Theatre For Children: Fourth Lesson

24^th September 2014

Hey

Performance  workshop

We are still trying to figure out what our scene could be about, so during our performance lesson we came up with some ideas to build on the outline we had.  We brainstormed some ideas e.g all of our personalities could be opposite of what we should be, but we discounted this idea and kept with the original idea of one of us going missing. 

We decided not to use ‘Where’s Wally’, but change it to Action Man and he could be Missing In Action. We had to come up with some scene ideas, which we did.  We would start off with physical theatre as a creative heap at the back of the stage and then would unfold and introduce ourselves as our characters. I think this is a strong start giving the impression of being muddled in Santa’s sack.  However when talking to Laura, our tutor, in Theatre for Children, she suggested we introduce ourselves when we did our ensemble pieces. We then came up with the idea we would also ‘freeze frame’ and Mel , who is playing action man, would go off stage in a dramatic James Bond style to the Bond theme music.  Another idea for further in the play is that we would have Benny Hill Theme music for cartoon type chase during which we would all try and catch Mel. We began working on using the right actions for our characters.   

I was feeling a little stressed about this as I didn’t have a character.  All my ideas didn’t seem quite right and I wanted to come up with a character that fitted with what my group mates had already chosen.  Initial ideas were a fairy in training, elf or Tinkerbell, but they seemed safe, bland options that I was not sure the kids would relate to.    Over the weekend I looked online and through some toy catalogues, which gave me the ideas of Dora the Explorer, Mario, Darth Vader, a minion, Spiderman, Jessie from toy story, Snow white and a pirate.  I texted my peers to see if they liked any of the ideas and the overwhelming response was Dora the Explorer.  I was pleased with this as I feel using the actions she uses in her show, (e.g, calling for her map and backpack) we could use in our show for audience participation.  I am feeling more confident for my character and found writing my Character Profile straight forward. 

At the end of the lesson we got a sneak preview of the scene other groups had some up with.  The reindeer idea stuck with me as it was modern and a novel approach to Santa’s reindeer.  Simply the reindeer posed for a selfie and as each character was tagged for a Facebook picture the reindeer stepped forward and introduce themselves.  Although as teenagers we all liked this idea, it perhaps could be a little old for the kids our play is intended for.

Theatre for children 

In the second part of the lesson we had to do some relaxation exercises and then reflect on happy Christmas memories.  This was then used as a basis for a short movement piece.  I found this quite hard to come up with ideas as I was slow working and didn't get as far as I hoped.  I felt as if I was doing mime instead of a movement piece. Which I thought “oh no!” as she told us were going to have to use some of the actions for our ensemble piece.  On the positive side I am quite nosey person but it was also give me a good in seen in to who my classes mate are.
I felt doing this exercise was not effective because we were all working separately, we all thought of our own christmas, when could of come up with a movement piece that could relate to everyone not just ourself, we could of worked in small groups or together as a class. I could do my movement piece with more wellie which means I would do strong and more definite with my movement.
  

Have written my letter, which I am quite proud about and am hoping for a response soon.  I also added in a cheeky hint about visiting them, so we will see what happens.  A copy is below.

I am finding the research limited for Something Special, so have broaden my area to the Cbeebies Channel.  However if I find this too larger a topic to do well I shall narrow it down to the areas I am particularly interested in.    I also understand there is an exhibition at The Lowry in Salford covering the history and creation of children’s television, which I think would be extremely useful, but it closes just before half term on 12^th October, so I am not sure I will be able to visit.  Perhaps I could contact the Lowry and see if they can help with information……

see you soon 

Jenny 

Theatre For Children: Third Lesson

Hey,                                                                                                   17^th September 2014

We had our third lesson of Theatre for children and now I will be including performance workshop class as well, because we all working toward the same goal, A performance of “twas a night before christmas”. We were told it was going to be like a journey through different scenes that we would create in groups. 

Performance workshop class

In this lesson we were asked to come up with some ideas in our group we would be doing our scene. We were given the lines “The stockings were hung by the chimney with care” and our teacher gives her idea on what she thought we would do. Which was that we could all be one toy of our choice, we could be in the wrong stocking or we could get lost in the house or some other idea so we took in on board and discussed ideas. We come up with the idea that we would be toys and then one of us would get lost and we would need the children help to find him. As we develop the idea. We discussed we would have 3 stockings on stage and the character would get lost in them. The audience could point to where the character is on stage like Panto. We also thought about some staging ideas which included having the bottom of christmas tree and big presents to make it look like we are small. We would all finally end up in the right stockings in the end and maybe sing a song. We started thinking about characters, the lost character could be based on “Where’s Wally” image. This is a good idea because it something the kids will know. The other characters would be a doll of some sort, teddy, baby doll, robot and a fairy we thought these characters would be easy to understand and recognises. We are still developing the idea but I think we have a good base to work from. 

Theatre for Children

We looked at some games to help us focus because some of the class were talking and not really listening, the first game a counting game, all stood in the circle starting at one, we had to count up to 20 in order without saying and number twice or talking at the same time. Some of the class were in high sprints so they were shouting out the numbers hurriedly. Each time we had to start over, not reaching 20. I suggested we slowed down but the still people were too enthusiastic. We were split into two group and hand to hold hands and tangle ourselves without letting go. My group was slower and therefore the other group finished before us and came over to help. This muddled what we were going because lots of people were talking at the same time, so our teacher told the other group to sit and start talking about our homework. So we ended up breaking our hands because we all thought that we would be missing some of our lesson so we all went over to talk about our ideas of what we thought of the Matthew Bourne‘s Nutcracker. We all basically had the same idea same idea of what we could use from the nutcracker. We went into pairs and counted to 3, have one person say 1 and then other person say 2 and so on. We did this for about 2 min and then had to do an action instead of saying one which our character for a production might do, so as a fairy waved my arms go up and down to seem like I was flying. Then had we had to do an action for all three, then come up with 5 and I did these actions:

Á       first action was my arms going up and down like flying

Á       second action was my wand making a taping move

Á       third action was twisting elegantly     

Á       fourth action was sprinkling fairy dust over my head

Á       fifth action was to bow gracefully

I thought my actions were well suited to my character. The different action showed how elegantly my character should be, kind and smiley.

Following on from this activity we started to decide music we could use for the production, so my friend and I played one of the songs we would use and everyone seem to like it and Laura thought it was good idea. Other people came up with music that wasn’t really appropriate for the 5-11 year old group our production is for. So we didn’t really get anywhere with the music for our opening and closing parts of the show.

My Research

Following on with my research for the theatre for children, I wanted to look in to what Justin Fletcher did before he became Something Special’s Mr Tumble. He studyed drama at the Guildford School of Acting, he was in his final year when he started watching Phillip Schofield who was in a show called Gordon the gopher, which is new presentation format between afternoon children's programmes on BBC1. I watch some clips of this, and its show me how far the children BBC has come. This is the link to the website I found all the information for “Broom Cupboard” link: http://www.thebroomcupboard.co.uk/page2.html   after watching this he came up with a “show reel”  (This is a motion picture, video, musical or voice-over announcement equivalent of an artist's portfolio.) called Justin time, which encompassed two different characters: Anna Conda, a myopic reptile house warden; and Arthur Sleep, a regional newsreader who has difficulty staying awake and can sleep anywhere no matter what.  I looked up another show he was in called “fun song time” I remember watching this show but it was with different people in it and it was more modern with a feeling of pop music tangled in it, but I loved that show (I still do) It was a really up beat and it taught you different nursery rhymes it also had simple actions that the audience can pick up easily so we could use that idea in our scene for our production. He came up with another show called gigglebiz and this show is with Justin Fletcher playing different characters that have different storyline including Anna Conda and Arthur sleep. I'm going to send a letter to cbeebie so ask about how they come up with shows and if they could give me anything to put in with my school work for theatre for children.

Till next time

Jenny

Theatre For Children: Second Lesson

10th September 2014 

Hey,

So for our second lesson, we were going to watch a clip from the Matthew Bourne's nutcracker (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4leYMIcA_eI) but the computer wasn't working so we were told to look at the short film in our own time. We could do a worksheet to describe what we saw for homework or after she had finished talking.  I choose to do it as homework so I didn't feel rush to do it in the lesson.  We had a free afternoon so Molly and I choose to do it together. This was helpful as we could write what we both saw and discuss it to get other points of views.

 

After not being able to work the computer, my teacher told as what our performance that three of our classes were working toward would be based on the christmas poem called "'Twas the night be for Christmas" which was really exciting because it's my favourite christmas poem. Our teacher said that it was based on the poem, but we do not need to follow the poem but should follow any ideas we come up with while researching the assignment to develop the theme.

Our other homework was to find music that we could use for our performance. I also did this with Molly because it was something fun and we could try and come up with dance moves while listening to the song. We came up with the idea that we could have an upbeat song for the evening before christmas which the family are putting up decorations and the kids are getting out snacks for Santa and his reindeer and trying to calm down so they will sleep that night, and maybe the mum could put them to bed and tell them a story that turn in to a song. We also came up with the song called "It's Oh So Quiet" which would be funny for the first line of the poem

                                       

                                         " 'twas the night before Christmas,

                                            when all through the house,

                                           Not a creature was stirring,

                                                    not even a mouse."

 because you would have a mice coming and being quiet then really loud and dancing around because they are as excited about christmas as everyone else, but these are just ideas and maybe we come build this idea or it might spark someone else's imagination.

Listen to the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htobTBlCvUU

I'm still liking my research idea about 'Something Special'.  I started looking at the Cbeebies web site and found this link that goes to a grown-up page about the different shows and how it help the child development. This piece of information was really handy to tell me why they made this show.

' The educational value of the show

"The simple format and the repetitive aspects to each programme will help children to absorb new information or remember something they have previously learned. There is also frequent use of well-known nursery rhymes and tunes.

Even very young children who do not have difficulties with learning can gain so much. They will quickly learn the names of everyday items, actions and settings. The activities used throughout the series include aspects of the Early Years framework that encourage children's learning." '

Source:  BBC.Something Special. Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/grownups/shows/

something-special. Last accessed 13th Sept 2014.

I think shows what children can gain and helps the parents understand what the children are watching, I read though the whole page and found that it gives a quiet a bit of information about the show and it tell us that it's made up of bright colours and big actions with different characters which have different personalities which help the child understand there are different people in the world. This web site has a page on what is Makaton? which shows a film about how it can help children and give a child with disability the ability to communicate with their mum and dad and children at school. There are lots of shows that help children, like Tree Fu Tom can help children with  Dyspraxia.  I'm amazed about the shows helping children with communication and dyspraxia.

This is the link if you wanted to look at it:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/grownups/shows/something-special

till next time

Jenny

Theatre For Children: First Lesson

Hey my name is Jenny, This is my blog about Theatre For Children class that I've just started at the Brit school, which is part of my course Community Art Practice. I've never done a blog before so this is very new to me.

3rd September 2014

Today we had our first lesson. I was excited to start this class as i would like to work with children and this class combined my love of children and performing.  We discussed what we all thought would be best for a children's production. What went well was the ideas we can up with and it felt like we all knew what we needed to understand about doing a children's production. we came up with the following points: having a baddie and goodie so the children have the sense of power as they boo and cheer for the different characters which empowers them to lower or higher someone's status, you also need to interact with the children to make them feel part of the play and make them feel included. It also needs to be in a format so the children can follow what the play is about and also it needs to be fun as children can get bored easily if something is very slow so lots of talking that doesn't makes sense to the children. Thinking about it now as i write this blog we followed a traditional panto theme. 
I think this section of the lesson was really good and very calm but sometime we need to talk less as it's becomes difficult to hear and become focused for the task in hand.

We also got in to group of three or two and had to find a children company or T.V show which chose their target audience. In the group I was in there was three of us, and we choose Disney as we are big fans of their films and shows. we focused more on the films and the different stories and morals like..... "Never give up on your dream"..... "Be true to yourself"......."Anyone can be a princess"....."happiness is important". which developed in to role model characters and strong female characters. We look at Frozen which is a story about two sisters who one has powers which she can't control without the love of her sister, this is not a love story between boy and girl but between family and it tells us "family is sometime more important than finding true love" I think our group work well as we were on the same wave length. We also find it easy to come with points and our own opinions. 

 I have started to think about what children's works I would like to research and have come up with the Cbeebies show "Something Special" but still interested in the whole Cbeebie company and how they use different techniques to engage children's interest. "Something Special" is a show about sign language. It is designed to introduce children to Makaton signing, and is specifically aimed at children with delayed learning and communication difficulties. As I  babysat my young cousins over the summer i have watch this shows many times and have been really drawn to it as I would like to learn sign language. This show mixes elements of fun and play with learning and intolerance towards children with disabilities. As i watched it over the summer I found my 3 and 1 year old cousins glued to the shows and doing the signing which was really interesting to watch because you could see them learning and developing the different signs. I'm going to begin researching this part of the assignment over the next couple of weeks. 

till next time 

Jenny