Lesson Questions - Week 2

We did several tasks in class this week in order to create our segment for the Children's Theatre show "The Tiger Who Came To Tea". My intentional reaction to this unit was that it would be really childish and silly but after doing more research a lot of complex work goes into creating good creative pieces of Theatre for younger audiences. I am going to be analysing and evaluating two different exercises we did to help along with the devising side of this project.

We found out about an American artist called Patty Smith.  She is a famous art maker, political singer, punk, poet and many other things. She took inspiration from a Poet named William Blake, who lived during the 18th and 19th century. He wrote out of the pain of the loss of his little brother who he adored. He was training him up to go into printing, He kept a sketch book he own and William wrote some of his most distinguished poems in there. He also wrote out of the inspiration from his religious views.  The poem Patty took as her own inspiration was the eminent "The Tyger" which was published in 1794. I have attached a link to the video. She adapted it from a spoken word poem into a instrument-less melody. Her voice was certainly unique as she completely gave new life into the poem. It gave me a sense of melancholy and irrefutable dread. The words that came to mind in the group discussion were things like "lament and dirge" and I felt that was fair!

Evaluation of source: It was useful in the way we could adapt it to fit in with our performance, as it was in it's pure version we found it would actually hinder the piece. We thought that the slow pace would lose the attention of the young audience so to fix this we amp it up a bit. I personally found slightly monotonous so we could change it by changing the expression in our voices. One of the positives is that it adds an extra performance medium to our segment. This means we have more levels and layers than just straight act. On stage Patty was stationary. We of course need to be active the entire time or again the children will lose focus so we must add something to the song. A final suggestion is to change the language as I highly doubt a 2 year is going to know what a sinews! If they feel as if they can not connect with the text.

The second task we did to help with the creation of the piece was our entrance and first section. Not technically an exercise but this did mean we now had concrete work to show! We worked on (using Lecoq's 7 states of tension) our energy levels as we travelled through the jungle. We were constantly hassled about not using enough different high level activities. This was because if everything was on the same low level it would become slow and boring to watch. We took a single line about our activity for example "By Jove! It's not extinct after all". Mr. Rennison then taught us how to say it with inclining sound to create to create excitement in our voice! I found this very useful as I could hear a difference from how it was said before to this knew way that is sure to create a funnier atmosphere for the young audience. We decided to experimented with creating a pyramid. We tried a method of just stacking one layer on another but after the third layer it became to heavy for the bottom layer. I suggest that we do some research on creation of pyramids correctly and safely. 

Lesson Questions - Week 1

1. Children's Theatre is a form of entertaining whilst educating and audience of younger and less advanced minds. Due to the fact kids have't fully developed yet and are still seeing the world through new eyes there brains are still susceptible to new thoughts and ideas. We can use Children's Theatre to touch on social, historical and classical issues using fun and innovative ways to characterise this problems in a child friendly manner that excites but is also factual. In my opinion it is an effective method of delivering more mature themes like racism and adapting them in such a way that it stays with a person for a long time even maybe through their entire life. However it may be perceived as immature and silly and may even trivialise a problem leading to the issue being represented a comical or not important. 

2. A great Children's Theatre performer must be able to experiment freely, finding new ways to give a performance and discovering other ways of delivering lines and movements. Don't think... feel! Energy must flow through the performer like it will never end. Children can and will be distracted easily so if they is a drop in the energy levels on stage they will feel it and lose interest very quickly. A good performer should keep the energy of the stage alive at all times. The body and voice should be connected together. This is true for all types of performance but especially in Children's Theatre where each movement and word is very expressive, in order to communicate everything to the audience clearly one must first make sure that each fibre of there being is in touch with every chord in the voice. Exercises like "I am a slimy frog" will cause an actor to become aware of the sound they are producing and then they can use it to join with the movement of their body. Modulating the voice can be key in keeping the attention of an audience of children. If you speak in a monotonous voice they will lose interest but if you change the register of your voice, go up and down in pitch and volume they will think it is exciting. A good Children's performer should be perceptive and consider every variable when working in different spaces. We are going to be playing to three sides so we need to be considerate to the fact that we need to give attention to all sides and not block anyone's view. Allow the audience to be a part of the story and if they give you something react with it and use it! Use the vertical and the horizontal, reach up and get down low! Go from side to side kids like all there senses to be used and I'm sure they don't want to see something on one dimension!

3. In my group we decided to adapt the theme of "tiger facts" in a fun and creative way. We choose to set out action in a Zoo, a location that every single child could identify with. Within this Zoo we have Zoo keepers or tour guides that would be free talk to the audience and break the basically non-existent fourth wall. The Zoo keeper will introduce the audience to there are array of famous tiger friends. For example we could have Tigger from the children's book Winnie the pooh, He can adopt his own persona and character traits like bouncing and talking quickly. He can tell facts like tigers can jump 4 meters in the air whilst being a fun and colourful character to watch on stage. We have chosen to do this because we feel it opens up a large variety of mediums to try and we can match facts with character persona's quiet easily. We feel like it's it's exciting enough to keep the kids entertain but we can still keep it educational.

Beautiful Thing - Review

What can  I say about Beautiful Thing by Jonathan Harvey? It is now one of my favourite modern plays for many different factors. From it's pitch perfect writing to the genius directing by Nikolai Foster. The social commentary's and running themes were educational whilst not being heavy handing. In this review I will analysing the different elements of what makes this such a great play. 

The staging was naturalistic. This brought to life the truth in the performance and made the play feel humble and real. We see a quaint yet deprive looking terrace of a block of flats with the doors facing down stage, stage right and stage left. This simple design gives us great angles to see action at without it being obscured by the shape of the stage. The faded blue of the doors help to create a "run down" atmosphere like you would feel if you went to any block of flats in London yet this is broken by the subtle tonnes of flowers hanging by doors and clothes rack make the believability of the piece even more real. This made me feel even more so connected to the stories of the characters on stage and didn't make me feel disconnected as an audience member because I could identify with a familiar setting. 

The costumes well researched and helped me to identify what time period it was set in. It was quite clear that the fashion of the characters was akin to that of the 90's and since there was a lot of little things that would look out of place in 2013 it helped to set up the world which the play was set in. The repeat use of the colour red gave me connotations of passion especially when Ste and Jamie were wearing their school uniform. I feel like to improve upon the historical placing using costumes would be to use football shirts, I know that I can tell what time period a shirt was from so as an audience member this would pull me even further into the story.

The lighting was natural but in some parts that were necessary it would become more dramatic. For example in moments of suspense the lighting would becoming harder and brighter to really illuminate the actors face and in my opinion to make the audience feel under pressure subconsciously. I feel as if the absence of light in Jamie's room made me curious, as an audience member I was trying to take in as much information as I could about the place this character lived in and by obscuring some of his room it made me want to look harder at certain areas of the stage. Also in parts where it was just Ste and Jamie when the rest of the stage was dark it made me feel as if was alone with them taking a peak at something very private. This also is used to make Jamie seem isolated in parts. 

The casting was near perfect. Suranne Jones as Sandra was the best decision that could have possibly been made. She delivers a poised yet wild performance whilst perfectly blending humour and raw emotion sometimes within the same sentence. I could really understand her motivations and I never questioned for a minute her place on that stage. In contrast I think Roy gave a much to be desired performance, I felt as if he made a very likeable character insufferable. I felt as if that character had a lot of potential but by end nothing significant was done by him! A very forgettable performance. The on stage chemistry between Jamie and Ste was tangible. The actors showed a journey from beginning where I felt the were just Okay mates right to the end where I was rooting for them to be together forever.    

There were not many sound effects used but I remember one moment after a big crescendo of action there was a pause before Leah walked off stage and slammed the door. I guess they utilized a natural sound like a door slam to really add emphasis to the scene. The music was mainly used during transitions as a distraction. I felt they were trying to draw attention away from the changing of the set. It also helped to enhance the story telling and adding atmosphere for example at the very end when Ste and Jamie dance together. The song used is perfect and adds a depth that dancing to silence wouldn't fulfil. 

The actors accents were very good and not forced at all. In my opinion sometimes there were moments where they went slightly over the top with the East end/cockney/commoner dialect but then again that may just be what people like Sandra and Leah talk like if they were real life people. Do to the fact it was set in urban London there was more slang which made the characters come to life as they weren't putting on airs they were being themselves which means I had a honest insight into their reality. A specific section of dialogue that stood out to me was the scene where Jamie and Ste are looking at the gay magazine and Jamie says that "frottage" was a French yoghurt because it really communicated the youth and innocence of his character in a comedic way. 

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