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.
