Discuss your exploration and development of TTWCTT
taking into consideration key factors and relevant ideas and input you to the
process.
Evaluate the skills and techniques in used in rehearsal
and discuss how you responded to direction and feedback to develop work.
In our final term
of Year 10 Theatre, the majority of strands came together to produce a
performance of The Tiger Who Came To Tea for Little People’s Day. Our theatre
class had one of the opening scenes to the performance.
In the first few
lessons in Theatre, we learnt about what qualities a children’s theatre
performer has to possess; they will need to be able to embarrass themselves so
that the audience are more entertained as children typically are amused by
slapstick comedy. We also learnt that children’s theatre performers would need
to create over the top characters, which are larger than life, so that they are
easier for the viewers to understand. As well as learning about the performers,
we learnt how to tailor an ‘issue’ to a specific audience so we learnt how we
could adapt an ‘issue’ to then transform into a children’s theatre piece.
Throughout the
rehearsal process, we learn how to create the atmosphere by producing sounds
from our mouths to create animate and inanimate objects. In week 2, we laid on
the floor and were told to mimic particular noises (e.g. babies crying, door
creaks, etc.); this helped us produce The Tiger Who Came To Tea as we begin by
creating a soundscape of snoring and birdsong as we mimic the sound of morning.
We
also created scary stories through sound and minimal dialogue; this also helped
us create The Tiger Who Came to Tea as it taught us that we could easily tell a
story through sound without the constant need of dialogue. In our piece, we
also created songs with our voices, which were age-appropriate for the audience
as the majority were nursery-rhyme-related however I do not think that all of
the audience could have been aware of the Rocky Theme Song or the Blue Danube
so there was a slight risk in the song choices.
We explored
creating physical theatre, which involved us using our bodies to create objects
when we created our ‘breakfast machines’; as our performance was a physical
theatre based performance, it was good to begin to explore creating objects
with our bodies. We used our potential energy as we were waiting to be
introduced into the performance, so that we were constantly in character and
showing our potential; we then sprung into life using our highest attention
level to make sure that the objects that we were portraying were larger than
life, as we embarrassed ourselves, so that they would be more enjoyable to
watch.
The majority of
material we created in our rehearsal lessons was suitable for the audience of
young children as it was all lighthearted and upbeat with nothing that was in
danger of being inappropriate. I think it is also suitable for the
audience as each segment of the performance is short so it won't challenge
the young children's attention span as their attention span is
often very short at that age so if the segment's were longer, we could be
in danger of losing the majority of the audience's attention.
In our ‘Who’s At The Door’ performances, they were all very engaging
and humorous. There was a wide variety of short performances so that there was
something for everybody. They differed from the Old McDonald rhyme to Beyoncé
with her backing dancers; the Beyoncé idea was a brilliant idea as it was fun
and it was something for the adults in the audience to also enjoy as it was a
slightly more mature and grown-up idea to put in instead of having constant
childish themes that the audience may not have enjoyed throughout. The only
problem with having a wide variety of performances is that there were 10+ short
performances so by the end the audience was beginning to get restless and
irritated.
When all the strands rehearsed for the first time together, it was
very useful as we could all finally watch what everyone had been doing and
rehearsing in their strand time, and it was also useful as we could see the
finished order of the performances so we could see how the each of our
performances fitted together. It was helpful as we could see the reactions from
the audiences for each segment, which meant we could decide what parts we would
need to improve to make the performance be to the highest standard. We all
could see how our transitions between each section had improved dramatically
than how they were when we performed to the other theatre class. Although our
levels of energy were high, we could have increased them intensely. We also
learnt that we have to make sure that all of our technology and props were
working because a few things, like the Beyoncé, did not work in the rehearsal.
When I was given feedback by either Mr Hughes or one of my fellow
performers, I took it all into consideration to help to improve my acting
skills in order to benefit the performance. If I did not agree with the
feedback, I would discuss it with the people who gave me the feedback to agree
with something different improve it.
Since we had
learnt what we had to improve, we went back to the classroom and rehearsed our
songs in more detail and rehearsed everything to make the performance even
better.
Last Friday, we
went to the Ashcroft Theatre to see The Stories Left Behind, which was directed
by Mr. Crowther and performed by the Post 16s. It taught me a lot about how
energy is crucial in creating children’s theatre because it became so much more
entertaining when they had high energy levels. Personally, I think the acting
was amazing and the performance as a whole was flawless, because even when the
head of the teddy bear fell off, they acted as if it was part of the
performance. It was a very professional piece that had a lot of high points. An
example of a high point was when Peter Pan came on stage and the actors acted
as if they didn’t know he was there but the audience was completely aware of
his presence, which reminded me of a pantomime. A low point was at the
beginning when there was a long recording while there was an empty stage and
the audience was becoming restless but the rest of the performance was
phenomenal.
Throughout the rehearsal process, I had researched
children’s theatres. An example of a children’s theatre is the Oily Cart
Theatre. Since 1981, Oily Cart has been performing children’s plays across the
UK. Example’s of their past performance’s include Mr and Mrs Moon, Tube, In a
Pickle and Mole in a Hole. They specialize in highly interactive shows for the
very young and for young people with profound and multiple learning
disabilities. I did more research into the Oily Cart and I took note into their
‘highly interactive’ performances so that I could improve my children’s theatre
performer skills to be the best that they could be.
On Thursday, we took all the things we had learnt in
the past few weeks in rehearsal and watching the performance in the Ashcroft
Theatre into consideration to perform our finished piece for Little People’s
Day. We had two audiences come to see our two showings of The Tiger Who Came To
Tea. On our first performance, although we were nervous, we gave it our all and
tried our best. A few minor mistakes were made but that taught us what we would
have to improve in our final performance in the afternoon. While there were a
few slight mistakes made, we tried, as an ensemble, to make sure that they were
unnoticeable so that the audience didn’t notice them so the performance seemed
a lot more professional. The audience reacted well to our performance but they
reacted in two different ways because the first audience laughed and reacted to
most things whereas the second audience laughed a bit less but they reacted
very well to the performance as a whole.
By Becky Rahman-Gonzalez.
