Unit 7 - Theatre in education

Thursday 5^th October

In the session today we were starting to devise material for the performance and pull together all the different ideas that we have proposed over the past week.

During the meeting this morning with Sarah Watkins, we were able to propose our ideas and listen to Sarah to see what ideas she had. It then meant that we could spend the session this afternoon acting on what was discussed in the meeting this morning.

We started by deciding on what characters are going to be in the show and who is going to play these characters. After some discussion, these are the members of cast and the characters which they will be playing:

Charlotte (me) as Fiona the Fruit Fairy,

Molly as Nancy the Narrator,

Kellyann as Annie Apple,

Rob as the Sweetie Monster

And Danielle’s character is yet to be decided as we are undecided on the second part of the performance. There also may be some opportunism for members of the cast to multirole but we won’t know if we will need to use this until later on in the devising procress.

We have carefully thought of these character names as they all include alliteration and this is something that is used a lot within children’s TV shows, plays, books, etc. I noticed this when carrying out research. Also, we were originally going to make the ‘baddy’ as Brucie Brussel Sprout but then I realised that this may encourage the children to not eat Brussel sprouts so we changed it to the Sweetie Monster. Although this doesn’t have alliteration in it, I didn’t feel like it needed to because he will be the odd one out in the characters because he is the ‘baddy’.

After we had decided on the character names, we started to carry out some improvisation as to how we thought the piece was going to start. The performance would start with Fiona the fruit fairy entering and welcoming and talking to the audience. During this part of the show, the fruit shaped shakers are introduced and rules are set as to how they are used during the performance. Then, Annie Apple would enter with toothache. There would then be a conversation between the characters about why Annie has the toothache which would also involve the audience so that it doesn’t become dry. Annie then exits which then queues for the Sweetie Monster to enter. There would then be a scene between Fiona the Fruit Fairy and the Sweetie Monster. This is the point which we have got up to at the moment in terms of improvising. However, Rob did come up with the idea that the Sweetie Monster could then sing a song. This then led us on to what we were going to be doing for the next part of the session – brainstorming some lyrics. We have already started writing some lyrics last week but these were for another song which we have had an idea for. The songs that we were writing today were for the Sweetie Monster and Sweetie Day. We worked on the Sweetie Day song first as this will probably be sung be the whole cast. We worked well together as a cast to produce these lyrics for the song:

Sweetie day, sweetie day

How I love my sweetie day

Sweetie day, sweetie day

I love my sweets on a Saturday

I have my sweets on a Saturday

But not on any other day

I brush my teeth everyday

And not just on a Saturday!

Sweetie day etc….

I brush my teeth everyday

And not just on a Saturday

After breakfast, after tea

Keep my teeth bright and shineeeee

Sweetie Day, sweetie day etc….

We then put these to a tune on the piano. All of the songs throughout this performance will be accompanied by Cara on the piano. I think the children will really like this song because it has a really catchy chorus and is quite an energetic song. We haven’t worked out where this song will be going yet in the show but this is something that we can work on next week.

The next song that we worked on was the Sweetie Monster song. Rob mainly came up with the lyrics for this song but we, as a cast, did help him with some of the lyrics. Here are the lyrics to the Sweetie Monster song:

Sweets are delicious

Sweets are great

Get a load of sweets

And share them with your mates

If you ain’t got any

Here, give these a try

You can get 5 for a penny

You’ll feel like you can fly!

For the rest of the session we were looking and talking about the costumes which the characters will be wearing. I think costumes are a very important part of a performance and if they are worn during the rehearsal process, they can help to form the character which an actor is playing. We went through the wardrobe and props cupboard and found some potential costumes for Annie Apple (Kellyann) and Nancy the Narrator (Molly). Annie is wearing a green and white dress with a red hat. These colours are related to the colour of apples so thought that this outfit worked nicely. Nancy is wearing a cape-like top which is velvety. We didn’t manage to find anything for the Sweetie Monster to wear today but we had some ideas such as sticking sweet packaging to a cape. Fiona (me) is wearing a pink tutu. We discussed about the role of stereotyping and how we may use this in the performance. For example, because I am playing a fairy, fairies are normally associated with pink and this should be the colour that my costume is. These costumes are just ideas and may or may not be worn for the performance.