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