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.