they see on a daily basis can be seen in different ways. It also significant for a child because it would have been their first piece of art they have seen which makes it memorable.

Log questions:

What activities did we do today?

We recapped the storybook and all of us were able to say our opinion about the book and how it affected us, this was helpful because we then began to have a great sense of the book and the meaning and how it was significant for little children, if they dream while they're little they're dreams will come true when they're older so basically he's saying kids shouldn't give up on their dreams. Following on, we were put into groups and we were told which part of the book we had as a strand,we then thought about the different ways we could use physical theatre to portray the story and after we were sent away to devise a small performance for the sections (pages) we chose. 

What ideas did you/your group come up with? 

At the beginning of devising our piece we decided to keep the movements simple as it was going to be shown to little kids who can loose interest really quickly and possibly wouldn't follow along to technical movements. We started by having a young boy (played by Tim) asleep on a bed in the centre of the stage, his toys then began to come to life which we thought would be significant to little children as they normally wish for their toys to come alive. He woke up to find his dolls (played by me and Jamie) talking to him, we used dolls because we didn't want to be stereotypical and use action figures. We used basic lines from the book , for the underline story we wanted it to show that Tim decides which of his dreams come true, so to portray this we wanted to make it obvious that he was alive in his dreams hence the reason his toys came alive and spoke to him.Following on from this  we used physical theatre when he talks about how he wants to be a captain of his own ship and we all became waves  and used a soundscape  as the sound of waves to keep it exciting for the children. We decided to do it this way to emphasise on the authors message that anything can happen if you keep dreaming. 
Finally we had Tim fall into the 'water' and swim with fishes before running into a spaceship but waking up in his own bedroom, as he got up and left his room he looked back at one of the dolls and they waved back. We stopped there because normally when children get deep into a dream and almost start believing it is true they waking up finding out it was all a dream and obviously a dream doesn't always last.

Why did you reject some of the things?
We had to reject some of the tricks we originally had because of  safety, we wanted to preform some of the tricks because we know that children are easily impressed by those things and it would have caught their attention.
We also rejected some ideas because we thought it would give a more negative message rather than positive and we wanted to stick to things that make children laugh and smile, also we had to think of the things we were doing and saying thinking if it's suitable for little children.

What acting skills/performance skills are you using? 

We used physical theatre because we felt that children are more likely to be intrigued into actions than to listen to people speaking for a long time and using big words, it also made the scene more real because in dreams you would normally had a lot of actions than speaking due to all the crazy dreams going on at once.

Another performing skill we used was communication, as there were five of us trying to get our ideas across we all had to listen to each other and be patient and finally we succed to listen to everyone's ideas.