30th April (Da-Doo)

Today we worked on "Skidrow" to make sure that everybody knew what they were doing. We then moved on the song Da-Doo. I decided that I would be a shop assistant to the Chinese man that is talked about in the song. This is a very easy song to do and I don't think that the cast will need much practice. I think that this number won't need any more work done on it.

Children's theatre research: Theatre

In this clip, we can see that in Dora the explorer, they use song and dance to portray how they are feeling and what they are going to do. This helps the kids stay engaged throughout the piece and stay entertained whilst they watch the performance and it also makes sure that the story keeps on going at a reasonable place with it making sense. We should use this because the kids will then stay entertained and it will also meant that the story can progress at a reasonable pace in an entertaining way. This will also break up the performance so that our whole piece isn't just dialogue making sure that the kids don't get bored.

They also break the fourth wall a lot with lots of audience interaction so that the kids can get involved and feel like they are part of the story and feel like that they have helped the characters out leading to them also feeling happy after the performance as they have helped the character through the story. We must do this because this is the thing that keeps kids engaged throughout the whole story and make them feel like they are part of the story and makes sure that they always know what is going on. This also makes the kids feel like they have achieved something and make them feel welcomed on the journey that they are experiencing with us.

They also use exaggeration with everything that they do meaning that they make every gesture that they do big and over the top. The fact that they do this might mean that to the adults, it looks a bit weird and unrealistic but to the kids it helps them understand what is happening and helps them to enjoy what they are watching. I think we should use this sometimes as it would help them stay focused on the story but if we do this all the time, it may look a bit stupid after a while and the kids may not understand as we may be overdoing it.

YouTube clip: http://youtu.be/lRymeAEFhuw

Children's theatre research: TV

In this clip, the presenter always directly addressed the viewer so that the kids always feel like that they are being talked to and don't feel left out or get bored. He does this so that they feel like the are being directly spoken to so it feels like a parent or close friend actually saying it to them. Also, this presenter talks slowly so the kids never get lost or confused on what is going on. On the other hand, he doesn't speak too slow otherwise the kids would get bored easily and quickly. I think that we should keep in mind the speed of our performance and how quick we speak so that the kids definitely understand what's going on and don't get too many things happening at once for them to understand. He also introduces himself to the audience as the narrator but uses his first name so that the kids now feel like they know who he is and feel like they can trust him on telling this story. I like this idea because it makes the kids feel like they now know the person who is telling them this story rather than a stranger.

The story has lots of rhymes in it so that the kids find it enjoyable to watch. With the rhymes it makes the story much more easy to listen to. If we used a narrator, we could use this so that the kids would be able to stay engaged with the story all the time and wouldn't get bored as they are listening out to the rhymes. They also never complicate the names of the characters. I think that we should definitely use this so the kids never get confused on who's who.

YouTube clip: http://youtu.be/0UwFcuLwSEs

Tuesday 28th April

Today we danced through the song we sung through yesterday-"Skidrow." Because not everybody was a trained dancer, the choreographer (Dan) decided that he didn't want to make the number a full dance number. I think that this number looks really good and that I just need to remember to remember the movement that we have set and make sure that I know the words to the songs.

28th April-Goldilocks and the Three Bears

To begin our lesson, we ran through Little Red Riding Hood once to make sure that we knew it and then we started to brainstorm different ways to tell our next story, which is Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Here are some of the ideas we came up with:

• Physical Theatre
• Puppetry
• Silhouette

We decided that we would workshop silhouette. This would involve a narrator talking the whole time for when the people in the sheet are transitioning. We did this as we already had a sheet and a light to silhouette with. We didn't have any puppets to practice or workshop with and physical Theatre may confuse the kids as they may be too young to understand some of it.

We worked on how to make objects like beds and chairs. We learnt that we could space out and that we could easily make the objects bigger by either getting closer or further away. We do have to be careful of this though because it we move to far away from the sheet, the object could distort too much. We tried to do the sections with the three beds and I think that it looked really good considering that this was our first attempt at silhouette and that  none of us thought that we would look too god at it.

I think that we should definitely use silhouette as it is a simple yet effective way to tell a story as long as we have somebody narrating the story.

Monday 27th April

Monday 27^th April

Today, we learnt our first song for “Little Shop of Horrors”. We learnt the song “Skidrow”. We learnt the song section by section with going through all the harmonies separately. I got allocated a solo line. We first used the cast recording and then used the backing track. We then had to learn all the different types of harmonies for the song as that was how the song was written.

I play a homeless member and I’m part of the ensemble for this song and I sing the line:

“When you buy your tokens you go”

I’ve thought that my character would seem like an innocent person who lives on Skidrow and just wants a home but can’t afford one

My targets:

·         Learn the solo line-this is so that when I sing this, it is to the best to my ability and I can try and show off my vocal ability

·         Learn my harmonies-this is so that the song sounds good when we sing it. This is also so that I don’t let the cast down

24th April

Today we finished the first out of our three stories. We finished Little Red Riding Hood which we are going to perform for primary school children.

We added some much needed scenes. We added the wolf and Little Red meeting each other the first time. We decided that the wok should be quite sinister and even a bit posh. I think this is a good idea as we don't want to have a wolf that shouts and is loud as it may scare some of the children. The wolf then sends Little Red the wrong way on purpose so he can go the quick way. We also narrated over this part to make sure that the Wolf's intentions are clear.

We then created Grandma's house. We only had enough people for the bed and the door but this should hopefully keep the children engaged as they will have to use their imagination. As we performing the story to little children we thought that we definitely couldn't use the version where the wolf eats grandma so we thought we would use the one where he locks her to n the cupboard. As we didn't have a cupboard, we decided that grandma would be trapped underneath the bed. This could also make the kids exited because it's an ending to the story that they have never heard of before which would also keep them engaged.

21st April

Today, we worked on Little Red and added three people who were away when we first set the piece. This then gave us a chance to go over everything and make sure that we have perfected everything. This also meant that the overall piece was improves aswell with us pitt no in movement for "off to see our grandma" making it more visual for our young audience to enjoy. This also means that we have used another story technique of dance.

Vaudeville

Before the American civil war theatre in America was dominated by burlesque and acts that featured many risqué things. People mainly go there to drink and the acts were more for middle class men.

In 1881, Tony Dastor wanted to create a more family show featuring a wide variety performances in one night. He removed all the bad language and risqué to to make the target audience open. He banned drinking in theatre to make it more family orientated.

He found out that they could make lots of money with cleaner productions and kept on putting performances like this. As the years went on, more and more amusements became available.

The purpose of these performences were so that they don't get any emotional attachment. The sole purpose was to  entertain. Even though there were new acts available, most of them were slapstick comedy.

As the years went on, Vaudeville became more and more popular appealing to many different audiences and featured a variety of performers. However these were stereotypical performences make them look bad. Although it was popular, the competition was from silent movies. A lot of the Vaudeville theatres As it became less common.

Vaudeville had been re-born as New Vaudeville from shows like Royal Variety and Britain's got talent. The presenters are stars stars that are funny to keep the comedy element.

What makes it New Vaudeville:

Voices

Over the top physicality

Comedy sketch

No character relationship with the audience

Often recognises that the audience is there (breaks the fourth wall)

Evaluation:

We did 39 steps and our piece was set at a theatre. I liked it because it's fast paced and there's no pauses. We had a piece from 39 steps. Our piece was wait two performers 

Our piece was about people in a theatre putting on a show. I like that everything is also over the top and big so I think that the audience would enjoy it more. I also like the while idea of the slapstick comedy so that people can really relate to the subjects and still laugh at what's going on.