I have enjoyed working on the Little Peoples Day performance. Foe me personally I found it really fun to take our physical theatre skills to the next level but also become a child again. I never really thought about my dreams in such depth before, and when we had to take ourselves back to a place which for me was a long time ago, felt quite surreal as my dream was from when I was about 5 years old and even to this day I still remember it. Becoming a kid again was probably my highlight, like playing sleepy bunnies, which surprisingly was really enjoyable and something I think the whole class loved, in got us in the childish mood that was great for coming up with ideas, and over acting our pieces.
I struggled at first with trying to think of ways to perform which wasn't to complex for the children. Although children do understand emotion, we couldn't make things too complex or not PG as they are still children and they take everything very literally.
My view on physical theatre has changed dramatically, I see it differently now as though I understand it better. I think before I saw physical theatre as a dance of emotions that I found quite hard to do. But now I know its so much more, its feeling and everything you want to say put into actions, facial expressions, body movements. I now feel as though I could do a whole physical theatre piece now and I would be very comfortable with coming up with ideas, and putting them ideas to life.
Our final product for me I found confusing at first, I didn't really see how the children would like it as it was a bit on the creepy side, especially with the Tim Burton music! I also didn't know how the children were going to act, would they cry, scream I really wasn't sure. It wasn't until we performed it to the rest of our year until I realised what our piece had. Our piece was full of meanings and comedy and imagination, lots of imagination that I think the other performances didn't have. As soon as our class performed we understood it and therefore we even more eager to make this the best performance that hopefully the kids would love and remember forever.
I liked how our piece was made up of tiny dreams, that all meant something to us and maybe to the audience too. I enjoyed being able to work on our own, it felt good to have something all by myself which I had all control of. The Dinosaur at the end could probably of needed more time as not everyone was in time, and somethings went a bit wrong, like forgetting of lines, but what I love about my group is that we can recover from those situations quickly and work as a team. At the end of the day we all love theatre and try our best in it, so when we were about to go on stage and perform we all were so ready and in the mood, we can all pull it together at the last minute and that's why our class works so well.
Overall I liked our performance, it had so much imagination, it really was a dream world. I hope the children took something away from, even just being amazed at what they saw. Our piece was so different to the other strands and I'm glad it was. We were so creative and gave a new perspective to childrens theatre. We made everyone laugh and that's all that matters, we put on a good show that people enjoyed. I think as a class we need to remember who our target audience is, in this case it was children not our piers. I think that's why everyone at the start wasn't so keen, but we all wanted to prove ourselves, and I think we did. We over exaggerated everything, walked in neutral and worked all together to create a giant Dinosaur. So I think we did pretty good and I definitely learnt a lot from this experience. I will be sad to see my teacher Mr Crowther leave, as he has taught me a lot this year and believed in our class. I hope in the future we will have more experiences like this and perform to lots more types of audiences.
Friday, 17 July 2015
Thursday, 16 July 2015
Lesson 2
Today we started working on our dreams, taking a dream that we have had and transformed it into a physical theatre solo piece. We started by turning up our dreams, making them more extreme each time, we did this by increasing the sounds, exaggerating every part of our body so it was so over the top and crazy. This was good because it helped us to be able to see the full potential we had with our physicalised dreams. It was able to take us out of our comfort zones and make us feel completely stupid, which now I think as a class we can do things like that again and we wont be so embarrassed.
Our next task was to create a machine, we had to choose a movement from our piece and join the machine when we thought the time was right. Slowly everyone was part of the machine and it was so funny to hear all the sounds we were making it was very effective. As we went on Sir told us to bring up our movements to the next level. We all had to push ourselves to the extreme giving it our all, and by the end we were all sweating. This was a good excercise, as it showed us how what we can do we our pieces and how we can make them work all together. It also helped us to think about how our mini dream part could fit into the piece and how others can work around ours.
This lesson we also had a company called Frantic Assembly come in and give us a workshop. We started of with an exercise which we had to say someones name in a circle and you go into their space while they say someones name. We then made it harder and we didnt say someones name instead we made eye contact with someone. This helped us to pay closer attention to people and feel more comfortable with making eye contact with people.
We did other exercises like running an obstacle course with a partner next to you but doing it in sync, this helped us to be aware of others and the space we are in. We also did an exercise where we were in lines of 5 one behind the other and we each had to clap a pattern and each time we got to someone at the ends it would change. This improved our concentration and listening skills, so we could prepare for when to clap and actually do the pattern correctly. All these exercises can help us with our performance skills, like being aware of people and making connections with them without verbally speaking to them, having spacial awareness, and concentrating on everything that is happening around us.
We then had to get into partners and lead each other round the room, one with their eyes closed, this was to gain each others trust and become comfortable with them. Then we had to lead someone with a body and making a part of their body move in one direction until you stopped them. Finally we created a piece, me and Antonia started doing ours and realised that it told a story without us even planning it. Ours told a story of two people who are in a relationship, one of them loves the other as one does not. It shows how at the end the person who was in love with the other realises that she is not loved and is all alone. I find it very interesting how from just controlling someone by pushing parts of their body, you can create a whole story.
Overall I learnt a lot from Frantic Assemble. I developed many skills, and had a lot of fun doing it.
Our next task was to create a machine, we had to choose a movement from our piece and join the machine when we thought the time was right. Slowly everyone was part of the machine and it was so funny to hear all the sounds we were making it was very effective. As we went on Sir told us to bring up our movements to the next level. We all had to push ourselves to the extreme giving it our all, and by the end we were all sweating. This was a good excercise, as it showed us how what we can do we our pieces and how we can make them work all together. It also helped us to think about how our mini dream part could fit into the piece and how others can work around ours.
This lesson we also had a company called Frantic Assembly come in and give us a workshop. We started of with an exercise which we had to say someones name in a circle and you go into their space while they say someones name. We then made it harder and we didnt say someones name instead we made eye contact with someone. This helped us to pay closer attention to people and feel more comfortable with making eye contact with people.
We did other exercises like running an obstacle course with a partner next to you but doing it in sync, this helped us to be aware of others and the space we are in. We also did an exercise where we were in lines of 5 one behind the other and we each had to clap a pattern and each time we got to someone at the ends it would change. This improved our concentration and listening skills, so we could prepare for when to clap and actually do the pattern correctly. All these exercises can help us with our performance skills, like being aware of people and making connections with them without verbally speaking to them, having spacial awareness, and concentrating on everything that is happening around us.
We then had to get into partners and lead each other round the room, one with their eyes closed, this was to gain each others trust and become comfortable with them. Then we had to lead someone with a body and making a part of their body move in one direction until you stopped them. Finally we created a piece, me and Antonia started doing ours and realised that it told a story without us even planning it. Ours told a story of two people who are in a relationship, one of them loves the other as one does not. It shows how at the end the person who was in love with the other realises that she is not loved and is all alone. I find it very interesting how from just controlling someone by pushing parts of their body, you can create a whole story.
Overall I learnt a lot from Frantic Assemble. I developed many skills, and had a lot of fun doing it.
Sunday, 14 June 2015
Lesson 1
What activities did we do today?
1. Sleeping bunnies. - this was a really fun good exercise, as it woke everyone up and got us into the mindset of children. I learnt from this that it doesn't matter how old you are everyone is a kid on the inside.
2. Remembering a vivid dream and Imagine you are in the dream moving around the room: making it bigger; slow motion. - by remembering a dream we once had it gave us plenty of ideas for what we can do in our piece. It also was a really fun way of getting everyone out of their comfort zones, and I found it really fun to be completely crazy and go into my own world. I believe now i feel confident in developing these skills and completely going for it.
3. Describing your dream to a partner. - When we had to tell our partner it was like we were trying to sell it to them, make them believe. This made me think how that in our piece we have to make the children believe in this book, believe in dreams, and believe that dreams can come true.
4. Describing your dream to a partner from a distance, where you have to be physically bigger. - As our partners couldn't hear us we had to make them understand our dream by our actions and facial expressions. We also had to really over exaggerate everything so they could see what we were doing. When we perform to the children they wont really understand everything we are saying so we will have to make them understand through our actions and facial expressions, and this exercise helped to give us all a glimpse of what we are going to have to develop.
5. Creating a Sound/ Movement machine.
- Constructing
- De-constructing
- Slow motion
- Speeding up
6. Moving around the room and then in numbers creating elements of different dreams. The elements fed back by the group were:
- Money
- Bull dogs
- Dinosaurs
- Stepping stones
- Flying
- Medieval
- Giant Frog
- Sweet food
- Princesses
- Concrete Jungle
- Night into Day
- Super Powers
7. Devising what a world without dreams might look like. In groups of 5/6.
What ideas did you/your group come up with? - We thought that a world without dreams is like a factory that doesn't work. So our idea was that we have someone in the middle who controls all the machines, testing each one, and slowly they all break down. The rest of the people in the group were parts of a machine that were controlled by someone and when we broke down we became ordinary factory workers. We thought that dreams are a fantasy, a make believe world, where you can be anything, and we were machines. If dreams were destroyed than the magical world would become ordinary, therefore when we were machines making dreams, when we broke down we just became ordinary, real life.
Why have you chosen some of these ideas to develop further? - I think the idea of dreams being controlled by something is really interesting. Do we control our dreams? Or is it things we see or people do in our life that makes us dream? And do the things we dream mean something? And is what our mind experiences telling us through dreams? And also is there a way to control your dreams? These are all questions I would like to know and hopefully can be answered during this production.
Why did you reject some of the ideas? - When we had to create a world with no dreams, we all had ideas of what that was. A blank space, a place full of nothing, a black hole. But there was no way of showing this, so when we came up with the idea of dreams being controlled by a machine that breaks down, we thought it was great as machines have no feelings, they are not human and only do what their told to do. But when we were brain storming, we kept coming up with really cool ideas, like making the machine a plane and having a conductor control it, but it starts to break down and when it crashes that's like dreams dying. But we got too creative and realised in a world full of dreams, there is no creativity, everything is so simple and colourless. So we had to scrap some ideas to keep it simple and to task.
What acting skills/performance skills are you using? - We are using physical theatre, this is suitable to the piece as the book we are performing is about dreams, and there really isnt a way of scripting a whole play on dreams. I searched up what dreams are and came across an article on Medical News Today about dreams and it says "Dreams are a universal human experience that can be described as a state of consciousness characterized by sensory, cognitive and emotional occurrences during sleep". How are we meant to create a piece where we are only talking and its about dreams? Dreams are so complex, but a part of our imagination. I believe the best way to get across a message about dreams, is by physical theatre, we will be able to show things that maybe we cant put into words. It will also be a way for the children to see Theatre in a more interesting way to probably what they have seen before, and hey might understand it better.
An Amazing Book
Today we were showed the book we will be doing are production about An Awesome Book. My first oppinion of the book is that its more than just a childrens book with pictures in, its got a bigger meaning behind it, something that will remain in the childrens heads for hopefully ever. It is saying that you should never give up on your dreams, even how crazy and unrealistic, or if people tell you that you cant live that dream. Always keep dreaming and happy things will come.
I think this book has been selected for our child audience, because it has a really important message. To never give up on your dreams. As us the Brit School students are performing it to them, we should be an example of this book. When we all auditioned, we must of had a dream and a big dream at that. When we got into Brit the beginning of that dream started to evolve. And to the children watching they should see us up there performing, knowing we are already trying to make our dreams come true, and they should too.
Devising skills
Today we discussed how to begin to devise our piece. We looked at having everyone performing different things at the same time. We also looked at creating things with our bodies, as well as working as a group to create a huge object e.g Dinosaur. We looked at creating more simplistic scenes, where there is less words and more movement. I am most confident in creating things with our bodies rather than working with other people. I think its easier to create something by yourself, with all your ideas. Its harder in a bigger group as there is so many ideas happening at once and so many bodies to think what to do with. But I think it looks really cool when we do work all together, so this is a skill i really want to improve.
Childrens Theatre
It is important for children to go to the theatre because it gives them a lot of life lessons. Usually there's a message behind plays that children should know. It shows them what happens if your bad, for example the baddy normally never wins. Shows them how doing the right thing and being a good person leads to good things. Gives them morals and life lessons that cannot be taught but only shown, even without them knowing.
What ideas did you/your group come up with? - We thought that a world without dreams is like a factory that doesn't work. So our idea was that we have someone in the middle who controls all the machines, testing each one, and slowly they all break down. The rest of the people in the group were parts of a machine that were controlled by someone and when we broke down we became ordinary factory workers. We thought that dreams are a fantasy, a make believe world, where you can be anything, and we were machines. If dreams were destroyed than the magical world would become ordinary, therefore when we were machines making dreams, when we broke down we just became ordinary, real life.
Why have you chosen some of these ideas to develop further? - I think the idea of dreams being controlled by something is really interesting. Do we control our dreams? Or is it things we see or people do in our life that makes us dream? And do the things we dream mean something? And is what our mind experiences telling us through dreams? And also is there a way to control your dreams? These are all questions I would like to know and hopefully can be answered during this production.
Why did you reject some of the ideas? - When we had to create a world with no dreams, we all had ideas of what that was. A blank space, a place full of nothing, a black hole. But there was no way of showing this, so when we came up with the idea of dreams being controlled by a machine that breaks down, we thought it was great as machines have no feelings, they are not human and only do what their told to do. But when we were brain storming, we kept coming up with really cool ideas, like making the machine a plane and having a conductor control it, but it starts to break down and when it crashes that's like dreams dying. But we got too creative and realised in a world full of dreams, there is no creativity, everything is so simple and colourless. So we had to scrap some ideas to keep it simple and to task.
What acting skills/performance skills are you using? - We are using physical theatre, this is suitable to the piece as the book we are performing is about dreams, and there really isnt a way of scripting a whole play on dreams. I searched up what dreams are and came across an article on Medical News Today about dreams and it says "Dreams are a universal human experience that can be described as a state of consciousness characterized by sensory, cognitive and emotional occurrences during sleep". How are we meant to create a piece where we are only talking and its about dreams? Dreams are so complex, but a part of our imagination. I believe the best way to get across a message about dreams, is by physical theatre, we will be able to show things that maybe we cant put into words. It will also be a way for the children to see Theatre in a more interesting way to probably what they have seen before, and hey might understand it better.
An Amazing Book
Today we were showed the book we will be doing are production about An Awesome Book. My first oppinion of the book is that its more than just a childrens book with pictures in, its got a bigger meaning behind it, something that will remain in the childrens heads for hopefully ever. It is saying that you should never give up on your dreams, even how crazy and unrealistic, or if people tell you that you cant live that dream. Always keep dreaming and happy things will come.
I think this book has been selected for our child audience, because it has a really important message. To never give up on your dreams. As us the Brit School students are performing it to them, we should be an example of this book. When we all auditioned, we must of had a dream and a big dream at that. When we got into Brit the beginning of that dream started to evolve. And to the children watching they should see us up there performing, knowing we are already trying to make our dreams come true, and they should too.
Devising skills
Today we discussed how to begin to devise our piece. We looked at having everyone performing different things at the same time. We also looked at creating things with our bodies, as well as working as a group to create a huge object e.g Dinosaur. We looked at creating more simplistic scenes, where there is less words and more movement. I am most confident in creating things with our bodies rather than working with other people. I think its easier to create something by yourself, with all your ideas. Its harder in a bigger group as there is so many ideas happening at once and so many bodies to think what to do with. But I think it looks really cool when we do work all together, so this is a skill i really want to improve.
Childrens Theatre
It is important for children to go to the theatre because it gives them a lot of life lessons. Usually there's a message behind plays that children should know. It shows them what happens if your bad, for example the baddy normally never wins. Shows them how doing the right thing and being a good person leads to good things. Gives them morals and life lessons that cannot be taught but only shown, even without them knowing.
The Unicorn Theatre
Who are they? The Unicorn Theatre was founded by Caryl Jenner as a touring company in 1947. Their audiences are young children, hoping to give them a proper theatrical experience. On their website they say 'the best of theatre for children should be judged on the same high standards of writing, directing, acting and design as the best of adult theatre'. They perform to young people, on their website they explain how they are "dedicated to inspiring and invigorating young people of all ages, perspectives and abilities, and empowering them to explore the world – on their own terms – through theatre." This can help with what we are devising because they have a lot of lessons in their shows, and in the book we are performing has a really big lesson. We can use how they interact with their audience to teach lessons. When I saw Girls Like That at the Unicorn Theatre at the end they the actors came out and answered are questions, so maybe it would be nice if the children could talk to us at the end with any questions.
What's on at the moment?
What's on at the moment?
Two characters play together, exploring new space, new objects, dressing up and taking turns. But there’s a bit of a struggle when one of them wants to be the ONLY captain of the ship.
ANCIENT MECHANICALS
Shoot down a castle with a Roman catapult, build an aqueduct to guide water to a village, try the Greek way of using the sun to burn the enemy’s ships, and bookworms can even learn to write their name in hieroglyphics.
Shoot down a castle with a Roman catapult, build an aqueduct to guide water to a village, try the Greek way of using the sun to burn the enemy’s ships, and bookworms can even learn to write their name in hieroglyphics.
Polka Theatre
Polka Theatre are a registered charity that opened in 1979. They are a theatre that performs to children from the ages 0-14. It is free to go so anyone can attend, they also have workshops, where they can make and create things.
They perform to all children, and as its free it means children from disadvantaged backgrounds can also attend the theatre for the very first time. They will help us with what we our devising as they put on performances that are intimate with the audience and react with them. In our performance we could do that too, and make the audience feel more comfortable, and their expeience more memorable.
They perform to all children, and as its free it means children from disadvantaged backgrounds can also attend the theatre for the very first time. They will help us with what we our devising as they put on performances that are intimate with the audience and react with them. In our performance we could do that too, and make the audience feel more comfortable, and their expeience more memorable.
What's on at the moment?
With no words, and accompanied by an evocative soundtrack of world music, Circles in the Sand is an intimate, imaginative and captivating play, providing the perfect introduction to theatre for the very young. At the end of the performance, children are invited to delight in the feel of the sand as it trickles between toes and fingers. Circles in the Sand is created by award-winning theatre director Sarah Argent and performed by the enchanting actor Marleen Vermeul
Would you trust a talking cat? You never know, he might turn you into royalty just like the hero of Puss in Boots, brought to vivid life by Patrick Lynch from CBeebies.With smoke and mirrors discover how this sure-footed feline fools both the King and the Ogre to put his master at the top. With a host of puppets, a windmill and an avalanche of fruit and nuts come and see this classic furry tail!
Join us on a playful adventure as a fantastical garden becomes a miniature universe of dots, squiggles and shapes of all different shapes and sizes.
What will you discover at the bottom of the garden? Meet a singing box and a dancing prism, follow footprints along a twisting path and find creatures that wiggle and squiggle.
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