An Awesome Book by Dallas Clayton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGQ3Nl1ZFy8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZMFE_V7xEw
What is your first opinion on the book?
I really enjoyed this book- I liked the story line very much, it was nice because, the book let children know that they can dream whatever they would like to dream and that they can dream however big they like. I think it is a good book for children because there are many interesting pictures that are very captivating. Some children may not understand the book, as the book is made for and adult to read to the children (preferably just before they go to sleep) however once you explain the book to the young children they will kind of understand this message of the book.
Why has it been selected for our 'Little people's Day' audience?
It has been chosen for our 'Little People's Day' because it has a great message for young children and also it can be portrayed in many different ways that will make it a interesting, good piece of quality theatre for our young audience of under 4's.
Sunday, 28 June 2015
Wednesday, 24 June 2015
Session 1- An Extremely Focused and Committed start to the project
Sleeping Bunnies - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9J_DqEwZdc
Sleeping Bunnies was an exercise we took part in as a group. It was a interesting task and also quite weird but fun because we got to act like young children. Sleeping Bunnies is a kids game. When you hear the music start you have to fall asleep and pretend to be a 'sleeping bunny'. When you hear the voice say "wake up little bunnies" the whole class gets up and hops around the room like bunnies. This was a good exercise for our class because it made us become more comfortable acting weird together. Also it gave us the opportunity to let our minds become free and feel like we are little children again. Therefore we can think like a child so we know what our audience will and will not like.
Remembering a vivid dream
We were then given the task to remember a vivid dream from when we were a small child. This was a good task to help us to remember what we liked as a young kid. Remembering our dreams gave us the chance to remember how imaginative and creative we were as children and we realized how big of an imagination young children have, so therefore we could incorporate our thoughts and ideas into our piece we will be showing for 'Little People's Day'.
Imagine you are in the dream, moving around the room: making it bigger; slow motion
Sleeping Bunnies was an exercise we took part in as a group. It was a interesting task and also quite weird but fun because we got to act like young children. Sleeping Bunnies is a kids game. When you hear the music start you have to fall asleep and pretend to be a 'sleeping bunny'. When you hear the voice say "wake up little bunnies" the whole class gets up and hops around the room like bunnies. This was a good exercise for our class because it made us become more comfortable acting weird together. Also it gave us the opportunity to let our minds become free and feel like we are little children again. Therefore we can think like a child so we know what our audience will and will not like.
Remembering a vivid dream
We were then given the task to remember a vivid dream from when we were a small child. This was a good task to help us to remember what we liked as a young kid. Remembering our dreams gave us the chance to remember how imaginative and creative we were as children and we realized how big of an imagination young children have, so therefore we could incorporate our thoughts and ideas into our piece we will be showing for 'Little People's Day'.
Imagine you are in the dream, moving around the room: making it bigger; slow motion
This task was good because it helped us to understand how we would act out our dream, giving us a chance to think about how we could make 'An Awesome Book' into a piece of theatre. However making it interesting and exciting for our young audience.
Describe your dream to a partner
This was helpful to us because we got to listen to another person's dream from when they were younger. This helped us to widen our imagination even further and understand the creativity and imagination of a child.
Describing your dream to a partner from a distance, where you have to be physically bigger
This was a good exercise because it helped us to think of way to communicate to our partner and let them know what we are trying to say with other people talking in the background. This was a good task because it helped us to try and communicate through our body language without having the power of our voice- which is a key skill in theatre. Little kids do not understand everything you say so doing this exercise was a way of finding ways on using your bodies so that children can understand what you are trying to say to them as they do not understand all of English.
This was a good exercise because it helped us to think of way to communicate to our partner and let them know what we are trying to say with other people talking in the background. This was a good task because it helped us to try and communicate through our body language without having the power of our voice- which is a key skill in theatre. Little kids do not understand everything you say so doing this exercise was a way of finding ways on using your bodies so that children can understand what you are trying to say to them as they do not understand all of English.
Creating a sound/movement machine
This was an exercise where we individually had to think of a movement and sound to do. Mr Crowther then told us to one by one get up and add to the machine, joining each movement so it looked somewhat connected. This was good because it got us to focus as a whole class and it also got us to be able to work together as a professional theatre company. It built trust between us. Also the machine gave the idea of different dreams. There was so many different sounds and movements going on that could represent so many different dreams. Constructing: this represented different dreams coming into the picture and the idea that you could have as many dreams as you like in your own personal dream machine. Destructing: Representing that dreams fade away but it is wrong and they shouldn't fade away. You should pursue your wildest dreams. Slow motion: Gives the effect of time passing or your dreams lasting for a long time or 'forever'. Speeding up: could represent the idea of your dreams being so fast that people can't keep up with you and that your dreams can be whatever you like.
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
- Marshmallow clouds
- Butter icing quicksand
- Tropical Tightrope
- Caramel filled chocolate iced hedgehog
- Heroes and Villains
- Fire breathing shoe
- Sunbathing aliens
- Swimming under water
- Mermaids
Saturday, 20 June 2015
Lesson 1 Homework Tasks
Devising Skills
What skills did we discuss today?
- interpretative skills
- technical skills
- interactive skills
Children's theatre
Why is theatre so important and valuable for children?
Theatre is important for children because it is most likely their first piece of theatre they have watched and therefore they will get their first chance in judging whether they like theatre or not. If children's first piece of theatre they watch is terrible, they will have a bad idea on theatre, however if they see a good piece, it could possibly be a trigger of them having a passion for theatre.
The Polka Theatre
- Who are they? They are a theatre company in the UK who put pieces of theatre on for children of young ages- aged 0-14. They have been open since 1979 and it is a fact hat over 90,000 children a year come to the Polka Theatre and are inspired, stimulated and engaged by theatre, often for the fist time.
- Who do they make work for? Children aged 0-14
- What's on at the moment?Dot, Squiggle and rest
World of Stories and Music
Gorilla
What to do when you find a dinosaur
Claytime
Thumbelina
Hurricane Boy
Beasty Baby
Beauty and the Beast
The Bear
The Sagas of Noggin the Dog
Not now, Bernard
The Paper Dolls for Toddlers
The Paper Dolls
The Tigers bones and Other Stories
4. How might this company help us with the work we are devising? This company can help us to understand what young children like and enjoy. Watching and studying this company can give us ideas on how to introduce theatre to our young audience.
The Unicorn Theatre
- Who are they?
It is a company who produce theatre for young children. They think it is very important to "give children a valuable, and often first ever experience of quality theatre". - Who do they make work for?
For young people of all ages. They welcome families, schools and young people. - What's on at the moment?
The longest ride
Far from the Madding Crown
Frozen (singalong)
Enchanted
Mary Poppins
Zarafa
Frozen
Labyrinth
Willow
The Never Ending Story - How might this company help us with the work we are devising?
They will help us to expand our minds to incorporate good, quality ideas to add to our piece so that it is a good experience for our young audience.
What activities did we do today?/ What ideas did you/ your group come up with?/ Was your piece suitable for the target audience?
Today, we got into groups of 5 my group was: Amaia, Jake, Michelle, Antonia and myself. We had to create an atmosphere where "dreams were dead" but we had to include animals in our piece. Amaia was a caterpillar, Antonia was a Sloth, Michelle was a bunny, I was a frog and Jake was the human. We decided to portray the "world where dreams were dead" by using a human who had no imagination, and everything he/she touched would turn into something lifeless, where dreams did not exist. For example when Jake came and touched me (the frog) i turned into a re-filled water machine, when he touched Amaia (the caterpillar) she turned into a bench. I suggested that this would be a good idea to show the world as lifeless, because it was a visual way of showing exciting, energetic life, turning into dull lifeless objects. We also took into consideration of our target audience and thought that our piece would be simple and quite easy to understand because it would look as if the animals died once the person came in contact with it. The young people, would get a sense of death.
Why did we reject some ideas?/ Why did you chose to expand on some decisions?
We decided not to make our piece to complex and too hard to understand with a complicated meaning because otherwise it wouldn't be simple enough for our target audience to understand. We decided to keep our ideas as simple as possible so therefore, it would be easy for the under 4's to understand. We expanded on our idea of showing the death of animals. We used a person to show them killing the animals, making them die. This was a visual way of showing our audience how the life became lifeless.
What acting skills/ performance skills did you use? EXPLAIN WHY these are suitable for the piece and the target audience.
We didn't use our voices to talk in the piece, instead we used our voices to make different animal noises to make the piece more child suitable and more interesting. Using animal noises made it clear for our target audience what we were acting, as animal noises are one of the first things you learn when you are a young person. Once the noises stopped it was a way of communicating to the audience that the animals had died.
Also we used our body language to communicate that we were not humans but animals. Body language is a very important thing in acting. People use it to show how they are feeling or what they are. We used our body language to show that we were animals.
Today, we got into groups of 5 my group was: Amaia, Jake, Michelle, Antonia and myself. We had to create an atmosphere where "dreams were dead" but we had to include animals in our piece. Amaia was a caterpillar, Antonia was a Sloth, Michelle was a bunny, I was a frog and Jake was the human. We decided to portray the "world where dreams were dead" by using a human who had no imagination, and everything he/she touched would turn into something lifeless, where dreams did not exist. For example when Jake came and touched me (the frog) i turned into a re-filled water machine, when he touched Amaia (the caterpillar) she turned into a bench. I suggested that this would be a good idea to show the world as lifeless, because it was a visual way of showing exciting, energetic life, turning into dull lifeless objects. We also took into consideration of our target audience and thought that our piece would be simple and quite easy to understand because it would look as if the animals died once the person came in contact with it. The young people, would get a sense of death.
Why did we reject some ideas?/ Why did you chose to expand on some decisions?
We decided not to make our piece to complex and too hard to understand with a complicated meaning because otherwise it wouldn't be simple enough for our target audience to understand. We decided to keep our ideas as simple as possible so therefore, it would be easy for the under 4's to understand. We expanded on our idea of showing the death of animals. We used a person to show them killing the animals, making them die. This was a visual way of showing our audience how the life became lifeless.
What acting skills/ performance skills did you use? EXPLAIN WHY these are suitable for the piece and the target audience.
We didn't use our voices to talk in the piece, instead we used our voices to make different animal noises to make the piece more child suitable and more interesting. Using animal noises made it clear for our target audience what we were acting, as animal noises are one of the first things you learn when you are a young person. Once the noises stopped it was a way of communicating to the audience that the animals had died.
Also we used our body language to communicate that we were not humans but animals. Body language is a very important thing in acting. People use it to show how they are feeling or what they are. We used our body language to show that we were animals.
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