The Performance Day / Evaluation

How performing in a professional theatre helped me to develop my skills as an actor

• Helped me to understand the rules of theatre
• Helped me to become more confident with working and acting in a theatre 
• Helped me to work with others 
• Helped me to realize that in a theatre it is important that you make you actions obvious because there are a lot of people in the theatre that need to see your movements.

What I learnt as an actor

• Not all acting has to be voice related, sometimes it is better to show your acting through your body language and your facial expressions. If you use your body as your advantage in acting you can make drama more interesting and captivating, rather than using your voice for everything, otherwise it can get boring.
• Making children;s theatre is an important thing. You have to try and make it as good as you can as it its most likely a child's first experience of acting. Children's theatre has to be quite obvious, it is good if you can make things less complicated as possible so that they can understand more easier.

What went well? 
Our performance went so well! Each group performed to their best ability and gave it their all. I think that the young audience loved it. I could tell by their reactions during the show and the feedback I received. We all committed to our roles making the show ten times better and very child-friendly.

Even Better If?

• Better communication behind stage as sometimes we could be quite loud and the audience might have been able to hear us from their seats and this wouldn't have been very professional.

Did our sections of drama relate well to the section of the book?
Yes, we made sure that the audience could tell that our piece was dull and not meant to be lively. This was a good chance for the audience to have a break from all the excitement that was open the stage previously. Also, our seen did relate to our piece of the show where we were in a world where "dreams did not exist" so we had to act miserable. We didn't use much words because we thought that our target audience would necessarily need words to understand what we were trying to portray. Young kids read emotion through facial expressions and body language, because most under 4's do not understand all of the English language. This means that we didn't have to use our voice as much, and our decided to use physical theatre because it would give the performance a change.

Did the whole piece relate to the book?/ Was our performance suitable for our target audience?
Yes, overall, the whole show related well to the book of "An Awesome Book". We showed the stages of dullness and excitement, and the piece came together really well. The audience liked our performance and it explained the story really well. I think that the book and the performance had a lot of similarities and it was very clear what our show was trying to tell the audience. "Always dream as big as you can, don't stop dreaming because someone tells you to, you can dream whatever you like, so achieve your goals in life". This was a good theme for our audience of under 4's because it let them know that they can have as many dreams as big as they like, it was a nice theme to our show because we want children to have creative minds, we as BRIT students think that everyone should be creative! We decided to teach this moto through theatre, hopefully it persuades some children to pursue this career when they are older. The show was suitable for our target audience because we made it simple to understand and exciting. We also used music to engage them as well.

I loved "Little People's Day" and it has helped me to realize that later in my acting career, at some point I would like to do children's theatre because it is very exciting and interesting to perform. I absolutely loved it and I can't wait to do a similar show like that in the future!

Dress rehearsal in The New Theatre with all the Strands

Today, in our lesson, we went into the space in which we will perform our piece for "Little People Day". The New Theatre. We done this so that we could rehearse how everybody was getting on and off stage.

It was really good because we got to see how our show would end up looking like, we also got to experience performing in one of our school's theatre.

Why it was good for me to work in a professional theatre
It was beneficial for me to work in a professional theatre as it allowed me to understand the environment that professional actors work in and the level at which professionals have to work at to achieve good results. It also allowed me to see what working at a professional level would entail and the standards I would have to live up to. Working in the professional theatre also allowed me to see how theatres work in general such as entrances and exists. It also taught me that your voice isn't your only source of acting and you can use things such as body language to express and show your emotions and feelings.

How could I/ we as a group improve?

• To have faith in acting that our section was boring but interesting and captivating.
• To fully commit to roles to make more effective and show off our skills to our full potential.
• To not make our piece boring, but to make it captivating and alive. 

What I learnt?
I feel that I learnt how mature you have to be to be able to work in a professional theatre and how important team work is. I also learnt that it is more beneficial when performing to young children you need to use more body language and less complicated language as young children remember actions better than complicated language. I learnt that for children theatre doesn't always have to be musical and exciting. For example our classes section of the book was more dull and boring as we were exploring and performing life where dreams didn't exist therefore our piece was not intended to be happy. My class still had to commit to our roles as much as the other groups however we had to portray to the young audience that our scene was about life with no dreams so in this case it was okay for our scene to come across "boring". During this dress rehearsal I learnt how to develop my confidence in acting.

What went well?
I feel as though this dress rehearsal went really well because everyone cooperated relatively well. I also feel as if everyone put in effort to perform our show and this made me really look forward to performing to the children next week.

How it developed my acting
I developed my acting by learning how to co-operate better with a large group of actors, dancers, musicians, and theatre crew. It helped me to understand how to work in a theatre like a young adult and it made me more confident in acting.