Unit 7 - Theatre in education

Thursday 19^th October

Today we were focusing on carrying on with the devising process for the performance. However, we were also focusing on movement and props within the piece and how we could incorporate these into the material that we have so far.

After a full voice production warmup, we started by running through what we have devised so far. Also now that we have a draft script, we are able to follow a structure and we can therefore start to learn our lines.

Once we had finished the full run through of all the material that we have so far, we decided as a group that we were going to work on the ‘Sweetie Day’ song. In our last session I started to briefly choreograph some of the parts to the song but didn’t get to choreograph it all. In this session I had the time to figure out what moves we could do for each part of the song and would be suitable for the 3 characters – Fiona, Nancy and Annie. For the chorus, the three characters stand in a line holding hands. They do ‘step kicks’ for the whole of the chorus each time starting by stepping on the left foot and kicking with the right. Then, for the verses, the moves are quite simple and they mostly match the line that goes with the action. For example ‘I brush my teeth everyday’ comes with an action of holding a toothbrush and brushing your teeth. We then added an instrumental part in the middle of the song which allowed us to choreograph some more moves which the characters can carry out. Each character has their own moves for 8 counts each. At the end of the individual 8 counts, there are 8 counts where the 3 characters do their own thing at the same time. After this, the characters weave in and out of each other for 2 sets of 8 counts. To finish off the song, the characters sing through the chorus one last time. Here is a video of Kellyann, Molly and I practicing what we have choreographed in this lesson:

Once we had finished choreographing, we ran through the whole performance again and added what we had just choreographed as well. During this run-through there were some little things that we altered slightly such as the position of Fiona’s fruit shaped shaker.

After a short break, we were focusing on devising some more scenes. We were now mainly focusing on Danielle’s character as we haven’t quite decided what she was going to be playing. After some discussion, we all decided that Danielle was going to be playing Tanzie Tangerine who is a teacher. Here are a few videos of us during the devising process and discussing some different ideas about the new character and scene:

In this video, Danielle was carrying out some improvisation as to what her scene could include. There was then also some discussion about further ideas.

Some more ideas as to what the scene could entail. We then carried out some improvisation around this.

One of the main ideas that we have taken from this session is audience participation during Tanzie’s scene. This will be great to include as much as possible for the performance because it will engage the children more. We have included audience participation from the start of the performance but have used it in different ways. Once the children have been selected to hold the fruits, the children will be led to call for Fiona who will then enter. The children will be holding fruits from the basket that Tanzie will be holding. These props will add to the performance and I think that they will work well within this scene.

Towards the end of the session we had some discussion of what else we would like to fit into the performance. Today we had Kerry in the session who was observing the lesson. She gave us some feedback at the end of the lesson from what she had seen. Some ideas that she gave us were to include an alphabet song which relates to different fruit and vegetables and embed literacy and numeracy.

I think that this session was very productive and that we managed to get a lot done. We managed to briefly map out the scene where Danielle will make an entrance as this was our main priority. We managed to choreograph a whole dance routine for the ‘Sweetie Day’ song and this will only need practice from now on just to tighten up the moves. In the future lessons we need to think of a few more ideas for more material to make sure that the performance isn’t too short but then make sure that the piece isn’t too long either. I will start to write draft script number 2 from the material that we have devised today.