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.

Friday 27th March

This week we had a rough idea on how we could start our performance for our children’s theatre piece. We then put the detail into this and completed this in full. The techniques that we are using in this opening scene are audience interaction, basic dialogue and a childish chant so they can remember. This will then hopefully get them involved with the story and get them ready for story time.

We then would create the scene for our first story “Little Red Riding Hood”. Our group was in charge of making the river. I had the idea that the river would be slanted so that one person would have a puppet on each arm with fishes on them pretending that they were under the sea. There would be then other people who are hidden behind the sheet with fishes on sticks which would also be shown over the river. This idea was not used due to another idea with the river being lifted up and everyone would be the fish underneath the river.

We then started the actual storyline for “Little Red”. We have a narrator and we have an ensemble that is in every scene creating the forest and other parts of the scenery. This will make the kids use their imagination with making the ensemble looking like the part of sceneries. We then decided that we would add a song. We then changed the words to:

“We’re off to see my grandma, my grandma who live in the woods,

  I hear she feels sick, and feel a bit ick, oh what am I going to do?

  I’ll take some treats into the woods, and make her feel better just like I should

  because, because, because, because, because, my name is little red riding hood.

  We’re off to see my grandma, my grandma who lives in the woods.”

I think that the children would recognise the tune and would enjoy the new lyrics and would be able to stay into their heads and it would help them with enjoying them.

Choosing our stories

The photo below shows a brainstorm of stories that we all came up in class that we could perform for primary school children after telling the children a basic synopsis so they understand what is going on. We  decided to take a short discussion we decided to take a vote on which three stories that we could do. The first story that everyone chose was "Jack and the Beanstalk". I think that this will be a really good idea because it has lots of characters and we could make almost like a musical as we could add song and dance.

The second story that was chosen was "Little Red Riding Hood" I think that this is really well known and we could also add the musical aspect. We could also add some other characters to male it more entertaining for all of the children.

The last story was a difficult decision for the group because me and a couple of others wanted t do "The Ugly Duckling" but others wanted to do "Goldilocks". I wanted to do "The Ugly Duckling" because I think that it could be funny and entertaining for the children. More people wanted to do "Goldilocks" because they though that the children wouldn't get confused and would feel that it could also be more song and dance orientated.

Story Telling

The photo shows below show a brainstorm of the theme that we could do our children theatre piece. We decided to choose to introduce the book. We started with Freya and Toby pretending to be teachers in a assembly to talk about healthy eating. After this, two people come in saying "We got the book!" leading to a change in the atmosphere in the room, this will then hopefully get all the children exited.

These two people say things like "are you bored boys and girls?" and "Shall we have some fun?" We then get them to put their hands in their air to make sure that everybody in the room gets exited. We will also be addressing the audience to get them involved so that they will be involved with us. Two people then sprinkle glitter over Freya and Toby so it looks like magic dust. There will also be a spell that they have to recite the spell for more audience participation to make the story move along.

Friday's lesson

Last lesson was our final week on work shopping techniques for storytelling. We brand all of the elements of the past few weeks  together. We started to make up a story with that class and everybody in the class would then follow on and tell a bit more of the story. We had to make sure that our story would appeal to different audiences. We had to focus on various age groups. Some exams were primary school children, teenage girls, teenage boys and men down the pub. This meant that our tone of voice would have to change and the content would have to change so the language would be relevant to the age or gender of the group to make it more suitable and interesting for the group.

After this we had to work more on movement. The class was split into two groups where one had to make a magical forest and the other had to make a magical undersea world. I had to make the undersea world. Our group started with a soundscape and which led to a short dance. We decided to go over the top with the facial expressions to make sure that we got our primary school target audience and make sure that they stay interested.

I liked what we did today as it gave us a whole overview of what we did during these workshops. This now means that we now how a better understanding on how to address our target audience and keep them interested.